Eastern amble

[Tourist Tony]

I  arrived at Munich airport from T5 in the early evening. Of course, I was short some luggage--two panniers, to be precise. They turned up on the next flight, 90 minutes later. I set off in the dark for a camp site. Hit a motorway. Tried the other direction. Ditto. After asking some very unhelpful cops I was taken into a rather upmarket hotel by a businessman, where they suggested the S-Bahn, but also offered to take me to the normal roads in the hotel luggage van, the first of several acts of generosity I would experience. I took the S-Bahn to Neufahrn, saw it was now 2230, the next train would be in 34 minutes, and there was a Gasthaus with weisswurst and beer thirty yards away....
Over the next two and a half days I rode up the Isar, which was in spate with lots of flood debris, on a variety of surfaces that were mostly some form of "kies" (gravel). I had a few problems near Landshut with teenagers riding deliberately at me; they were all drunk at the end of the chool year.
Ferry over the Danube at Thundorf, into a small village with, of all things, a museum to the F104 Starfighter ("G for Germany Herr Minister"; "Hmmm, also 'G for Gott strafe England'. Where do I sign?"), holding a couple of them with a MiG21.
The Danube was very high, with lots of sheep penned against the dykes by flood waters, and the Radweg went from dyke to back road to village street, passing shedloads of facilities purely for two-wheelers. Wonderful!
Through Passau, where I nearly got taken out by a blind ped. We had a shouted conversation as she stepped off the footpath in front of me, that culminated in me shouting, in German, "Oy! You! The blonde! Look out!"
She suggested I should have rung my bell, and I asked her what good that would have done when she was clearly deaf as well as blind. And ugly.
Passau had started with a cherry picker crane parked squarely across the cycleway, its crew having sodded off for the weekend, and was my first introduction to bloody cruise ship passengers. It was soon past, and the route became a nice spin along good surfaces past Nixy statues and massive barges. Austria....

Austria was a delight. I crossed the border just after the punningly-named Haus an der Strohm, where there was a Rad station. Free tools (on security wires), pump, cafe, free maps, advice....why can't we do that?
Lots and lots of flood damage, where heavy rain had flooded the side streams, which were running so fast in some places that they were tearing up the tarmac and pushing it downhill in great folds.
One of the features of this section is ferries. There is a great S-bend at Schlogen, where I took a tiny wooden ferry specifically built for bikes across the Danube, and then back to the left bank. Clouds were lifting through the trees as I stopped at Obermuhl, and it was a gorgeous view.
It was more of the same to the edge of Linz, crossing the river on great hydroelectricity dams, but the approach to Linz itself can only be described as a Bit Crap, with a farcility that ran beside a very busy road and then began stopping for all the junctions. Just like home.
Linz was bypassed through a riverside park in the rain, past a swimming lake with families under trees as damp barbeques steamed, and I stopped at a sort-of-hostel in Steyregg, spending the evening talking about all sorts with a great German lad called Lars (as well as drinking beer...)
Back on the road, and into chocolate box Austria. The only exception to this was a charming little town called Mauthausen, with prosperous houses, a pretty flower shop (called 'BlumenEck'...) and a concentration camp out the back. Riding was through woodlands, and orchards, steadily changing views across the river interspersed with loops 'inland' on quet roads. The scenery changed from a narrow gorge to an immens plain, and back to a gorge, and then opened again. I was doing my usual chatting with the locals, and seeing a small selection of cyclists that I would pass, and then see again as I took a coffee. At Grein I said goodbye to one pair I had ridden with for about ten miles as they headed back to their hotel, and the rain came down in torrents.
It rained all thw way to Ybbs....but the next day was fine, and I was coming into the officially most scenic section. Lots of vineyards, lots of little castles and churches, and the vast orange abbey at Melk, which meant more cruise crowds.
Schonbuhel came as a surprise, with an actual HILL that was a little bit of a grind, but gave my first chance of a decent descent , always fun fully loaded. The floods were worse along here, and near Durnstein I had to ride across folded tarmac through running water. The ferry to Durnstein gives views of the castle where Richard I was held hostage as well as a truly pretty blue and white church.
And more cruise crowds.
Then Krems, which oddly seemed to have two "old towns" and which I left following a filthy and smelly canal, no hotels, no camp sites, no food along there till I spotted a garage and grabbed some sarnies. Middle of nowhere, it seemed, then I spotted a church and yes,the village had a Gasthaus. With food, a room, and beer, but not in that order.

[Tourist Tony]

The Gasthaus had an odd couple of visitors, both very big. I had previously, in Ybbs, been treated to an Austrian neo-Nazi spouting off to a crowd of toadies, explaining how the EU was a conspiracy between the West and the South to destroy Good Austrian Culcha, which was why all the immigrants speak English instead of Good German.
This time, the two were two huge men, one in shorts and a grubby vest, the other in slacks and a clean shirt. The first had that Austrian obsession on his head: the mullet. He was accompanied by what seemed to be his wife and daughter, and to my eyes was attempting to force the entire menu through his Obelix mooustache while his daughter looked on in disgust, Mrs Slob peering away into the distance and chain-smoking.
When I went upstairs, I found that the hall opposite my room was hosting a jive night, and there was fat man number two expertly swinging his partner, like a helium balloon tethered to two patent leather shoes.

[Tourist Tony]

The next day was the run in to Vienna, preceded by a scenic amble along flat paths. I stopped for coffee at a really odd place, a nuclear reactor, the only one in Austria. Austria is blessed with abundant hydro power, which is evident in the multiple dams on the Danube. This place was built despite massive public opposition, and then never opened because of, er, massive public opposition. What a waste of time and money.
I was passing massive flood damage still, and I had heard that St Polten was under water, but the day was fine and dry. At Tulln, there is a complicated bronze statue cluster telling the story "Attila gets Hitched", and as I lined up the camera for a pic a Germanophone woman walked straight in front of me and encouraged her little piece of missed-by-Darwin-so-far to play in the fountain while SHE took HER pictures.
I passed a couple once more I had taken to calling the Delhi Duo, as they were both on red Forts.....
Through Klosterneuburg, down a maze of back roads, and into the edge of Vienna.Busy, large, dirty in places, I was looking for a campsite near the river in the South East of the city. With some friendly assistance from locals ("Just stay on this side and turn left at the last bridge"---how do I know which is the last bridge?) I found the turning, and the site, and a pitch. LOTS of cycle tourists, and LOTS of motor caravans, too. And a Visitation, the first ever in a set of Marathon Plus. It was a snakebite caused by clipping a metal gate stop at the site entry. Well, I was tired.....
An evening spent nattering with Reinhardt from Hamburg over pizza and beer, and a night enlivened by rain and a ferocious wind storm. Broken tents in the morning were abundant. A day as a tourist was also enlivened by the Mozarts, touts dressed as the composer (male AND female in the same garb) trying to sell concert tickets. I just reply to them in Welsh.....

It was a drizzly day when I set off after two nights there, and I made a mistake by going down onto the riverside cycle track. It was filthy, with liquid mud left behind by the floods. I managed to push the bike up the steep banks and started again on a better track that took me to a tank farm, and then to yet another behind-the-dyke path through a nature reserve. Gradually the drizzle eased as I approached Schonau, where a chap on CGOAB had warned the surface changed to crap. The path over to Schonau itself was flooded, with a stream actually flowing across the top of a bridge, but no great depth. There is a friendly Imbiss at the path junction, and over a wurstl and coffee I asked a group of local cyclists about the path.

I took their advice. Apart from the fact that the path is mind-numbingly flat and straight, the surface is fine, with bad gravel appearing only at junctions. Most of the roads to the right were marked as closed due to the floods, and there were pools of standing water everywhere. The trees and bushes were stained grey from immersion to a frightening depth, while white storks were everywhere, one eating a live slow worm as I passed. I even saw my third ever black stork, just before I passed the Delhi Duo again.

The track finishes at the Danube bridge to Hainburg, which has a nastily narrow cycleway across wedged between bridge supports and railings, and it's a loooooong bridge. Along under the old walls, a little bit of a climbette through the town, and I was on a rolling country lane set nicely away from the main road. Bliss!
Then, as the road crested a small rise, I could see Bratislava Hrad off in the distance.
Why in hell's name had they painted it bright green?

[Tourist Tony]

I worked my way around the field edges to a cycle track that crossed the border parallel to the main road, and stopped at the services. The terrace aoutside the shop where I grabbed a cold drink was a real taste of Eastern Europe. It seemed to be devoted to the sale of second-hand Western cars, and some men were spit-roasting a whole animal of some kind in a sort of glass cabinet rotisserie.
Meandering paths took me under the UFO bridge opposite the castle, and I realised it hadn't been painted green, but was swathed in netting for construction work. This was the pattern in Bratislava, everything being painted up, but still showing the cracks beneath. And it was full of Tesco stores. The local tourist guide was full of really odd statistics, like some Radio Moscow report about tractor production, and it described the dreary masses of tower blocks as a tourist attraction---"world's biggest collection of panel buildings". The approach ramp to the UFO bridge was built into the wall of the cathedral in a stunning display of destructive Communist arrogance, and German boys were everywhere, mostly stinking drunk on the cheap beer.  I stayed two nights, and met a group of elderly Dutch cyclists, one of whom was very friendly, another of whom was frankly dismissive of claims by some fat bloke in civvies that he was riding. Over the next few days I would leave after them, pass them, and be pitched and swimming before they arrived. Eat my dust, git!

As I walked down from the old gate on my second day, I saw the Delhi Duo, and Lukas and Misa recognised me. One of those happy chats with former strangers over a cold beer that make touring the experience that it is.

Out of Bratislava, I found myself on a path behind the dyke once more, passing and being passed by my elderly German pair with the yellow dry bags, as well as rather a lot of very pretty girls in bikinis. The answer to that came when I found a swimming lake by the roadside. It was obviously open to naturists, as there were a lot of rather old country members swinging in the breeze.  turned right for Hungary, and met another couple for a chat, this time in Norwegian. They were out for a day ride through three countries, which is easy at this point. Through derelict Customs posts, and finally into Hungary at Rajke. Now, this was DEFINITELY a new country, and for the first time in ages I was looking at signs  I could not read.