A woman in her early 90s has been identified as the author of a message in a bottle she cast into the Rhine in 1958, after the green glass bottle was unearthed during recent construction work along the riverbank at Oberwesel.
The note, scrawled on the back of a ship's menu from 1958, was a bid to find pen pals. The writer, then 22, was working as a ship's cook aboard the MS Drachenfels on the Koblenz–Mainz route. Oberwesel Mayor Jan Zimmer traced the author with the help of a residents' registration office, and the woman's daughter subsequently made contact. The sender, now around 90 and living in the Eifel region, has since signed Oberwesel's Golden Book, and the original document is to be displayed in the town museum.