JEF (Jeunes Européens Federalistes) Bavaria had an event in Passau on Saturday 14th December, so we decided to make a weekend out of the trip and visit the Christmas market in the Bavarian town.
The town sits on the border between Germany and Austria, it has a beautiful waterfront where the river Inn meets the Danube.
I took this photo of a plant growing across the wall on the waterfront and played with the colour editing to create this effect - I think the picture looks amazing now!
The event was a 6-hour discussion workshop where JEF Bavaria worked on a healthcare policy proposal.
Obviously the conversation was held in German, but they switched to English in order to include me and make comparissons between the NHS and German / European healthcare systems. Most of the group spoke excellent English and it was really interesting for me to participate in their activity.
After the event we went to an incredible cocktail bar which had Sazerac, my favourite cocktail (basically because I love absinthe), this photo I took sums up how I felt after 4 drinks:
The next day we wandered around the beautiful town, even though the rain was horribly cold. Passau is full of picturesque passage ways and cobbled roads - some of them had been painted in bright colours and I had fun trying only to step on the red stones.
We visited the Modern Art Gallery, but frustratingly they wouldn't allow photographs to be taken in any of the art exhibitions (only the photography exhibition), so I made a list of my favourite artworks to look up later... Unfortunately, despite writing down all the information on the legend I was unable to find most of the artworks afterwards but here were a few I managed to:
Mannequin-Migof, 1967, Bernard Schultze
There was an entire room dedicated to a retrospective of a local artist, Georg Philipp Wörlen, many of whose works depicted Passau and the local area. I quite liked them:
I wasn't overly impressed with the photography exhibition 'Filmstars' by Herbert Fried - a lot of which were scantily clad women in rather uncomfortable looking poses, or women wearing equally uncomfortable dresses.
There were a few photos I enjoyed, however:
These photos of Marie-Louise Mourer were extremely amusing.
I love this photo of Romy Schneider because I'm desperate to know what her mother is saying to her, I feel a great sense of female support and solidarity in this photograph.
We went to an incredibly kitsch café to reheat and after a double-espresso the rain had stopped, so we visited the Christmas market in front of the cathedral - which was really stunning.
The doors of the cathedral were also incredible!
Sketches
Comments