Flow, river, flow

Four years ago, the Elbe bubbled and burst, spewing its waters forth onto the shores and into the basements and lives of folks from Prague to Hamburg. As you walk through Wittenberg today, you see signs of that flood – monuments to an unbelievable natural disaster. Literal monuments. You can still hear the collective gasp of the people as the plaque announces “Four years ago, the water was this. high.” The river broke through its barriers, leapt over its boundaries, ceased being a river and became a force to be reckoned with; metamorphosed from a thing of beauty and practicality to a raging, destructive tyrant, splashing up and seeping in.

I used to laugh at a street sign in tiny Waverly, Iowa – my college town. Where the street took a dip, there was a sign which proclaimed in all practicality: “Street closed when under water.” Wittenberg could have a similar sign today – “City closed when under water.”

The atmosphere in Wittenberg today is subdued, because the river has begun to rise again. The water table has been creeping up for days. Families on their Sunday afternoon walks have had to choose a new destination; the Elbe Bike Path is now completely submerged. The ground starts to squish and jiggle as the water table inches higher.

The citizens, calloused by the flood tragedy of four years ago, resolutely bring out the pumps and get to work on their basements. The trees remain stoic, lifting their skirts and enduring, as usual. The ducks are unaffected. They paddle placidly across the top of the water, just a few meters higher than last week.

From our southern-exposure office window, you can see the Elbe in the distance, and in the foreground a tiny tributary that runs through the field behind the building. The tiny stream has swollen to four times its width and is creeping its way insidiously toward our foundation. The two branches of the Elbe strain to reunite themselves across the floodplains, which serve now as deep reservoirs. The Elbe, normally so docile, churns with whitecaps and manifests three competing currents. The grasshopper has become a locust.

The high water mark was in Dresden yesterday and is moving downstream. We haven’t seen the worst of it yet.