Schlogen

The Inn and the Danube merge at Passau
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Wednesday. We made our way down to the end of the Inn River in Passau this morning. There the Inn meets the Danube, and the Ilz River joins them, too, as it comes down through Germany from the Czech Republic. It makes Passau a dramatically situated town, one that Napoleon called the most beautiful town he had conquered in Germany. I think you might call that a back-handed compliment. And yes, we were briefly back in Germany when we crossed into Passau.

We arrived early enough to ride--or push--our bikes up the ridiculously steep cobbled path to the Oberberg, where you can look down on the lovely Altstadt and the confluence of the rivers. We then rode down--if roads were ski trails, this descent would have been a black diamond--in time to hear the daily organ recital at the cathedral. The cathedral, one of those oppressively mannered Bavarian Baroque designs, has the largest organ in Europe, with 231 stops and 17,388 pipes. The organist showed off the variety of sounds in the organ, but I did not find it nearly as powerful an experience as our impromptu recital in the simpler Gothic church in Burghausen the other day. Doug commented after our Burghausen experience that it felt as though the entire church were the instrument being played and we were right in the middle of the resonating chamber.

Reaching the Danube

Looking upstream from our hotel at the meander
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The Danube has a whole new feel from what we have been experiencing. It’s far grander in scale and at the same time more domesticated--almost lake-like. We are suddenly encountering far more cyclists than we have over the past week and there are boats plying the waters. The cycle paths extend on both banks, so we rode along the south bank out of Passau, crossed over to the north on a hydro-electric dam, then finally took a ferry back over to the south, where we’re spending the night.

We are staying in a small hotel at the rural resort of Schlögen at a distinctive point in the Danube, known as the meander. The river here has run into a granite outcropping that forces it back to the west for several hundred meters before it finds a new path for its eastern route to the sea. It’s a dramatic and lovely spot.