Of all the

images I can summon of my month in Germany -

cathedrals and churches, operas, fresh-planted gardens,

outdoor markets - what do you think is the one that

pops most often into my mind when I first wake up in the

morning or begin wool-gathering during a boring meeting?

The river.

The Rhein.

Or the Rhine, to use the English spelling. Father Rhine,

it's been called. The Rhine is to Germany, indeed to all

of western Europe, what the Mississippi is to the United

States. Germany's earliest multi-lane transportation

route, the Rhine and its tributaries did for early

Europeans what rivers do everywhere: provide passage for

the exchange of goods, people and ideas, cutting the way

for roads and railroads built later in valleys smoothed

flat or cut through mountains by the river itself.

Dave and I

collect rivers, heads of rivers to be exact. We've waded

in the birthplace of the Chattahoochee, the Mississippi

and the Susquehanna, and photographed each other standing

at the source of the Delaware, the Danube, the Missouri

and the Neckar. We tried to do as much with the Rhine, on

earlier trips, but identifying the Rhine's true source is

problematic, composed as it is of literally hundreds of

streams gushing from Swiss glaciers to converge in dozens

of valleys and lakes before issuing from the Bodensee.

We did

stand there, on a flag-lined bridge in Constance at the

foot of the Bodensee, the young jade-colored river

already in a rush beneath our feet toward the North Sea

- which is, of course, downstream, but

"up" on a map, a confusing reversal of our

usual conception of rivers running north to south.

Ironically, the Rhine itself never actually flows into

the sea, but ends as it began, in a number of

distributaries, chiefly the Waal and the Lek, that spread

its waters through the lowlands to Europe's leading ocean

port, Rotterdam.

I made my

acquaintance with the lower Rhine at Cologne (to use the

spelling English-speakers prefer for Germany's K�ln, a

word that doesn't always make it into print correctly

because of its pesky umlaut).

Cologne's

rise to importance was due largely to the fact that it is

at the intersection of the Rhine with early (and modern)

trade routes from Paris to northern Germany. While

visiting my daughter Mary in March, I found myself with

lots and lots of time on my hands while she was at the

theater, and I learned to know the city quite well,

mostly on foot and mostly in very cold weather.

But time

and time again, even though my initial destination had

been the old city or the shopping district or a museum, I

found myself drawn back to the river. Through the

narrowest canyons of tiny 16th century buildings or down

the wide modern boulevards that have replaced the old

Roman walls, almost every time you look eastward, the

river beckons.

Rivers are

organic in every Webster sense of the word: having to do

with a larger body, inherent, systematically

interrelated, living things. They grow and change and

their magnetism to human beings is such that there's

always something happening on or around them. A major

roadway runs through Cologne alongside the Rhine, but

just before the street arrives at the heart of the old

city-on-the-river, it is diverted underground and into

other arteries, so that the space between the river and

the old fish market area (now lined with pleasant

restaurants and Biergartens) is all green and totally

people-oriented.

Along the

river itself is a wide, paved pedestrian zone, high

enough to be clear of the rising water of most spring

run-offs. That area is separated from automotive traffic

occasionally venders, sculptures, and always people:

lovers with arms entwined, in-line skaters winding among

the walkers, runners, cyclists, people walking dogs and

people pushing prams, more and more of them young

fathers, I'm pleased to mention.

And on the

river, oh! on the river, the barges hauling raw materials

upstream to German and Swiss cities and finished goods

downstream, bound for the world. The river is mighty,

very wide here, but nonetheless fast and powerful, and

there is a marked difference in the speed of barges

pushing upstream against the current or being pushed

downstream by the current.

Especially

on windy days, the blunt prows of these behemoths often

breast water well over the bow. Some days it looked like

a regatta of freight on the river, barges passing each

other under the four great bridges that link Cologne with

Deutz on the eastern bank, barges slowing to tie up for

the night at riverside. This is the most concentrated

commercial wealth on the continent, the Rhine literally

throbbing as it turns inland cities into seaports for 800

kilometers (some 500 miles) from Basel, Switzerland to

the ocean.

Come back

next week and we'll leave the geography lesson for a long

virtual walk up one side of the Rhine and down the other.

"Virtual" may lack the color and sound of

"real," but I promise, you'll be a lot warmer

this way.

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