October 13, 2015
We posted the text and photos from yesterday to the blog,
before breakfast, and it uploaded quickly.
There is a thin cloud in the sky today, no frost overnight and a
temperature of about 5 C this morning in Passau, Germany. It is our final day in Germany.
We picked up our group assignment number and guest pass
cards at reception on our way to breakfast.
We had breakfast with the other Canadian couple from
Toronto and their friends. We tried some Chinese breakfast of pulled beef,
fried egg and short grain rice.
During breakfast, the ship moved to its berth by Passau’s
old town for today. When we returned from breakfast, our cabin had been made up
and a towel turkey sat on our bed. The announcement for the walking tour came
at 9:30 (15 minutes before leaving time), so we gathered our receivers,
cameras, sweaters, gloves and jackets. The groups were off on their tours by
9:45. Our guide was Martina.
From where the ship is docked, you can see on the other
side of the river up on the hill, the 11th century fortress. Its main building was completed in 1499 and
additions were made in later centuries. There
has been a Bishop’s administrative center since 807 and then the fortress home
to Prince Bishops since 1219.
Passau is a very old city, first as a Boii Celtic
settlement before the Romans arrived in 30 AD building the fort Castra Batavia
and stayed for more than 400 years. It was a trading center due to its good
location at the confluence of three rivers - the Inn, Danube and Ilz. Then in
739, Boniface, an English monk founded the diocese of Passau, the largest see
in the Holy Roman Empire. Salt trade was
important to Passau, it was known as “White Gold” and transported from Alpine
mines. As with other towns in Germany,
traders had to stay three days in Passau, before leaving and had to sell some
of their goods, stay in inns and buy food or meals and drink, then pay tax on
their sales. In 1707, trading of salt with Passau was forbidden and the city
lost some of its wealth. During the
Renaissance, the creation of high quality knives and sword blades, stamped with
Passau wolf, became specialty.
There was a strong
connection to the Catholic Church and in 1623 an abbey opened. It became a
place of pilgrimage where people came to view the copy of the Lucas Cranach painting
of Mary and baby Jesus, owned by the Prince Bishop, Leopold of Austria, and
some people claims miracles happened after praying in front the painting,
especially after the Turks were defeated in September 1683 and Vienna was saved.
(For a history please see Website http://www.mariahilf-passau.de/en/mariahilf-2/history/)
After our town tour was finished, we walked over a bridge spanning the Inn
River and tried to find the entrance to the covered 300+ steps where pilgrims
had to crawl up on the knees confessing their sins as they went up. We couldn’t
find it, so we found another path with 169 steps scattered between slopes and
landings through a wooded park and arrived at the abbey as its tower clock
struck 12. We looked around and found a
viewpoint with a great view of Passau.
We saw the distinct colours of the Inn and Danube rivers as they
converged, then, found another route on city sidewalks down, still not able to
find the entrance to the covered stairs.
The Old Town has
many churches and patrician houses in the Baroque style due the fire of 1662 that
the gutted the town. Stone became the
new building material. There is flooding
from the three rivers. The most recent
flood in 2013, caused the houses in the lower areas, near the river in the old
town, to have water into their second storeys.
All the shops on the ground level were flooded, in the artists area,
this year, more than 100 white umbrellas were distributed to be decorated any
way and then hung from third storey wires across the street to announce that
the shops were again open for business. We
assembled by the tower of the Ratshaus (Town Hall) and were given some history
including the scale on the wall that shows the level of water in past
floods. The 2013 flood was one of the
worst. While we stood there the carillon bells in the tower sounded 11 o’clock.
. At the café were sitting three young men in short top hats, who were new carpenters.
They were doing the tradition two year “Waltz” of carpenters, where they only
have a bag of tools and a suitcase going from town to town to do carpentry jobs
for accommodation, meals and drink.
The group followed our guide through some narrow streets
and came out to a walkway along the river.
She pointed out a yellow building, with a chimney, which is one of the
breweries. It makes “true” beer from only four ingredients, water, hops, yeast
and barley. Next we walked a set of 23
stairs to the Jesuit St. Michael’s Church which is pale pink stucco and its
high school which is called Gymnasium for these schools. When “secularization”
occurred in 1803, there were no longer Prince-Bishops and their land and
holdings were taken over by the state, except the churches. Next we entered the
square of the bishop’s “new” residence (the old one was the fortress) and the
back of St. Stephan’s Cathedral. The style of the residence is Rococo (or Late
Baroque) style. Then we came to the tour’s
end at the front of St. Stephan’s Cathedral. While most of the ship’s passengers were
gathering with other tours to hear an organ concert of the largest cathedral pipe
organ in Europe (and the world) with over 17,000 pipes, we found our way to a
bridge over the Inn River to try to find the covered stairs up to the Pilgrimage. We missed the entrance, couldn’t really
figure which little lane would lead to the entrance, so we found a side footpath
which wound its way up inclines and 169 stairs to the back of the Pilgrimage
and we wandered around and took some photos of the confluence of the Inn,
Danube and Ilz rivers. You could tell
the difference is colour between the Inn and Danube rivers. We had a good view of the fortress across
from the ship’s berth. Then we found the road down and took the sidewalk back
to the bridge, through the seven streets over to the Danube and returned to the
ship about 20 minutes before the crowd from the organ concert returned. We saw
AmaWaterways and Uniworld ships, as well as river tour boats, as we walked
along the river.
We were joined by the couple from Thunder Bay and a bit
later our dinner companions from New York arrived. Then we were off the climb to the
fortress. We needed to cross the bridge
over the Danube to get to the over 200 steps and inclines on switchbacks of the
long (20 minutes) route up the hill to the old fortress, Veste Oberhaus, that
houses museums and a youth hostel. There sections built in 1219 and additions
due to improvements in siege warfare with the 1499 building readily seen from
the river.
The Passau diocese was the largest in the Holy Roman
Empire stretching from Bavaria to the Hungarian border. We bought admission to
the museums about $8 Cdn each and learned about the history of the area for the
past 2,000 years. In one gallery were
six paintings on wood, which looked like huge tapestries that were painted by a
German painter who went sightseeing in the United States in 1836 and had painted
Niagara Falls, Boston over a river and Westpoint, New York, overlooking the Hudson
River. In the outdoor courtyard on the way to the viewpoint over the confluence
of the three rivers was an ancient Treadmill crane. We left by the shorter path
and stairs to go back across the Danube and through the streets passing again
the new Bishop’s Residence and taking
pictures of the baroque style St. Stephen’s Cathedral. The ornate interior is
stunning. We had logged 18,331 steps. We continued to walk toward the Ilz river to
walk through the pedestrian shopping area before returning to the ship.
At 6, Claus gave a presentation about different Viking
cruise itineraries. During the presentation shots of Jägermeifter (a German
digestif were distributed and also an appetizer of a breaded pork ball drizzled
with a mildly spicy pepper sauce. Then
at 6:45, he gave the daily review of the next day’s itinerary, which will be
part of the daily newsletter that is in our cabin after dinner daily. Afternoon scenic cruising along the Danube’s
Wachau valley is planned, with a commentary from Claus. People will be finding
loungers on the Sun Deck to get a 360 view, if it is not raining.
For dinner with our regular four couples, as wine and
beer were served, we discussed the day’s sightseeing and read the main menu, ordering
for the appetizer of a Philipino Shrimp Meat Egg Roll, next for the entrée was Porcini
Risotto (Pork steak with seasoned rice) Then for dessert, Chocolate and Coconut
Viennetta and coffee or tea.
At 9, following the presenting, the pianist, Jerzoy, was
playing, in the lounge. There were about a dozen people in the lounge and just
one other couple was dancing. Jerzoy
played a nice variety of dance music for us. After 45 minutes we returned to
the cabin after an interesting day. Final
steps total = 21,323, almost 20 km.
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