Day 14 - Passau

Tony's View

 A day off in Passau. Let me begin by showing you our AirBNB. It is an awesome place and has all the amenities. Free beer, champagne and beautiful furnishings. I really like the coffee maker and thought I would like to have one for home. It cost well over $1000, oh my. 

You can see the living room/bedroom and bath in the picture to the right. The TV has a Bose soundbar and a subwoofer. 

 The kitchen to the right has features we would like to have in our new house. The light under the counter is so cool.

Below, I am sitting in one of the chairs that are completely automatic. They were great to do three blogs in. Jan really liked playing in them last night, almost as much as I liked playing in them. 

I got up around 7:30 this morning; needed to sleep in a little from the late night last night. The coffee maker that grinds the coffee beans and automatically makes coffee was awesome this morning. Joan got up a little later. We went to Mass at St. Stephan Cathedral.

The Mass was in German, which helps Joan learn more German. I could tell where we are in Mass. I just don't understand what they are saying. One thing I found interesting was that the last two Sunday masses only had one reading. I'm not sure if that is a German thing or not. As you can see from the four pictures, it was an amazing Cathedral and the organ is the largest pipe organ in Europe. They give daily organ concerts as well, and we were blessed with a free concert right after mass. They have 3 Sunday masses and the large church was pretty full with both men and women. 

 After Mass we visited St. Paul's church, which is near our room. It has some neat features too. The picture to the top right shows Jesus chained up for scourging and a statue of the sacred heart.

The church had a cool contrast between black and gold. It is neat how the Tabernacle really shines in this church more than any other. You can see in the pictures how it just glows. It really looks special when you are there. The picture to the right shows the many side altars in this church. Each had a theme. 

 We  decided to walk to the point in Passau where 3 rivers come together, which is why they call Passau, "The Three Rivers City." Yes, it reminds me of three rivers stadium. yuk, Steelers. The picture below show a bicycle self service station outside a bicycle shop. We plan to stop there tomorrow to pump up tires. A floor pump is so much easier than my hand pump.
You can see from the pictures where the rivers come together. The picture below shows Joan running to get in the picture. hehe. You can see from the map I took a picture of, how these rivers come together and double the flow of the Danube river. At 2800km the Danube is the second largest river in Europe, after the Wolga. Orginating in the Black Forest (Germany), the Donau flows through Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldava and the Urkaine before joining the Black Sea. The three rivers coming together are the Danube, the black Itz from the North, and the green Inn from the South which is the result of melting of Alps snow. The Inn river doubles the flow of the Danube. As you can see it is starting to get big. Remember how small it was when we started?

After checking out the confluence of the rivers, we saw these young kids playing on this long kids' zip line. We decided to wait until they were done so that Joan could try it. I was pushing. Joan said not to hard of a push. Wrong. I went as high as I could go and then let her go. Joan said I was so determined that I had my tongue out. hehe 😇  I let her go and got a picture of her coming back. She was holding on tight. My inner Wade came out to let Mom have it 😂.  Here is another Wade story, or at least one he would enjoy. There was a free toilette and I decided to go. When I came out Joan had eaten a few strawberries that others had left to share. That is something Wade would do because of his fruit addiction.

Later down the trail I ask Joan to test out how cool the water from the Inn river was coming from the snow melt of the Alps. She said it was pretty cool and refreshing.

Joan's Extras

We are resting up this afternoon in our automatic leather lounge chairs, and gearing up for our 1st day of riding in the rain tomorrow. We have been blessed with 2 weeks of straight sunshine so far absent all rain so maybe those many farms that we've passed on our travels could use some rain.

I thought this lone miniature scene in St. Paul's was so unusual. Of all of the passages in the Bible, this scene depicts the story with Martha and Mary. In German, their names are Marta and Maria. Changing just one letter, Marla is a Bavarian form of Mary. Marla says that Spank, her Lehman religion teacher, was the first to inform her of this definition.

Speaking of Marla, we need to give her a huge thank you for patiently doggie sitting our dog, Luna. We have been video chatting with some family members now that it's weekend, and we found out that our psycho dog had a close encounter with a skunk this past week. I guess Marla had to stay up late on a weekday night cleaning up stinky Luna along with her bedding that she joyfully rolled on while she savored her skunk play time. Marla had field work / clinicals the next day. Thank you Marla!!!