Fun Fact of the Day: Passau is home to the largest pipe organ in all of Europe! It is parked in St. Stephen's Cathedral and has 17,774 pipes in total! Check it out for yourself here. Everything is a bit off with our schedule, and the fact that we didn't have internet for several days so here goes! In the morning we took our ship out to Passau, which is also known as the "City of Three Rivers". Here is where the Danube (where we have been sailing) meets up with the Inn and Ilz. It is important to note that this is in the state of Bavaria - and the locals prefer to talk about themselves as Bavarians instead of Germans which I found very interesting. In 2013, Passau was devastated by the floods. Our tour guide was a fascinating local man named S. Now, S seemed to derive a sick pleasure from doing "role playing" with his groups, meaning that he would select people out of the group to represent or "act" out specific people in historical contexts. This inevitably led to my family's delight and my horror as I was deemed to be one character. Sigh. Now, this small town in Bavaria is over 2000 years old and was originally founded by Romans. It is a VERY Catholic (89%) town, and leans very conservatively. Here there is the famous Wallfahrtsstiege, which is a covered walkway of ~321 steps to the Mariahilf Kloster (Monastery). It became popular when Leopold took up his third wife (wife one and two had died and neither had produced heirs) and after stopping at each step to pray and kiss the step, his third wife went on to produce 13 children, 4 of them survived and of the surviving 3 were MALES, so the best of news in the olden days. S also took us into the St. Stephen's Cathedral, a church from 1688, that houses the largest organ in the world. Now this "organ" is actually 5 different organs, with almost 18,000 pipes, 260 registers, and over 1,500 buttons!! If you sit in the middle - or as close to middle as possible - you get a "surround sound" effect. This is because there is a giant grate in the middle of the ceiling that allows the fifth part of the organ to be pumped through to your ears! It truly was a beautiful, ornate building. I just wanted to add a funny side note - our guide S joked that "WC" didn't stand for Water Closet here, it stood for "What Coin?" since the bathrooms were all pay bathrooms. In the past they were known for "white gold" (salt), today they are known for their overpopulated university (built for 5,000, now has 12,000), the only Dachshund museum in the world?, and for their castle on the hill. We did - Of Course! - take the 30 minutes to climb to the top of the castle to see the splendid views. Our guide, S, said it would be about 100 steps and an easy hike - WHY oh WHY do I keep thinking Europeans understand the word "easy"? After almost 300 steps and several steep inclines we made it near death to the top to rest at a cafe and drink some iced chocolate. I then found a group of very elderly (80s+) non-sweaty people at the cafe ... and realized that there was an option to take a bus to the top! Smart Move! Afterwards we strolled down the mountain (i.e., nearly tripped and fell down the mountain repeatedly on the uneven, slippery ground) and through the town. We stopped accidentally in the other church in town which happened to be open before the WORST THING HAPPENED!! Here I was. Minding my own business. Calmly walking down the cobblestone path. THEN. OUT. OF. NOWHERE. I was quickly and violently attacked by a ginormous wharf rat! It scuttled out of nowhere and ran straight for my feet, which were in open sandals. I ran away, almost knocking over others before narrowly escaping! It was such a close call I wasn't sure I was going to make it. (there is a photo included below) But fortunately I did, and from then on we were able to go back to the ship and do a Bavarian beer tasting. We tried three beers - ranging from light to dark - and had a presentation to go with it that was really good. We learned that if you look at just Bavaria, it is the highest percentage of beer drinkers in the world. Afterwards, since we hadn't eaten in all of five minutes ;) we were able to have a nice dinner and enjoy the views! Apologies again for the lateness of the text and photos; we didn't have internet for several days so now I am trying to play catch up!!
1 Comment
Ashely
7/10/2018 10:22:24 pm
Amy it just wanted to be your friend! ;) UHM... what is iced chocolate?! That sounds amazing! *drooling*
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