Once across the border, there was a short, gradual climb through a town, then we were soon on a rail trail, very gradually (almost unnoticeably) uphill at first, then a long downhill stretch where you almost didn't have to pedal, and all through a wonderfully forested region. There was a lunch at a German restaurant on the downhill—it would have been nice to linger and pig out longer, it was so good—but continuing on we eventually leveled out again, and rode past some bucolic farmland and lakes to the end of the trail. Most of us were tired at this point and got on a bus that took us to our next hotel, the Altstadt in Passau, but a few hardy souls decided to brave the remaining distance by bike. We relaxed a bit, and did some preliminary exploring of the town—I found the ATM and Post Office—and later had a group dinner in the hotel, where we drew partners for the €2 gift. Kristy and I were paired.
The following day we did a ride up the Inn River. (Passau is at the confluence of the Inn, Ilz, and Danube.) On this ride disaster struck: while backing up to get a picture of the Kissing Bridge over the Inn, I slipped and fell, and my camera broke, so I was hors de photography until we got to Vienna. Blessings forever to James and Kristy who later shared with me their photos of the rest of the trip, many of which are shown here. There was a stop at the Baroque church at Vornbach, extremely lovely and moving. Moving further upriver we crossed over to the Austrian town of Schärding, where we browsed for a while, and I got the €2 gift for Kristy. We then rode back downstream on the Austrian side, and part way we had our group picnic. Boris and Richard outdid themselves with all the sausages and German/Austrian fare. Crossing back over a dam to the German side, we were once again in Passau with time to do more sightseeing and shopping. It being early September, Dult, the Passauer version of Oktoberfest, was going on just outside of town so instead of having dinner in town, we got some cabs and went to the fairgrounds where Dult was going on. Traditional German cuisine with beer. I tried the beer, but still don't like it. It was fun until the oompah band morphed into a rock band, and some of the people in the tent (not from our group) decided to start smoking, so I went outside and walked around the fairgrounds until the taxis came to take us back to the hotel.
The next morning bright and early we boarded a river cruiser and headed downstream to our next ride.