Because of the low water, we’re spending two days in Passau. George, Carol, John, Nancy and John chose to go to Regensburg for the day and left at 9am. Mom, Bowman, and I decided to go to the Bavarian Forrest, but our tour didn’t start until 1:45. So we were lazy this morning. I will admit it was nice not to rush out the door to another medieval town. We had breakfast, showered and then my phone rang, bowman decided she was going to take the 10:00 shuttle into Passau and go to one of the museums. I decided, what the he’ll, I’ll go with her. Mom stayed on the boat.

Passau is a very quaint town in Lower Bavaria, Germany. It is also known as the City of Three Rivers, because the Danube is joined at Passau by the Inn from the south and the Ilz from the north. Its like Pittsburg…not. You can see the two colors of the rivers when they merge together.

On the walk, across the river, you can’t help but see Veste Oberhaus. It’s a fortress that was founded in 1219 and, for most of its time, served as the stronghold of the Bishop of Passau, Germany. We walked on a cobblestone street one block off the river, and there were things like umbrellas hanging from wires, very cute. We decided to go to the Glasmuseum first. It had 30,000 pieces of glass, and I swear we were the only people there. It was on three floors, and was a labyrinth of glass cases that never ended. There more glasses, pitchers, vases from 1815 to the mid 1960. For some reason Neil Armstrong was there when they opened the museum. We learned later that it was a private collection owned by a married couple. They collected the pieces over the years in auctions, and various garage sales. Just kidding about the garage sales, although I could have sworn that I saw pieces that mom was trying to sell at her yard sale. We were hoping to go to the museum of modern art, but we had trouble getting out of the glass museum, so it took us much longer than we expected.

So we meandered back to the bus area, stopping to take pictures of doors, churches, and we saw a gymnasium that had the date of 1664 on the door. We didn’t see rows and rows of treadmills, but were curious about what was behind the door. While walking back to the ship, a man almost drove into Bowman, we were walking in the street, she was trying to get out of the way, when his car lunged at her. She gave him the evil eye and said something. The passenger shouted something in German as well. Fortunately no one was hurt. We went back to the ship, ate lunch and had a few minutes to chill before our next tour at 1:45.

We got back on another bus, and our tour guide Florence, from Passau was with us this time. We were excited to learn that we were going to the top of the fortress for a beautiful view of the city, and the rivers. And he was right, it was impressive. We also didn’t realize how close we were to Austria. From the top, we could easily see the hills of Austria. We learned that from Passau, that it’s 6 hours to Berlin, but only 3 to Italy, and 1.5 hours to the Alps. Like many of the other cities we’ve visited, there are many churches; in Passau there are 54 for the 50,000 residents. We saw:
• St Stephan’s Cathedral – white church with the three green doms and has the largest organ in the world (we’re going to listen to the organ tomorrow)
• St Pauls – pink exterior with a black alter inside
• Pilgrimage Church – on the hill near the Austrian border

We continued on our trip through the Bavarian countryside, and Florence kept talking about the Museum Village. But we were all thinking forests. So we were surprised when we learned we were going to be there for 2 hours. The village is not a regular village. It’s a collection of houses that were decaying and were saved by moving them to this village and restoring them. It’s an open-air museum and has over 100 structures built between 1580 and 1850. There were many exhibits inside the houses, barns, such as crucifixes, mouse traps, baby carriages, doors and other things. Mom liked seeing some of the houses with rocks on the roofs to hold the shingles down. Bowman took a ton of pictures of window boxes, and I liked shooting photos of the buildings. We also We saw a donkey with her four day old baby.
Regarding the others and their tour of Regensburg. Everyone had a lovely time in this quaint town. It was the first capital of Bavaria, but was originally settled by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius.
Carol and George enjoyed the hat store, many rooms of all different kinds of hats. A few of them went into the St Peters Cathedral and saw the bones of one of the previous bishop. An exciting find was a mustard store and everyone bought mustard. George bought tubes of mustard, and Nancy found a few things she couldn’t pass up. Weird but true.
Only the two Johns went on the Jewish excursion. In one of the buildings they saw a blessing inscribed on the ceiling. They also visited the first fast food restaurant and enjoyed some brats with sauerkraut.
We had a lovely dinner catching up on the day, laughing, and learning more about our servers. One of the waiters was trying to tell us about Milka, a brand of chocolate who’s mascot is s purple cow. But we thought he was talking about a type of cow that is purple and produces milk specifically for this chocolate. We both struggled with the language barrier, and German nor English is his first language. Then the second waiter brought a foot long chocolate bar over, and then we all understood. We cracked open the bar and has a piece. Of course it was tasty. That was sweet of them.
Some of our group,went upstairs to listen to the music of the Danube. We also learned that we. But because we were the last table to leave the dining room, we were concerned about finding seats, so we headed for our room. Carol stopped in the bathroom, but she walked right out after she walked in. And proclaimed that she isn’t using those bathrooms again. This was the second time someone hadn’t locked the door and she walked in on them. Funny part was we were all laughing about it, when the first man she walked in, walked by. Mom and I listened to the music from the lounge cam in our room. And we’re glad we made that choice.