The harbours, fist of all that of Hamburg and Bremen, are still today major transhipment terminals, even if everything is constantly changing. Sometimes the harbour had to follow the river, when its bed was relocated. Just like at the inland harbour of Duisburg-Ruhrort, where the river Ruhr meets the Rhine.

Romans used the most important German river, the Rhine, to advance to the north. They built overnight Xanten in the Low Rhine region which for a while was the largest city north of the Alps.

In the Archeological Park of Xanten, which today is on the far west of the Ruhr area, a few Roman magnificent buildings have been reconstructed. From Xanten, Romans travelled further into the unknown. Opposite of Xanten, on the other side of the Rhine, legionaries travelled up the tributary Lippe and made their way up to the north through the virgin forests of Westfalia. Today, Bochum aerial archeologist, Bao Song, is looking the remains of the Roman camps on the northern boarder of the Ruhr Region. He is also looking for the lager where the Roman general Varus and his defeated legionnaires took shelter after the defeat against Arminius.

The river Rhine has been Germany´s cultural axe for 2,000 years. The castles on the Middle Rhine, from the Castle of Katz to that of Maus, are Unesco cultural heritage today. On the steep Rhine shores they exhibit power and architectural ability and where visible since the old time for travellers moving between one customs station and the next every few kilometres along the river.

Today there are huge industrial plants along the river: from the chemical BASF, to Hoechst, to Bayer just beside the gigantic power station where the waters of the river Rhine to cool the reactors and pours them warmed up back to the river.

Yet other rives beside the Rhein and the several tributaries Neckar, Main and Ruhr shape the country. When you look at it from above, time seems to stand still along the river Elbe. Nowhere else in Germany do water birds have so much space as in the meadows along the Elbe valley, where at the end of summer young storks get ready to start their summer holiday in the south – without their parents.

Also Helgoland, the only open sea island in Germany is so enjoyable for stationary seals that they give birth to their offsprings round Christmas at the shores of the dunes. In the summer the guillemots hatch on the stack the so called Lange Anne. South of this cliff, at the East Frisian island of Juist, the workers of the seal breeding station set adrift the pups at the village of Norddeich. From the air you realise that saying good bye can be really hard – both for the seals and the humans.