Passau - Monday, June 14, 2010

First day on board the Viking Primadonna...pretty fancy for us, but very nice and we can get used to it.  We met some interesting people again, at dinner and breakfast.  Dave and Dianne are a couple in their 60's who currently live in Toronto, Canada, but have traveled and lived all over the world.  He was in computer program design and management and by their count moved over thirty times to Singapore, France, Germany, Canada, America, Australia, South Africa, China, Japan and others.  He has great stories.  Bruce and Sharon are from Milwaukee and he had a long career with IBM and also lived and worked abroad; she was a teacher and stay at home mom for part of the time.  Hoyt and Jaquelin Leisure are from Los Angeles where he was in the family insurance business with offices throughout California; they insured the likes of John Wayne and Betty Davis for the movie studios.  He is a Stanford alumni from 1946.

Passau, Germany:  This morning was a tour of the small (50,000 population) town of Passau at the convergence of three rivers, the Danube, the Inn and the Ilz.  The Ilz is black due to the headwaters being in bogs and marshes, and is the smallest of the three.  The Inn river is the second largest and is blue to turquoise in color, but I can't remember why.  The Danube is referred to as the mother river and is greenish in color for other reasons.  These rivers tend to flood the town periodically and the town records the high water marks on various buildings with the date.

As you can see, the lower parts of many of the buildings nearer the water get flooded up to six to eight feet.


We had a wonderful tour guide from Paris, France sho now lives in Passau; she loves the town and is very knowledgeable about it's history, so it was great to listen to her.  She even got us into some of the town hall chambers so we could see the stained glass and art.

I took so many pictures that it will take a long time to sort them out, if I ever do.  I don't know how much I can upload to the blog, but they may be more entertaining than what I write, so I'll just keep adding them until I get tired.

Each of them, as explained by the guide, is full of symbolism related to the town history.  I can't begin to relay all of what she said, but what I do remember has to do with Wagner's Ring opera as Wagner spent time in Passau.  Many of the subjects were heroes, heroines and villains painted with intense expression and sometimes huge exaggeration.  Kathy and I both were oohhhing and aahhhing throughout the tour...and this was just the town hall. 




The painting below from the town hall is of King Arther and Queen Guenevere (on horseback) being offered gifts from the Passau Mayor.  There was more treachery here that the guide told us about regarding some murderous intents by the rulers.  The painting below on the right is a representation of the three rivers, Danube, Inn and Ilz.  The voluptuous woman on the left is holding a large container in her right hand; this is the Danube River.  The dark "wild" man on the right is the Ilz black river, and the cherubs in the middle are the Inn river.  Notice in the background the two onion towers of the Passau town hall.

Wait until the church, where we were treated to a half hour organ concert.  We both got goose flesh.  he church was almost totally destroyed during the second world war, but was lovingly rebuilt with funds from the US and Germany as well as donated artists and craftsmen from Italy.

 




As you can see, I'm having some difficulty getting the formatting down so the pictures and text flow together better.  Does anyone with experience have a suggestion?  I'm clueless!!

There is much more that I could add to this, but I've violated my own rule about how much time I would spend typing.  Don't expect this level of information except on random occasions.  I'm not trying to write a travel log, just have some fun.


Tomorrow we cruise in the morning from Linz, Austria to Melk and Vienna where we have a day tour to a Hapsburg residence (translated:  castle) and optional classical music concert in the evening.  We won't go to the concert but will go on the day tour.

Until the next post we are D&K2.