Good news from the Titanic

A stroll to the Syr Daria today shows that the river is completely unfrozen now. This is a real change from the landscape we had in January when we arrived in Baikonur.
The water level is rather high at the moment. This is due to the melted ice coming from the Uzbek mountains. In summer, according to local people, the shallow waters enable to reach by foot the islands in the middle of the river with water up to the hip only.

On the ground, ice crystals are slowly but irreversibly melting at the foot of the reed canes under the tepid sun of March,

and CryoSat-2, despite a launch on April the 8th will not be able to map the last few large ice sheets left along the Syr Daria banks.

We all are waiting for the accurate data Cryosat-2 will provide once in space, but we already strongly suspect a negative balance of ice on the planet which has already triggered alarming signals for some of our polar friends...

However, there is may be one place in Baikonur which is not going to complain about this seasonal warming or for which ice melting is not bad news at all. This place is called the Titanic. Why?
Certainly not because of any kind of icebergs (even if melting) this time...

In Baikonur, the Titanic is the name of the wreck (above) that has been pulled up onto the upper bank of the Syr Daria to become a restaurant and a "Bier garten" during the spring/summer period. It is still closed but should open as soon as the weather conditions will improve, offering to the "Baikonurtsi" a nice place for social events with a gorgeous view on the river and the steppe.
How this ship ended her life at this place? One can only speculate. Earlier, at the time the flow of the river was more stable and the Aral sea was still a sea, she was may be carrying passengers along the river from place to place. The development of the intense irrigation to support cotton and rice cultures has drained the river (and the Aral sea) making these trips impossible today.
A quick look on the web shows that most of the Aral sea has become a cemetery for ships of this kind.

A last remark about the city itself and the river: In fact when the was city developed at this place as from 1955, the engineers started the settlements and then the construction of the city on the right bank. The (natural) idea would have been to build a city over the 2 banks of the Syr Daria. This idea was abandoned due to the non predictable behavior of the river flow. It was decided very early, that the city would grow along the river but on the right bank only.