Passau, October 11, 2018

After breakfast, we went on a short walk in Passau. Again, this was a free city ruled by the Prince-Bishop of Passau. It is on the junction of three rivers; the Danube, the Inn, and the Ilz. If you go far enough up the Inn, you would get to Innsbruk, Austria (the bridge on the Inn). Austria is just across the Inn River from Bavaria, and the Czech Republic is just a little to the north. We walked along the Danube for a couple hundred yards and then went up the hill to where the old Roman Gate from 179 AD had stood.

Then we walked around the square and into the St. Stephan’s Cathedral, a large whitewashed Baroque building, unimposing on the outside, but with elaborate stucco and tempera paintings inside.

We returned to the cathedral for a half hour organ concert at 11. The organ has 17,979 pipes and 223 registers. From the main organ, the organist can control a total of five organs scattered throughout the church. This is a modern innovation. There was no program and so I have no idea what pieces he played, but I think that at least the first one was Bach.

Returned to the ship for lunch and then left on an optional tour stopping at the Baroque town of Schärdling (named for sheep shearing) which had been Bavarian, Austrian and French Empire over the years. It is a lovely, color coded town. Multiple building colors, which indicated which business was in each building. Light yellow for the beer of breweries, a light greenish yellow for the herbs of the apothecary, red for butchers, light blue for bakers, etc.

Then we reboarded the bus and drove to a suspension bridge that we walked across to get back to Germany and to catch the river boat which we would take to go up Inn River for an hour or so. On the boat , we had beer, pretzels and a cheese concoction named obatzda which is a soft Camembert cheese mixed with butter, herbs, and paprika and is to be spread on the warm, soft fresh pretzels. Needless to say, it was good.