Day 7 – Passau and Tree Path Kopfing
Today we started our day in what has become one of the things I love about river cruising – walking out to the pier and meeting our Tour Guides for the morning walking tour of Passau, Germany. No bus, no fuss, just off the boat you go, and you’re right where you want to be! We were met by our costumed Guide, Baron Phillip Wilhelm of Hernick (I think, couldn’t quite catch the place name. Check out the video below, and see if you can tell me!)
Click! It's a video!
He gave us a bit of an historic overview, and started walking around, pointing out sites of interest.
Believe it or not, this says 1499. The second digit is “half an 8”.
I liked how the supports for the bridge were actually anchored into the hillside.
This artwork was on the side of the City Hall for Passau.
Baron Phillip pulled some adults & kids out of the group to do some play acting to illustrate the politics of the time that led to the building of the City Hall. It was learning disguised as fun.
There were a lot of interesting details on the buildings.
This object was one of several interesting pieces of “art” suspended across the walkway in the artists’ section of town.
They had painted colorful pathways in that section of town to lead you from one artist’s shop to another.
The little rectangular plaque on the rounded tower, below the windows showed the water level during one of the floods that Passau had. (Three rivers, including the Danube, go through this town). He said one enterprising man got his boat out & would row from building to building selling bread to the occupants via their second story windows.
As you can see, they were pretty close to the river.
We weren’t quite sure what this bright yellow cart was until we saw this woman fish some envelopes out from it. She’s the mail delivery person, and had to lug that thing up & down the hills to deliver the mail! She had to have been in pretty spectacular shape to do that day after day!
We paused at this home for a while as Baron Phillip gave us a fascinating explanation about when the plague was in Passau, and the use of the little grated window in the door to get things in to folks.
Honestly, Baron Phillip was just a fantastic Guide and storyteller. Everybody seemed to really enjoy his tour.
We were then given some time to go inside and enjoy the gorgeous St. Stephen’s Cathedral of Passau.
Relatively plain on the outside, it’s amazingly and gorgeously ornate on the inside.
And the organ there is apparently the largest pipe organ in Europe. This is only the main part of it. While we were there, they were tuning the organ, so while we didn’t get to hear *music* from the organ, we did get to hear its magnificent tones. It was quite amazing!
Walking across Passau to our next destination
At our next destination we met up with another of the
ABD tour groups at a bakery, where we were to have some fun molding marzipan. We were given blocks of the stuff, and a stick, and instructions on how to construct a face out of the candy. Everyone’s faces looked quite different!
Our instructor
Mine didn’t look too horrid! It was challenging but fun!
Baron Phillip, our instructor, and the Tour Guide for the other ABD group.
We then had some free time to explore Passau, and eventually make our way back to the ship.
Passau was very charming, and there were a lot of small shops right in that area. I bought a few small things, and then headed the long way back to the ship. On the way, I met up with
@pandw, and we made our way together back towards the AmaViola. The main difficulty we had was that you couldn’t do like we’d done in other towns, and use the river as your guide as to which direction led back to where the ship was docked. That was because there were *3* rivers that converged in the town, so you had to make sure you were using the *correct* river to guide you.
We were mostly sure we knew where we were going, and only asked for directions a couple of times, but I think we were all glad when we got back to where we could see the City Hall and knew the AmaViola was nearby.
A lovely towel animal was awaiting me in my cabin, along with my pin for this, my 7th ABD!
We relaxed for a bit and had some lunch.
A bit later, we re-grouped for our afternoon excursion, the trip to see the Tree Path Kopfing. I was very curious about this one, and had been looking forward to it.
We did have a bit of a hike this time to get to where they had the motorcoaches parked, but a few of the Jr Adventurers led us on our way.
We had a bit of an orientation before we entered from the folks who ran the place. Loved the hats!
First we stopped on our way in, and had a very cheesy but cute photo taken. Yes, of course I bought it!
We started up the climb to get up above the trees. As I was climbing up, the man in red, who was one of the owners, paced me & asked me some questions. Apparently, ABD is the very first English speaking people they’ve ever had at their attraction! They had made up brochures in English, but all the signage was in German. I don’t know how ABD came across this place, but it certainly wasn’t because it was a well-known tourist spot! It’s the kind of unique ABD activity that I really adore ABD for!
Continued in next post!
Aw, gee whiz!! 
Thanks! I work really cheap! 
Looking forward to traveling with you guys, too.
