Our last stop in Germany is the city of
Passau. I loved this little city, as did Bar, and I loved our guide – a tiny
imp of a woman, a theatre student - Dorothea. She filled our ventures round the
town with drama and stories that endeared not just her, but the location, to
us. Passau is known as the ‘City of
Three Rivers’, as it is at the confluence of the rivers Danube, Inn, and Ilz.
The streets crawl up and down, almost all of them ending up at the river. But
if you don’t watch yourself, you may end up at a different river than you had
intended. If you’ve turned yourself south you are at the Inn river, turned
yourself north and you are at the Ilz river. Not all roads lead to the Danube!
As we traversed the various streets,
small fragrant gardens popped out at all sorts of unexpected places. One even
had a sleepy cat sunning itself – the first and only cat we saw on our entire
trip. You could smell the green (Passau being the greenest city we had yet been
in). No grand gardens here, just peaceful. Greenery spilled down the various stone
staircases (treacherous if you are trying to keep your footing but all partake
of garden charms). Sculptures of Don Giovanni appeared in parking lots.
Passau is all about baroque, baroque, baroque. Baroque is known for its love of detail, and we were overwhelmed by the amount of detail in every thing we saw. Passau is also a predominantly Catholic city, which surprised us. In our niaivity, or ignorance, we had assumed Germany would be predominantly Protestant, specifically Lutheran. This was not the case. Well, I did mention that I am not particularly religious so perhaps I can be forgiven for my assumptions? It is the seat of the Bishop, so catholic saints appear around every corner (not live ones, sculptures). The narrow, cobbled, and curved alleys are full of surprising views and perspectives, gardens, and odd views. Lovely archways appear at irregular places along the alleys, spanning from building to building across the alley. We were rather sobered to learn that rather than an architectural art they had the function of holding the buildings apart so that they didn’t collapse on us!
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