Passau; Friday, 05 December, 2025

I had a bit of a lie in after the late arrival the previous evening and then had a leisurely breakfast, finally checking out of the hotel just before the cut off time of midday to wander over to the bus stop to pick up the bus another couple of stops further on to the town of Freising to pick up the train onto Passau.

When I was originally planning the trip nearly a year before this had been a slight worry point – how busy would the train be by the time it got to Freising, given in starts in Munich Central Station. I needn’t have worried as in the interim Deutsche Bahn had scheduled some serious engineering works which had closed the lines south of Freising meaning the Passau train was starting and ending here, so with an early bus from the airport hotel I was at the station as the train arrived on it’s previous journey in from Passau and I was able to get a decent window seat for the journey.

The train was the customary couple of minutes late leaving Freising, but had made up all that time by about the middle of the journey, only for it all to be undone at the penultimate station where we were held back to allow a late running ICE train to overtake us on it’s journey into Passau – not sure why given we didn’t have any intermediate stops and the line appeared to be pretty slow and winding, so the ICE train wouldn’t have been able to go any quicker. The main result was we ended up arriving into Passau 10 minutes late, but again that worked to my advantage as by the time I got to the hotel it had just gone 3pm and checkin was open so I was able to get straight to my room.

After freshening up I headed out of the hotel to go for a wander around the city, pretty quickly finding my way up to the Cathedral and the Domplatz, home to the city’s Christmas Market. I had a long wander around the market – which is surprisingly small for a city of Passau’s size – including stopping for the customary sausage and a mulled wine.

Fortified against the rapidly chilling weather as the sun had now properly set I walk the vast distance of about 10m to the cathedral, which was still open, and had a look around inside. Almost every surface inside the cathedral is painted making it pretty spectacular inside, the only slight drawback is that the organ is undergoing a multi-year renovation which means that part of the centre of the church is closed off to house the crane and other works equipment that’s being used.

Having looked around the cathedral I walked around the outside of the building towards the rear where I came across the Neue Residenz, the bishops palace, and more importantly the very impressive and much quieter Residenzplatz, another large formal square though this one almost totally deserted.

From here I wandered down through the old town towards the rivers and the Dreiflüsseeck, the point where the Rivers Inn and Ilz merge with the Danube as it’s continues it’s journey beyond the city towards Vienna, the whole area is very pretty with the hills rising up behind all three rivers creating great views, even at night with many of the key buildings in the city floodlit including the Wallfahrtskirche up above the Inn and the Oberhaus and Niederhaus on the rocky outcrop that separates the Ilz and the Danube.

I spent quite a long time wandering around the area here, taking photos before realising that I probably needed to grab a proper dinner, rather than a single Christmas market sausage, so headed back into the centre of town for a quick bite to eat before returning to the hotel and my bed for the night.