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It turned out not to be too difficult a choice. It’s a 10 min walk to anything interesting and after dinner we just weren’t feeling it. On top of that, there was a concert in the lounge. “The Sound of Europe”. Unfortunately, it was operatic. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But not an art form of which we are fans. We stayed for a few and then bailed. But at breakfast, we heard it was really great (and not all opera). So I guess we should have stayed longer.
Today we are in Passau. Or I should say this morning we arrived in Passau. Just before we did we passed through yet one more lock and I went up on deck to watch. We’re now on the downward side so we come into the lock and drop vs. going in and rising up. So it’s a bit easier to see what’s going on. This lock was big. It held us and two other ships. One very small but one that was pretty good sized. Not like the tight squeezes we were in on the canal.
I was chatting with one of the passengers and somehow we got on the subject of leaving things to our children and he commented that his grandfather had acquired a statue of Caesar Augustus that his wife wanted to acquire after his grandfather passed. But he wasn’t going to allow it because there’s no way he was going to have a “rump rustler” in his house. Nice. Well, gotta go.
A walking tour today. We met our guide Daniel on the quayside and headed into town. Passau is quite pretty and is 1000+ years old. But there was a major fire in the 1600’s and the town was completely rebuilt. So it looks like it’s from that era.
It sits at the confluence of three rivers – the Danube, the Inn and Ilz. The Danube is not the biggest, as in most volume, (the Inn has that distinction) but the longest river gets to keep its name and the Danube is 100 miles or so longer than the Inn. So we will continue down the Danube when the time comes.
There’s a castle/fort above the city on the opposite side of the bank that protects the area and because of its strategic position, the city was never attacked. It was quite wealthy in its day, being a major player in the salt trade. Salt, in its day was more valuable than silver and was called white gold. We take our spices for granted these days but salt and pepper and the like were very rare and a major luxury in the olden days.
The town is pretty small. The walls are all painted in pastel colors and it has an Italian feel to it. Although the countries its most closely bordered with are Austria (which is just a few minutes away) and the Czech Republic. In fact Daniel said the gas is cheaper in Austria so he drives over there to get it.
We walked up a fairly steep hill (for the old folks) past a relatively small Catholic church. Daniel asked, why have this church when there’s a cathedral just up the way? Well, all men are equal in the eyes of God but some are more equal than others. The cathedral was for the aristocracy and the other bigwigs. The rest of the riff raff went to this church. A women in the group, said it reminded her of a Simpson’s episode where the sign out in front of the church said “All are Welcome”, then in parenthesis underneath it said “just kidding”.
So on up the hill to the cathedral (St Stephan’s). Out front is a statue of King somebody the First and there’s an interesting story that goes with it. Passau was run by a Bishop-Prince just like Wurzburg. And while not as extravagant as that guy, the digs were still pretty nice. But anyway, when the king took over the area from the bishop (after Napoleon shook things up), he had a statue placed in front of the cathedral. It’s facing away from the facade and he’s pointing towards Munich, indicating to the bishop that a) he (the king) was in charge now and b) power resided in Munich, not here. Ever subtle these Germans.
Anyway, the facade of the cathedral is white and reasonably plain. It’s tall and has a clock tower and an interesting dome on the top, but compared to the cathedral in Regensburg, it’s fairly ordinary as big churches go. And by now, we were pretty much in an “oh goody, another cathedral, seen one, seen ‘em all” state. Well. If you ever feel like you’ve seen all the cathedrals and they all look pretty much the same, come to Passau. The inside of the cathedral was amazing. Incredibly ornate with plaster angels and prophets and saints and all sorts of ornamentation, plus major frescoes all over the ceiling, marble pillared altars, a giant gold stairway, and, to top it off, the largest cathedral pipe organ in the world. It was jaw-dropping.
The amount of effort to create it must have been staggering. Not just to build a good-size cathedral, which takes decades in its own right, but to then decorate it so elaborately. And how they did it. Daniel described what it took. Of course there’s no electricity and no mechanical apparatus in these days. So everything was done with scaffolding and anything they needed was carried up and down. The scaffolding blocked what light there was coming in. So the painters and plaster workmen wore crowns of candles on their head. Which of course meant they couldn’t look down too far or move their head around too much or they would drip hot wax on themselves. Not to mention they were right up against the ceiling so they couldn’t really step back and see what it looked like. You can still see the holes in the four corners of each of the paintings in the ceiling where they attached the scaffolding to keep it from falling down.
The plaster work was done by making a metal skeleton and filling it with straw, then applying animal blood which acted as a glue when it dried. Then you cover it in plaster then carve it and sculpt it. There are hundreds if not thousands of distinct pieces that had to be done this way.
Then you go back outside into a nothing little courtyard and look back at the building and it’s just “meh”. But heck, if you’re going to spend the money, spend it on the part where you’re spending the time I guess.
After the cathedral, we headed back down the hill to the river where Daniel showed us a building where they had marked the various floods over the years (centuries). Just last year they had the second worst flood in the city’s history, only maybe half a foot lower than the worst one, which was in 1501! They apparently had fairly little warning at least to the extent of the flooding. They knew it would crest above flood stage but not nearly as high as it went. He said in 3 days it rained 50% of the average annual rainfall. He said, “You’ve heard of raining cats and dogs? It was raining elephants”. They lost power and water for anywhere from 3-4 days to over a week.
But if he hadn’t told us about it, you’d never have known. The city received some major financial aid from the government (Daniel pointed out it was an election year and that helped dramatically!) and they were able to clear the knee-high mud and muck from the streets, dump out all the destroyed household items, dry everything out, replaster and repaint it and voila! The place looks great. But needless to say, we are awfully glad we did the tour this year and not last year. Things got interesting for the boaters last year. The river was too high to travel on (the boat wouldn’t fit under the bridges, even if it was safe to navigate, which it wasn’t). So they were bussed around to haphazardly found hotels. An adventure for sure, but probably not the vacation they had envisioned.
Daniel said that two weeks later, things were back to normal in terms of river traffic and tourist boats. Although I’m guessing the tour was a bit different. The cathedral, being up on the hill, wasn’t affected by the floods and as that’s the major thing to see, they likely still stopped to see it. But they probably didn’t have the pleasant day strolling through town and shopping that we did.
The tour ended back at the cathedral. The cathedral is St Stephan’s. Stephan was the first Christian martyr. He was stoned to death, I assume for espousing his Christian beliefs but we didn’t get the story (guess we’re supposed to know). While I can relate to the desire to stone someone to death who is espousing his religion to you, especially when you’ve already got one of your own thank you very much, stoning seems a bit harsh. Anyway, there’s a lovely sculpture of Stephen being stoned at the front of the cathedral, just in case you forget why it was built. But one thing we learned that I didn’t know. At the top of the church there is a double cross. That is, a typical catholic cross but with two cross bars instead of one. That is the martyrs cross and that means the church was built for and/or dedicated to a martyr. I did not know that.
We were lucky that the day we were there, there was a pipe organ concert scheduled. The tour got us tickets. Before we went in Daniel told us that the last time he was there for a concert, when it was over, “the people ran to the exits like there was free beer outside. There’s not.” He suggested we would do better to wait, let the queues clear, then “walk out like a winner”. Pretty funny.
So the concert. It was more a demonstration than concert. 5 or 6 short pieces of different styles so we could get a feel for the range of the organ. And 40 minutes or so is plenty of time to listen to pipe organ music (actually 30 is, but okay). But wow. You’re in a big open cathedral, and the largest pipe organ in the world is playing and it’s quite something. There are actually 5 organs (or pieces of the organ, it wasn’t quite clear) spread around the church. Medieval surround sound. The main piece was in the center back. With two more pieces to either side of that. Then one in the middle of the church in the “attic” that you can’t see and another in front above the altar that you also can’t see. The organist can play them individually or together. And when he gets the whole thing going, you can hear it across town. They of course played Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (the classic horror movie riff) which was just awesome. The organists have to train to use it because since they are in the back and there’s an organ in front, by the time they hear the sound from the key they pressed it might be a third of a second later. So you have to play ‘ahead’ of the sound – that is, you can’t wait to hear it before you should be playing the next note. It takes some practice to learn how. I imagine if you live nearby, organ practice might be a bit of a nuisance. The organ has 17,774 pipes (according to Google). Which any way you slice it is a lot of pipes.
When it was over, we were prepared to wait and exit like winners as instructed, but since most of the crowd was old and slow moving, we saw an easy path to the door and made a break for it. We got out ahead of the crowd and headed down to the ship for lunch without being stuck behind slow moving older folk. So who’s the winner Daniel? I’d say us!
The boat was nearby so we decided to let Viking feed us instead of a local restaurant. We were having a nice chat with John and Chris from Toronto when Brune Hilde (name changed to protect the guilty) and her husband came to sit with us. This woman must be a descendant of one of the aristocratic families of old Europe because she speaks loudly and rudely whether at an appropriate time or not and mostly complains how things are not to her liking – think Queen of Hearts from Alice and Wonderland and you pretty much have it. We finished quickly and headed back to town.
The day had turned sunny and warm. We wandered the old town a bit but as I said, the town is fairly small, and the heat I think sapped our strength a bit. Plus the previous days may be catching up to us. Anyway, we only lasted about an hour and headed back to the ship.
I should mention it’s cruise ship city in Passau today. There are 3 Viking ships including ours, plus another 5 or 6 from other lines. The Viking ships are all docked together, 3 deep from the quay. Ours is on the outside since we’re leaving first. So getting back to the ship was a rat’s maze. In from the dock on boat number one on the 1st deck, up to the second deck to cross to ship number two, up to the 3rd deck on ship number 2 to cross to our ship, then back down. (Brune Hilde was very annoyed that there was no one available to direct her when she came on board).
I spent the remaining couple of hours before we sailed up on the sun deck with a lovely view of a long row of houses along the river and writing this log. Then just before dinner time we set sail and headed into Austria.
At dinner, much to our surprise, we had our anniversary celebrated. We were surprised of course since our anniversary had been a week ago. But I guess they just got around to it. I should mention that every night there are at least 1 or 2 and sometimes more celebrations of birthdays or anniversaries. The staff comes out with a huge raspberry covered cheese cake with a big sparkler in it and either sings Happy Birthday or Let Me Call You Sweetheart depending on the occasion. We’ve been enjoying it but secretly glad they had missed ours when it happened. But when you are on vacation, time is a relative thing. So we got our celebration. The only problem was we had already had dessert so now we had a second one! (Problem being perhaps the wrong word…)
After dinner we went up on the sun deck (although it was evening and the sun had set) and enjoyed a very lovely cruise through a wooded valley while we snuggled a bit. It felt like our anniversary anyway.
Marion decided that this night would be a good night to watch Monuments Men on TV. We really hadn’t watched any TV to this point. But it was fine except we didn’t start watching until almost ten and we had a relatively early start in the morning (8:15a). So we ended up not getting a lot of sleep.
7/3/14
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