Today, my mom was planning on visiting a fabric shop with Gundi and Stefan.  At first, I was going to go along but then I thought I’d really like to go back into Passau to explore more on my own.  Gundi dropped me off at the bus stop and I had to do a silly pose like Esme is always doing while I waited for the bus. 

Hey look, the fort!  I remembered this from yesterday. 

There were lqots of English speaking tourist groups.  Like about 30 groups each with 30 people in them.  There are cruise ships that stop here and the travelers leave for “shore excursions” that include tours like we had yesterday. 

I walked to the peninsula…

…where you can see the confluence (coming together) of the three rivers.

The fort from another angle.

Here you can see the two colors where the rivers converge. 

Ducks

Another angle of the town hall from yesterday.

A flood marker on the town hall.  We saw this one yesterday but I forgot to take a picture.

Hell’s Alley

The Mary fountain with the balcony in the background. 

I looked through a bunch of shops.  I found a tablecloth with edelweiss on it for my mom at one touristy shop.  The shop below was an antique store with tons (TONS) of knickknacks.  I found two tiny cat figurines for the girls here. 

Fanta Exotic.  Fanta here has fruit juice in it. 

I decided to eat lunch at Nordsee which is a seafood restaurant similar to Long John Silver.  I had “shrimp and chips”.  It was alright, not my favorite. 

Then I met up with my mom, Stefan and Gundi.  They had ended up in the city after they didn’t find what they needed at the fabric shop in Salzweg.  We met at the mall which was actually pretty cool and the girls would have liked it.  They chose to stay back at Gundi’s house today to have some down time but they didn’t know there would be a mall. 

When we got back, we got ready to go to Pullman City which is a western-themed amusement park.  I was sure this would be really entertaining either because of its accuracy or inaccuracy.

The girls were not really into it at first.  It was hot and while I had suggested swimsuits after reading the reviews, I didn’t insist they bring them and they both decided not to bring them.  There were lots of kids playing in the water in nothing but underwear including girls as old as 12 or so which I think also added to a feeling of “otherness” for my girls.  European comfort with nudity takes more than 2 or 3 weeks to get used to, ha. 

The girls started to have some fun when we went on this super tiny train ride.  The cars were marked with American cities and states and someone must have loved the Midwest because Madison and Minnesota made the cut! 

We got ice cream next.  Nova got one called something like “Summer Dream” and it tasted like watermelon bubble gum. 

The girls wanted to try panning for gold.  This was different from any other gold panning attraction we had ever tried.  They give you a panning dish and you wade into this shallow pond full of gravel that they stock with gems and fool’s gold.  This very much is in keeping with Germans philosophy that not everyone can be a winner in that there were relatively few treasures to be found and lots of work and patience required.  The girls did find a few specks of fool’s gold and some small gemstones to take home.  I guess I should be grateful that we don’t have to lug a pound of rocks around for the next week.

It was Mexican Week which meant pinata hitting and a mariachi band. 

The girls each got a small handful of candy and we sat at the “Western Alehouse” and drank steins of soda and ate chips and salsa.  A basket of chips and salsa was 8€ which was more than the fries probably because they are a novelty here.

After eating, we went to the evening show.  This is a professionally done, almost 2 hr program, with a well developed story and live  animal “actors” including horses, a dog, goats and a raptor.  There were pyrotechnics and special effects involving guns and smoke. 

Laura had suggested this place and we met up with her, her boyfriend and her boyfriend’s sister before the show.

The show was all in German but we used Google translate and help from Laura to understand the plot.

This is where the goats totally steal the show and from this point on, it was hard for me to concentrate because I was only thinking about wanting two tiny goats of my own.

I mean look at them!

After the show ended Laura and I discussed the cultural aspects of the show, specifically how Native Americans were portrayed.  She told me they have Native Americans who live on site and advise on their representation in the shows.  I do feel that they were represented respectfully. 

Some other interesting aspects of this performance were that the female lead fought with a frying pan and the supporting actress portrayed a German immigrant to American who became the surprise hero of the story. 

The experience at Pullman City felt pretty accurate to what you might find at a similar theme park dedicated to the West in the U.S. (think Frontierland at Disney).  In fact, several times throughout the afternoon, my mom and I noticed that we forgot we were in Germany!

We ended the evening with goodbyes and promises to see each other again.  We hope that both Tobi and Laura will be able to come visit us in Milwaukee soon!