Keeleys, Wright, & Forster Viking River Cruise: Danube, Main, and Rhine : Passau, Germany

Passau is our destination for Day Seven. It is found in Lower Bavaria, Germany and is also known as "City of Three Rivers". (The Danube is joined at Passau by the Inn from the south and the Ilz from the north.

In 739, an English monk called Boniface founded the largest diocese of the Holy Roman Empire in Passau. During the Renaissance Passau became a center for the manufacture of sword and bladed weapons. Passau smiths stamped their blades with the Passau wolf, a simplified rendering of the wolf on the city's coat-of-arms. Superstitious warriors believed that the Passau wolf conferred invulnerability on the blade's bearer, and thus Passau swords acquired a great premium. As a result, the whole practice of placing magical charms on swords to protect the wearers came to be known for a time as "Passau art."

In 1662, a devastating fire consumed most of the city. Passau was subsequently rebuilt in the Baroque style. (From 1892 until 1894 Adolf Hitler and his family lived in Passau.) During WWII the city housed three concentration camps. After the war we learned it was the site for the displaced persons camp that was managed by an American from New Hackensack, New Jersey.

In the morning our 3-hour walking tour revealed the amazingly “intricate” St. Stephen's Cathedral. Their organ has nearly 8,000 pipes making it the second largest organ in the world. (The First Congregational Church, Los Angeles has the largest organ.) At noon we took a 10-minute shuttle bus up to the Veste Oberhaus – an impregnable fortress on the mountain crest between the Danube and the Ilz rivers. (The architecture was really impressive.) It offers sweeping vistas of Passau and its three rivers. (It was interesting that the Danube was quite dark while the Ilz (which flows from the Alps) was aquamarine. We enjoyed sitting high over the city and having a wonderful lunch of Bavarian sausages, spaetzle pasta, bread, beer, pretzels, and sweet mustard. The outdoor restaurant had beautiful breathtaking panoramic views of the city that was far below us. The waitresses hustled to bring the delicious Bavarian fare to their guests. After lunch a few of us wandered around the castle and its museum. (We learned the real historic value of the city was in controlling the “white gold” trade (salt).) They also had many armaments on display, artifacts from Roman times, nasty looking hand-cuffs, and other medieval implements! We then rambled down the mountain via hundreds of steep steps.