Day 11 - Music Playing

If we were on a pirate ship right now the only music playing would be the crew singing grog songs with maybe an accordion. Not in Passau, today we heard one of the largest organs in the world play, sang to by a group of young women in the platz and yes there were a few accordion players. You would think that Passau was the city of music, but not really.

Street accordionist that we met on the streets of Passau

Passau is the city of three rivers, Danube, Inn and the Ilz, all three come together at Passau. Which is why Passau in June was severely flooded. All of these three rivers at once became full and rose past the bridges and the walls along the rivers. It's amazing how quickly they have cleaned up after the flood, unless you look really close you won't notice traces of the flood. As you go away from the tourist center and further into the town you will hear lots of saws and hammering. Reconstruction after the flood is going on even now.

Picture of the flood in June, note the building in front with the red roofed steeple (the Rathaus). The Danube is the river in front and behind the town you can see the Inn river. The Ilz is not shown here.

This is about the same picture as above today, notice the building with the red roofed steeple in the front middle of the picture. Now you can see how much flooding there was and how close to the river the town is. The Danube is the river in front and behind the town you can see the Inn river. The Ilz is not shown here.

On every Rathaus is a flood marker, this is the one in Passau. Notice the flood lines and dates for the floods, at the top you see the wall gets lighter, it's darker below, that's where the flood was this year. You might see a faint line and date indicating the 2013 flood.

Because Passau has so many water ways it was a big area for travel and shipping. Passau was the stopping place for the crusaders heading to Israel, in fact Passau's first hotel was just for the crusaders. Passau was well known during medieval times for it's weapons and sword making. But it became a very rich city because it was where all of the salt for the Czech Republic had to go through, salt for many hundreds of years was more valuable than gold. Everything that came through the waterways of Passau had to be taxed and salt was taxed highly. Passau became a very rich city just from that.

The Rathaus

St. Stephen's Cathedral (Dom) dominates the hilltop in the city center, it was built in 1668 and is in the baroque style. For you kids, baroque is a style of building art. Baroque is very fancy with gold and murals and often very white or light colors. The Residenz in Wurzburg is baroque, as an example. The outside of the cathedral if fairly plain and white, but the inside is amazing. The pipe organ in the church, up until 1994, was the largest organ in the world. There are 5 organs in the church and they are all connected to the main keyboard, so when you listen to it played you get sound coming from all around you. Here's a YouTube video of the organ being played http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jdQ-IYR508 , this was actually the first song that was played for us as well. It gave me huge goosebumps. Grandpa bought a few CDs of the music to listen to on his Bose. As you look at the pictures of the inside notice all of the murals on the ceilings and the gold with marble. Pretty fancy inside, wish they hadn't spoiled the altar with some modern sculpture, looks stupid. That's ok, my head was turned to the ceiling more than the front of the church anyway.

St. Stephen's Cathedral

Inside the cathedral looking towards the altar

The organ inside of the cathedral, there are pipes to the left and right of this main part, as well as in the ceiling and down by the altar.

Across the Danube river high up on the hill is another palace/fort the Veste Oberhaus. This was built by the Bishop of Passau in 1219 to keep him safe from those who would come and raid the town. It was to show the military might of the bishop but to also remind the people of Passau who was in charge when they wanted to be free from the bishops rule. Grandpa and I took the bus up, but walked down to the ship and the view was incredible.

View of Passau from the Veste Oberhaus

The Veste Oberhaus from the town view

We finished our day walking around Passau looking for our picnic dinner. We found the backerai for the bread and the store for cheese and yogurt. As our boat set sail we ate our picnic on the sun deck above while everyone else ate in the dining room below. We had the best food and view of them all.

Tomorrow we stop in Melk and Krem, Austria.