Petersontravels

Our last stop of the cruise was Passau, Germany.  We were docked right in the heart of the old town.  Passau is known as the “City of Three Rivers”, as it sits at a point where the Danube is joined by both the River Inn and the Ilz River.  Everytime I heard somebody say the “River Inn” I could swear they were talking about a hotel.

We had signed up for a hike along the Ilz River, and met our guide on the dock.  There was road work going on so our bus had to take a back road to our starting point.  We were basically taking a bus down what should have been a one-way residential street, but it was two ways, and it wasn’t wide enough for that!  I was so stressed (terrible back-seat driver that I am) to even take photos!  Needless to say, our driver ran into two spots where I thought for sure he was either taking out a parked car or the wall of a house….but he managed to miss them both with nary a scratch!  We even had one spot where a guy ran out of his house to move his car because he was sure the bus wouldn’t make it by!  The bus driver earned his pay and then some!

We finally made it to the start of our hike, and I needed some time to decompress because I always put myself in the position of the driver.  Thankfully the hike was beautiful!  First up were some castle ruins overlooking the Ilz River.  I loved seeing the windows of the house just to the right of the ruins…what a cool spot to call home!

Here is our trusty group of 8 fellow cruise passengers who opted for the hike.  I can’t imagine how crowded the other excursion was!  Three busloads = not a fun time!

We crossed the Ils River on our way upstream.

The views upstream from the bridge are excellent!

Our guide pointed out these markers on the trees, which marked the path of Pandurensteig.  This is the same path taken by the Pandurs, a troop of soldiers working under a charter from Empress Maria Theresa (her name keeps coming up!) who took this path in 1742 during their campaign in the War of the Austrian Succession.  We just did this little snippet of about 5 miles…the complete path is 112 miles long!  Maybe in our next lives.

The hike we took was a loop, and the place where we looped back was this damn on the river.  The dark color of the water is due to bogs upstream, much like several waterfalls we saw in Ireland.

The view across the lake created by the damn is so gorgeous!

On our hike back we hit this high point looking down on the river.  I’ve gotta say that if the rest of Germany looks like this I can’t wait to get back!

As we finish the loop we look down upon the bridge where we previously crossed the river.  Off to the right of that bridge is a set of man-made islands that were placed there to assist with logging in the past.  They would line up barricades to keep the logs from going downriver, and then feed them into a tunnel they blasted into the side of the hill we were standing on to bypass a tight part of the river.

Here is  that tunnel, set up today to allow hikers to complete the loop.  The water would have to be a lot higher than it is in this photo to float any logs through this passage.  The stream on the left was barely flowing.

We made it back to the ship without making the bus driver endure his prior experience…we ended up taking the city bus, which we should have done in the first place!

Once safely back, we took a walk around the city center, which sits on an island between the Danube and the River Inn.  The confluence of these rivers is quite interesting, since they all have a different color of water.  Here is a photo that tells the story better than words (not my photo).

We had some extra time to walk around Passau, so we headed towards yet another “Saint Stephen’s Cathedral”.  We passed this beautiful square near the church, and were disappointed to see all of these young people smoking…it remains a huge problem in Europe, but seems particularly bad here in the Czech Republic.  We’ve even seen the old smoking vending machines littered through the cities here.  Ok, enough of the negatives.

Saint Stephen’s comes into view between two other buildings.  I love the views on the streets in these old cities!

The interior of the Saint Stephen’s Cathedral was of course beautiful.  As we say when we are traveling in Europe, it was “ABC”…Another Beautiful Church!  This site held a church as early as 730, but the current Cathedral was built from 1668 to 1693 after a fire destroyed its predecessor in 1662.

My only minor issue is the lack of stained glass windows, which we have come to love…so a little ding there.  A- perhaps?  In their defense, they did lose the entire roof during WWII due to flying sparks from houses which were burning in the vicinity.

I noted this reliquary in the cathedral.  I love my reliquaries, as they always hold something interesting…or comical…depending on the implied item held within.

This one is supposed to contain an organ, I can’t remember which one (heart, liver, whatever) of Altmann, the Bishop of Passau from 1065 until his death in 1091.  They truly were pretty damned morbid!

As you exit the Cathedral you get a damn nice view of the main shopping street that runs through Passau.

Everybody was out shopping…the weather was perfect!  One thing to note, I go out of my way to try to avoid shots of large crowds, so presume that no matter what my photos show, it’s more crowded than it appears.

The next morning we departed our Uniworld ship, and had a driver ready to take us to Prague, but not before stopping at a Czech Republic highlight and the subject of my next post, Cesky Krumlov!

 

 

 

 

Our ship arrived in the city of Linz pretty early in the morning.  Most of the cruise guests were gone by the time we made our way to breakfast, as they were headed on a full day bus ride to Salzburg for a “Sound of Music” tour.  Kim has already done this so we opted to stick around and visit the city.  We’ll hopefully make our way to Salzburg for a longer visit in the future.

We met our guide on the dock and she gave us a brief overview of the city.  Linz is Austria’s 3rd largest city.  The cities name originates from the Celtic word “lentos”, which means “bendable”, as the city sits on a major bend in the Danube River.  The current name Linz was documented as far back as 799!  The first stop on our tour was Saint Mary’s Cathedral, the largest church in Austria.  I was absolutely shocked it wasn’t called Saint Stephen’s!

It’s a newish church, completed just 100 years ago in 1924.  They were actually setting up for their centennial during our visit.  The church was constructed to hold 200,000 people, which was the population of Linz at that time.  Apparently it’s only full on Easter and Christmas Eve, but they wanted to make sure it was bigger than the Saint Stephen’s Church in Vienna.  It’s all about the bragging rights with the Austrians!

Our guide discussed this stained glass window, the “Linz Window”, which depicts the history of Linz, and gives thanks to several prominent wealthy locals who made the church a possibility.  You can’t put a price on being portrayed for all eternity in stained glass!

The church has an excellent collection of stained glass windows around the altar.

No tour of Linz would be complete without tasting the famous Linzer Torte!  We visited  Jindrak Cafe, as they are famous for theirs, and even hold the record for the world’s largest Linzer Torte!  I haven’t looked it up in Guinness to verify this claim.  Hmmm…Guinness…must be time for a beer.

Yum!  These were quite good, particularly with coffee!  Suffice it to say we liked it enough to get one to bring home to Fletcher, and they are supposed to get better with age…we shall see.

The 16th century Linzer Landhaus building now serves as the Upper Austrian state parliament.  It has an interesting feature in front of the entrance.

During excavations for a new car-park in 2007 they discovered Roman relics from an ancient castle as well as a medieval cemetery, but more impressive was this complete stone bridge from the 1760’s!  The bridge was hidden under the ground when the former city moat was filled in during the spring of 1801.  I love the little discoveries like this!

We passed through a square where Mozart was said to live in an adjacent apartment for a period of time…and of course there is artwork depicting this claim.  Like most musicians, we learned that Mozart lived in numerous places over the years, as they moved around quite a bit.

In the Main Square of Linz is this statue called the Plague Column.  We have seen these in several of the major cities in this region…commemorating those that died during the great plagues.

Our guide then pointed out this balcony, stating that Adolf Hitler spoke from here on March 13, 1938 in front of 60,000 people to proclaim the Annexation of Austria.

Here is a closer look of the balcony.  It’s interesting to note that Hitler actually lived in Linz in his early childhood, as his father was stationed here as a Customs Officer.  He often referred to Linz as his childhood home.  Noted asshole Adolf Eichmann, the leading organizer of the Holocaust, also grew up in Linz at the same time as Hitler.  I’m not sure if it’s the first name or the city that brought about these tendencies, but I think it’s safe to say Adolf is not a popular name in Linz these days.

Here is a photo of Hitler on the balcony.  Very surreal to be in the same places where such evil existed.

Our guide then shuttled us into a large room just off the main square where there are aerial photos of Linz on the floor.  It was supposed to be a temporary installation but people liked it so much it’s permanent.

Here is an aerial view of the Main Square (just above the bridge) as well as the Danube.  Our ship was docked just to the left of the bridge where you can see two river ships docked in the photo.

We then boarded a bus and drove out into the countryside.  Our destination was this Cider Farm, Deisinger Hof,

The farm is just gorgeous!

We were greeted on arrival with an elderberry drink by owner Josef Deisinger.

Our guide did most of the talking, as Josef’s English was spotty.  His enthusiasm for what he does was infectious though!  We had several ciders, both Apple, Pear and a mixture of both.  While they were good, they won’t be replacing wine for us anytime soon!

We also got to try some spirits that Josef makes as a hobby.  Some of these were dangerous!

It was an excellent experience, and it was nice to see an operating farm in the countryside.  We even had some excellent views of the Austrian Alps!

One final shot before boarding the bus back.

Near our cruise ship was a museum that had an exhibition around the artwork that the Nazi’s stole during WWII.  It was difficult to follow for us, as it was all in German, but we got the jist of it.  We now know we need to see the movie Monuments Men when we get home.

There were a few interesting photos.  Below shows Hitler discussing his planned redesign of the city of Linz.  He had a grand plan for Linz to hold the worlds best art museum, showing off the stolen works he had collected over the years.

This photo depicts a box of explosives that was disguised as a work of art that was taken down into the Altaussee salt mine, the largest repository for stolen Nazi art.  As allied troops were nearing the mine, the Nazi in charge, August Eigruber, sent eight huge bombs into the tunnel with the intent to destroy the art, which was directly against Hitler’s wishes.  Once Hitler killed himself, Eigruber gave the order to set off the bombs, but thankfully the local administration at the mines refused to do so.

This same museum had an exhibition of “modern art” that we breezed through.  I had to take a photo of this “work”.  For the life of me I can’t imagine anybody looking at this and saying “wow, what a brilliant piece!”.  WTF??  The producers of Hoarders might be interested?

Before we got underway we could view the two buildings near the ship lit up at night.  First is the museum just discussed.

Across the Danube is the Museum of the Future, which we didn’t visit….after the daily news these days, I don’t want to know what’s coming next!

Coming up, we visit our last port, Passau, Germany for a nice nature hike and a walk around the city.