Passau is hard to beat. For being ancient, picturesque, accessible, and even inspiring - it is certainly in the same league as Salzburg and Vienna. In fact, its smaller scale probably puts it over Vienna overall .
The first sight of Passau as one comes out of the camping, which is a little bit up the Ilz river is of the tower of the Rathaus, and the twin domes of the St Stephan cathedral, and probably the St Paul church. It is a scene quite reminiscent of the towers and domes of Salzburg.Crossing the Luitpold Brucke over the Donau, you land immediately at the Rathaus and in the old city (altstadt). A big feature of this is the wall showing the high water marks for river flooding of past years. Two years ago, Jurgen and I stood here and playfully held our noses - because with all these high waters we would have been underwater.
First look at Passau, from the bridge over the Donau
As we approached the wall, we were interested to see if they had 2013 up. In 2013 we had watched in horror -through the blogs of others and on TV, as flooding badly affected this entire region. I didn't see an entry for 2013, until Dodie said "Look up, look way up". Yikes, just under the highest mark, for 1501, was 2013!
Our first order of business, though, was not flooding and not churches, but dirndls. Since we decided to pick some up, we have been looking, and thinking - where and how much?
Two years ago we had spotted one dirndl shop, but now tourist information pointed out one just along the water, by where all the super long tour boats dock. As we walked over there, we were amazed at how well any sign of the flood had been repaired and cleaned up. There was indeed lots of evidence around, and repair crews were still at work, but generally the place looked great. As complacent tourists I guess we expect disasters to be recovered from quickly, so we can continue to vacation and play undisturbed. However, we were also trying to understand what the effort of cleanup must have entailed for the people here.
At the dirndl (lederhosen, beer stein, and general souvenir) shop, we were at first deflated by what looked like prices way out of our reach. I am taking credit for discovering that what we were looking at were the European sizes, and that the euro prices were reasonable. So then Dodie was free to choose some great ones, and a few other things as well. My French credit card seemed to work well here - all too well!, but we were happy. With our treasures bagged we were back out on the street. But now the forecast rain spits decided to arrive. So this sent us into high gear, to find the post office and get the treasures safely on their way to North America.
Passau is one of those towns with a separate "altstadt" and "zentrum" - with the latter being the more modern part. In the case of Passau, while the zentrum has wider streets and newer buildings, it is still very pleasing, and also mostly car free. We headed into the zentrum to find a post office, but could not spot one immediately. We asked a local man, and he not only told us where the post office was, he escorted us there! The one he chose was in the Nibelungen Centre - a modern shopping complex. It has this name because Passau styles itself the city of the Nibelungen. This refers to the great German epic mythology, the same that inspired Wagner. Passau gets a mention in the saga, and has been really tickled about it ever since.
Across from the post office, inside the mall, was a great bakery - low prices, high quality. We snapped up a large quantity of all our favourites.
Now it was time to check out the gorgeous streets and churches. The St Paul's church was all done up in black and gold, making a quite unique treatment. Normally I feel pink cherubs are needed to complete the scene. Actually, I did spot some, up high. They had aerodynamically inadequate looking wings, making it a mystery as to how they got up there (LOL).
The crowning glory of Passau, and maybe of Germany overall, is the St Stephan's Dom. The interior of this is huge - maybe bigger than Koln Cathedral, and there is a many domed ceiling. The entire ceiling is insanely frescoed. The size and extent of the whole thing is stupendous. Even more, the Dom has the largest cathedral organ in the world. Most days at noon there is a thirty minute concert. We managed to be fooling around in a (great!) Gummy Bear store at that time, and just missed it. Still, we picked up a pamphlet about the organ. We got lost immediately in all the technical details. There seem to be actually five or more organs making up the whole thing, and they are somehow controlled from one keyboard (we think).
We had chained our bikes outside, and could still keep an eye on them through the aircraft hangar sized doors. Still, we were nervous about them, and also mindful that we had somehow not decided to stay a full day, and therefore had to beetle off up the Inn, to find camping somewhere.
We still had one chore left, though, and that was to buy replacement drive chains for the bikes. After 3000 km, our gauge showed signs of wear, so we wanted to take no chances. We headed for the Fahrrad-Klinik. For two years we have had their sticker on our bikes, and have proudly shown them to folks in places like Tallahassee, Florida, to prove to them and even to ourselves that we have been to so exotic a place as Passau, and to a bike clinic that is properly spelled Klinik.
In the klinik, we recognized the owner, Matthias Brach, from the years previous. Far from selling us the chains and hustling us out the door, he fired up Google Earth on his computer, and was very interested in exactly where we come from. Matthias is planning a trip to Canada sometime, and would like to have some contacts there. When I told him the best time to visit Vancouver Island is June, he was disappointed. June is when the cycle tourists are most heavily swarming through his shop.
Dodie and the GPS effectively got us going up the Inn, and sadly, away from Passau once again. I forgot to get another sticker from the Fahrrad-Klinik, so what we have will have to survive weathering on the bike until we can get back some year.
The bike path along the Inn was varied - some by the river, some through suburbs, by the autobahn, or through fields or trees. There were also some obstacles, in the form of short sharp up or down hills, or stiles that were hard to push loaded bikes on. Since we had passed this way before, I was wondering whether our blog would have documented these annoyances in the way. Nah, I concluded, blogs including ours do not mention such temporary blocks. So just then Dodie said "Did you get a shot of that sign about the 18 percent grade?". Oh, I guess the blog will be mentioning this, then.
There is adequate camping along the route, but it is not exactly plentiful.The first one out of Passau is about 40km out. We had left Passau well into the afternoon, so this seemed like a bit too far. We sailed past lots of guest houses, but with the sun out and the nights warm, we are getting back to our stubborn old ways of not going into guest houses. Finally we passed one that was actually in and run by a monastery. Interesting... but no. I was voting for one of the fine wild camps that presented themselves near the river, but in the end we pressed on to the camping. It's pretty luxurious - we have a covered table, and we found two electrical outlets. Zowie!
The Wilder Mann hotel. I took the photo because I liked the name. The hotel is most famous as a place empress Sissi (of Austria) came and stayed with her parents, Maximillian I (and Mrs - Duchess Ludowika) of Bavaria, in 1862. We didn't check prices, but for enough euros you can sleep in Sissi's bedroom (seems a little perverse?).
Here is the same lamp standard today. The shop owner told us that the water rose eight feet in two minutes. She and her daughter went from moving stock to slightly higher positions in the store to making sure not to drown. The loss in stock was 100,000 euros. However, within six weeks, the store had at least put some things out for sale on the street, and they were back in full operation by the end of the summer.
In 1967 I worked in a restaurant at the Expo in Montreal, loading Lowenbrau kegs like this onto the vacuum delivery system to taps around the building.
We picked up a pile of Eurobike catalogs for numerous supported bike trips around Germany. They are too heavy to carry or mail, but we will try to speed read the German and see what they offer. This is clearly a large warehouse for them.
