Sidebar: Baedeker’s guide to our route, from Passau to Vienna, circa 1911

The 1911 Baedeker guidebook for Austria-Hungary includes a section describing the route from Passau to Vienna—which is the same route that the four of us are now cycling.

In 1911, tourists travelling along this route went by river steamer, rather than by road or train (there was apparently train service available from Linz, though the guidebook notes that “the steamer is far preferable”). The Baedeker guidebook offers four overview maps, showing the route along the Danube:

From Passau to Ottensheim (left, top)
from Ottensheim to Strudel (left, bottom)
from Grein to Krems (right, top)
from Krems to Wein [Vienna] (right, bottom)

For fun, I’ve included Baedeker’s complete description of the Danube route from Passau to Vienna. I particularly love the passages which instruct the traveller on what to look for (from the railing of their steamer) at specific points along the river: “On leaving Passau we obtain a splendid view astern of the town and environs. The waters of the grey Inn and of the dark-brown Ilz disappear gradually in the green water of the Danube”; “an old chateau, now owned by Count Pachta”; “a Cistercian monastery, now belonging to Count Pachta”; “a little lower down the rebound of the Strudel [an island] forms another rapid, the once dangerous Wirbel“.