A Visit to Passau

Our Viking Cruise continued with a visit to Passau. Our guide today was Martina. Not necessarily having permission to publish people’s pictures, I edited this to show she was wearing a dirndl that she told us she had made for herself.

She spoke about the Prince-Bishops who ruled vast territories from their magnificent palace overlooking the confluence of three rivers, the Danube, Inn, and Ilz.

Bishops Palace, Passau

A fire destroyed Passau in 1662, so most of the oldest buildings date from about 350 years ago and are in the Baroque style. Close to where our ship docked she showed us St. Paul’s church, dedicated in the 11th century. The current building was erected in 1678.

St Paul’s Church

Passau has experienced periodic severe flooding, most recently in 2013. The high water marks are shown in this picture of the base of the city hall clock tower (“Rathausturm”).

High water marks for various floods in Passau

After our guide left us, we heard a free organ concert in the magnificent Baroque St. Steven’s church.

Our tour group approached St Stevens after visiting the shore of the Inn river

St Steven’s organ (click link for a picture) is considered the largest Catholic Church organ in the world. With my back to the organ, I took these pictures in the nave after the concert:

After the concert we had lunch at Altes Bräuhaus.

This restaurant traces itself to a brewery established in 1333, according to the website. We chose the smallest dishes we could, but they and the local brew were still filling!

We headed back down to the Danube and saw this statue of Emerenz Meier, one of Bavaria’s greatest poets. She emigrated to the United States for economic reasons. She married twice and had a son by her first marriage, but did not become prosperous there. She passed away in Chicago in 1928. We walked back to the ship, but skipped lunch. The ship headed upriver shortly thereafter.