Sometimes the simplest things aren’t.
I did all of our train bookings months ago while sitting comfortably in Vancouver working on a nice big screen (well, big compared to my phone) on my iPad mini. Everything that I booked in the DeutscheBahn (DB) app simply also appeared in the app on my iPhone while we’ve been traveling.
Easy peasy.
Our trip today is not with DeutscheBahn but with the Austrian train service. It was also booked months ago back in Vancouver using my iPad in the ÖBB app. As we prepared for today’s trip, last night I double checked to make sure that everything was as expected, and there were no train scheduling changes.
In the app, I could see our train booking, which looked great, but I could not see our digital tickets. It turns out that the ÖBB app only allows tickets to be seen on the exact same device on which they were booked. The booking now indicated that I was going to need to have my iPad7 mini device with me on which to show tickets. That iPad is the one that I lost at the airport in Frankfurt and was never able to retrieve. Hence, I had no train tickets available.
Slight change of morning plan.
We had intended to sleep in a bit since our train was not until 11 AM, but instead we headed to Vienna’s main train station to find the ÖBB ticket office and figure out how to retrieve our tickets on my phone. Fortunately, I had a booking number, a receipt, the app, and identification. Fingers crossed that having them issue physical tickets wouldn’t be too difficult to do.
My problem (different device, not necessarily stolen device) is apparently not uncommon. A very friendly ticket agent entered my booking number, verified our identities using our passports, and issued paper tickets for us.
Son#1 was, as ever, patient with and unperturbed by his mother’s visible travel day stress.
Our ICE train from Vienna to Linz boarded right on time and we settled into our reserved second class seats.
At Linz, we had an easy 15 minutes to transfer to the regional train already waiting 2 platforms from the one of which we arrived. That train would take use, via 14 intermediate stops, to Passau.
If the ICE trains can be compared to Canada’s VIA Rail, except higher speed, the the RE and REX trains are analogous to Ontario’s GO commuter trains, or our Vancouver area West Coast Express, on which specific seats cannot be reserved. That could mean a slightly more hectic boarding process as folks secure their seats, but today’s midday train was more than half empty.
We arrived in Passau around 2:30 pm, ready simply to check into our hotel, freshen up, and find coffee. We’re staying 3 nights at the Hotel Passauer Wolf, about a 12 minute walk from the train station.
The photos in Expedia showed a building with a pale green façade, and it does have one, but it faces the Danube, which is not the route we walked from the train station.
We’re in a pedestrian shopping area so large that it belies the fact that Passau only has about 54,000 inhabitants – the smallest city we’ve visited on this trip by a factor of 10!
When we reached the hotel (arrow above), it looked like this:
We found the green side of the hotel after I took the elevator to the ground floor later, walked outside, and realized we’d entered Reception two storeys up on the opposite side of the building.
The hotel is by far the most “unique” we’ve stayed in so far.
Our key card holder explains: The “Passauer Wolf” hotel building dates back to the 14th century. Following city fires in 1512, 1662, and 1680, the property acquired its present-day appearance around 1700, presenting a unique architectural curiosity in Passau’s history: a unified Baroque façade of exceptional artistic quality was applied to the front of the two original buildings—both of which featured fine Bohemian “Platzl” vaulting on the ground floor.
It doesn’t explain the very 1930’s’s feel of the hotel room itself, but the view from our windows is pretty charming.
With no definite travel day plans, we opted to stretch our legs a bit, walking as far as the cathedral to verify the daily organ concert times, and back along the pedestrian mall to buy some big bottles of water for our room.
We passed the small but lovely “Tencalla Garden” dedicated to Carpoforo Tencalla
(1623–1685) a fresco painter from Bissone (Ticino) who worked in Italy, Germany, Austria, and Bohemia. Beginning around 1679 he was engaged in the reconstruction of Passau Cathedral, painting the choir, dome, transept, and nave. Together with the master builder Carlo Lurago and the stucco artist Giovanni Battista Carlone, he played a pivotal role in the cathedral’s Baroque design.
The garden was planted where in 1367CE the “ad Tilias” cemetery—meaning “by the linden trees”—was located. It was originally established for the approximately 200 citizens of Passau who had fallen in the “Battle of Erlau” after rebelling against the bishop’s rule over the city. Merged with the cemetery of the St. Paul parish church in 1432, it was closed after 1770 and finally abandoned in 1811.
We got a glimpse of the Veste Oberhaus high atop the hill on the opposite bank of the Danube, visiting which is one of our goals tomorrow.
We walked to the Passau’s Donau-Pegel (Danube level) which shows the water depth in the river , currently displaying 385 centimetres of water above a localized baseline called the “gauge zero point”. The gauge zero point is in meters relative to the standard German sea-level system, NHN (Normalhöhennull). The official gauge zero point for the Passau Donau station sits at 286.439 meters above NHN. For river traffic, the highest level at which boats can safely transit and get under bridges is 780; the low water level at which most boats will experience issues is 415.
We saw a single boat navigating this stretch of river.
We walked from river level back to the Main Street, practicing for tomorrow’s hill climb.
Our afternoon coffee break involved Milchkaffee, plum tart, and tiramisu.
After a couple of hours relaxing and charging our devices, we headed for dinner to LARCO, which required very little walking since it was almost right beside our hotel.
Despite a pretty inactive day, we were both exhausted and called it an early night.
Rose and Ted’s Excellent Adventure 