Hofkirchen to Passau: Losing Each Other Between Earth and Mars

September 17, 2015

Last night after dinner Keith and I went for a walk and met the nicest man and his incredibly smart dog. The dog is a trained rescue animal, and finds people in disaster zones. He put on quite a show for us, finding the tiniest stick, in the dark, without a problem. At one point he was told to stay (in German, as he understands it, unlike myself) and his owner hid the stick 100 m away. No issue. Out and back, stick dropped at the owner's feet. Wow.

We had a delicious breakfast this morning. The woman who helps run the place...we are pretty sure it is a family run enterprise, was absolutely the nicest person you can imagine. She took great care to be sure we knew exactly how to get back on the Radweg, and checked that we had everything we needed. Then she came in with her Kanada guidebook, and I found Victoria for her. She put in a bookmark and settled down to read about where we are from. How nice was that? I loved her.

Meeting such wonderful people is one of the pleasures of travel.

The weather today was beyond spectacular. It went up to 30 degrees, clear blue sky, and I say, enjoy it while we have it! The riding was smooth, and we knew it was going to be a short day because we wanted to stay in Passau.

Another look at the scenery. Some more random old stuff up on the hill.

A section of the bike path had a scale model of the solar system. Keith and I were very intrigued by it. I would have loved to have had a resource like this when I was teaching. Keith was photographing each planet, and when he stopped to take a picture of Mars, I kept going to Earth. They were only 79 m apart, but, there was a curve in the path. You guessed it, Keith was looking the other way, and didn't see me pass him. I waited what seemed an extraordinarily long time by Earth, and finally followed our rule of travel...go back to the last place we saw each other. So I headed back to Mars. No Keith. He had gone back to Saturn, the last place he saw me. Honestly! It was hilarious. Fortunately, when I wasn't at Saturn, he reversed, and I had been smart enough to decide I had better stay put, so I was camping by Mars all day if need be. Reunited we had a good laugh. And thank goodness I did stay put, as I was starting to wonder if he had passed me as I was looking at Earth!

Here is the Mars explanatory plaque, showing just how close we were to each other.

And here I am, under the sun, under the sun, once we found each other.

Shortly after the excitement of the solar system we passed under a great arch entitled Bier Radweg. The chief photographer somehow missed it, but his trusty sidekick pointed it out, so we have a picture.

Love the construction of this baby. Beer crates!

Views across the river to Vilshofen. Note the two cruise ships. This was just a taste of what was to come.

From there we rolled into Passau. We crossed the river over something. A hydroelectric dam? We are not sure, but it was big. Then we stopped along the river at a bench with our picnic lunch.

What an incredible resource this bike path is.

Plastic wrapped cars on the other side of the river. This was a long train, and all it carried was cars.

This is what we crossed to get into Passau.

Once in Passau we were astounded by the number of river cruise boats! Viking Cruises was rafted three deep and we have the pictures to prove it. We stopped at Tourist Information and got set up with a bed for the night. We cycled over, dropped off the ponies and started walking all over Passau. Those pictures may have to wait until tomorrow to be posted. I haven't downloaded them off the camera yet, and the Internet just slowed to a crawl. We will see how it goes!

Viking Cruises weren't the only company represented. There were several others, some we had heard of and some we hadn't. I stopped counting after about eight ships.

Passau is a very walkable city, and we saw most of the sights posted on our tourist map. We were astonished by the Dom. Absolutely beautiful. The weather was just so amazing, although we had noticed a few clouds in the distance. About 5 PM we sat down on a bench to check the map and boom! Gale force winds, the kind that blew Dorothy out of Kansas, came out of nowhere. The bench was in a garden and we leapt up because the soil was getting blown everywhere. Small children were being picked up by their parents and we dashed to the nearest coffee shop. Boy, am I ever glad we weren't caught cycling into that!

We decided to head back to our hotel. We saw the first evidence of the refugee crisis. Police were stopping all trucks, and any cars with tinted windows, as they came across a bridge. We also saw two huge buses and a small fleet of vans full of police on the road.

It was so windy I was hanging on to Keith's hand. The gusts felt like they would blow me over. It was getting late anyway, so we had a quiet night in, blogging, route planning, drinking wine and listening to the bizarre wind!

Val, it was almost worth it to strap this pillow on my pannier for you.

Carol, this picture is for you. Unbelievable!

Sometimes something is so beautiful it is impossible to convey it in pictures, especially when all you have is a little point and shoot.

Everywhere we looked there was something amazing.

You would feel pretty jazzy preaching from this pulpit!

Today's ride: 36 km (22 miles)
Total: 902 km (560 miles)

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