Father's day came and went, and I spent much of the day thinking about my two little boys, who aren't so little anymore. Being in Vienna means missing them, but no matter what they've made me feel really lucky.
So it's on to a bright Monday morning, looking out the window of the hotel at a bustling street. We have been playing tourist for a couple of days here, and today will be more of the same. The Hapsburg palace is impressive, and this is quite a town. We have seen opera, listened to an organ concert inside an ancient cathedral, and been through an art museum. I would like to visit Sigmund Freud's museum and house today. Perhaps a little therapy will rub off on me.
Tomorrow we plan to leave town with a little lunch in the packs, and make it to somewhere in the vicinity of Bratislava. For now I have to get started on the day, so I will cut this a little short. More tomorrow morning before we leave. Once we are out of Austria I am pretty sure Internet service will become a little spotty.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Friday, June 17, 2011
Attila
Woke up to a dark morning, but the overcast never amounted to anything. Nice and warm as we rode through the little village of Durnstein, where Richard the Lionhearted was imprisoned for a short time in 1192. He wasn't going to chisel his way out of those three foot stone walls, for sure, but they let him go because of political reasons. The guy was 6 ft. 4in tall, and foolishly brave. Eventually he died from a wound suffered because he wasn't wearing his armor.
The towns we pass through now are full of narrow alleyways, gothic arches, Roman towers and walls, and Churches that are sometimes as old as 300 AD. Other monasteries and abbeys, along with old castles that are high up on hills, look down on us, but usually we do not want to climb up the long hills to take a closer look. As one guy told us recently, castles look good from the outside, but inside they are just a bunch of cold gloomy rocks.
After a 74k ride today we are spending the night in a little town on the Donau called Tulln. This is the place where Attila the Hun met his future bride Gudrun. A statue along the river celebrates the event. Attila came through here raping and pillaging on one of his conquests back in the 5th century. The guy owned territory from the Rhine all the way to Constantinople, and from the Danube to the Baltic Sea. But never could defeat Saladin in Turkey or take down Rome. And he died on his wedding night after drinking heavily, passing out flat on his back, and choking on his own blood from a massive nosebleed. The statue here shows him as a big nice looking guy with a Fu Manchu.
Need a little lube for Laura's chain, but otherwise the trusty bikes are holding up. We hit Vienna today. After days of quiet in the countryside, we can now hear airplanes on final to the big city. We could use a little culture, so here we go.
The towns we pass through now are full of narrow alleyways, gothic arches, Roman towers and walls, and Churches that are sometimes as old as 300 AD. Other monasteries and abbeys, along with old castles that are high up on hills, look down on us, but usually we do not want to climb up the long hills to take a closer look. As one guy told us recently, castles look good from the outside, but inside they are just a bunch of cold gloomy rocks.
After a 74k ride today we are spending the night in a little town on the Donau called Tulln. This is the place where Attila the Hun met his future bride Gudrun. A statue along the river celebrates the event. Attila came through here raping and pillaging on one of his conquests back in the 5th century. The guy owned territory from the Rhine all the way to Constantinople, and from the Danube to the Baltic Sea. But never could defeat Saladin in Turkey or take down Rome. And he died on his wedding night after drinking heavily, passing out flat on his back, and choking on his own blood from a massive nosebleed. The statue here shows him as a big nice looking guy with a Fu Manchu.
Need a little lube for Laura's chain, but otherwise the trusty bikes are holding up. We hit Vienna today. After days of quiet in the countryside, we can now hear airplanes on final to the big city. We could use a little culture, so here we go.
Happy Birthday Tim 33
Not real easy to write these posts. Internet is spotty, so I have to put them into notes on the iPad and copy them in when I get a chance. And getting on long enough to post a picture on Facebook is tough, because we need a wireless connection for a longer time, which can be a challenge.
As bike time goes, we have actually been in the saddle for about seven hours each of the last two days. We've changed the angle of Laura's seat a couple of times, moved it back and forth a few more, lightened the pack, paid attention to stopping for breaks, and leaving early to avoid the heat. So we ride about 80 kilometers per day. With our trusty guide book consulted often, we are only lost for short, exciting stretches.
The Donauradweg, as it is known here, is without any doubt the best bike tour ever. No autos, hills, wind, or tour de France wannabes running us over. Just pleasant bikers from around the world out to have a holiday. Cost? Well, this is Europe, where the euro is worth 1.5 dollars. It hurts the pocketbook, but I am going to bike heaven soon anyway where the dollar will be worth nothing. So it' easy for me to say now, after we have been siting in a weingarten for three or four hours, that it is a trip I will remember even in cycle nirvana.
Go to google maps and find Grein, Austria. Follow the Danube downstream and stop at Weissenkirchen. Notice all the vineyards along the Wachau valley. We have been drinking the product of those vines all evening.
Laura here: Lisa ,you would appreciate this. We are at an Austrian winery and are well into the wine...so, no thoughts of dinner! We are not sure what we are drinking but we don't care!! What a setting : we are in a large garden with cream colored walls on three sides, flowers blooming everywhere, hedges, tall,overhanging trees; the birds are singing..
Enough of the bird chirping drivel.... But yeah, this town is the best one yet. Tomorrow it's on to Tulln, if we stick to our semi plan. The next night we will be in Vienna. Our Gausthaus hostess- Ann-Marie Heller- will let me use her connection to post this.....If I learn German overnight.... By tomorrow morning I will be the proud papa of a thirty three year old son. Wish I could give you a big Austrian bear hug Tim, but my skinny little arms won't reach that far.
We finally found a wireless network at a coffee shop! Ordered a beer instead but here goes the post to blog.
As bike time goes, we have actually been in the saddle for about seven hours each of the last two days. We've changed the angle of Laura's seat a couple of times, moved it back and forth a few more, lightened the pack, paid attention to stopping for breaks, and leaving early to avoid the heat. So we ride about 80 kilometers per day. With our trusty guide book consulted often, we are only lost for short, exciting stretches.
The Donauradweg, as it is known here, is without any doubt the best bike tour ever. No autos, hills, wind, or tour de France wannabes running us over. Just pleasant bikers from around the world out to have a holiday. Cost? Well, this is Europe, where the euro is worth 1.5 dollars. It hurts the pocketbook, but I am going to bike heaven soon anyway where the dollar will be worth nothing. So it' easy for me to say now, after we have been siting in a weingarten for three or four hours, that it is a trip I will remember even in cycle nirvana.
Go to google maps and find Grein, Austria. Follow the Danube downstream and stop at Weissenkirchen. Notice all the vineyards along the Wachau valley. We have been drinking the product of those vines all evening.
Laura here: Lisa ,you would appreciate this. We are at an Austrian winery and are well into the wine...so, no thoughts of dinner! We are not sure what we are drinking but we don't care!! What a setting : we are in a large garden with cream colored walls on three sides, flowers blooming everywhere, hedges, tall,overhanging trees; the birds are singing..
Enough of the bird chirping drivel.... But yeah, this town is the best one yet. Tomorrow it's on to Tulln, if we stick to our semi plan. The next night we will be in Vienna. Our Gausthaus hostess- Ann-Marie Heller- will let me use her connection to post this.....If I learn German overnight.... By tomorrow morning I will be the proud papa of a thirty three year old son. Wish I could give you a big Austrian bear hug Tim, but my skinny little arms won't reach that far.
We finally found a wireless network at a coffee shop! Ordered a beer instead but here goes the post to blog.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Keyed up
Started out with a nice pot of coffee at the Gasthaus breakfast spread early this morning. 12:30am Denver time as a matter of fact. Then took off and rode in the early morning through farmlands and canals to Linz. Only about 30k today because we wanted to see Linz. Mozart and hitler both lived here at one time in their lives. Also Kepler, the famous mathematician and astronomer who formulated the law for how planets move through space. We saw their houses, along with an oompah band in the Hauplatz, sitting beside a 400 year old tower in the square.
But the real excitement was caused by my increasing senility. I have already lost a pair of sunglasses by leaving them in a bookstore although we went back in two minutes later and they had disappeared, with virtually no other customers going in or out. Then the other dat we discovered that I was missing a pair of shorts. God only knows where those might have ended up. Alas, today I outdid myself. We went out on the bikes, because this town is too big to walk around. Immediately after locking them up, we walked fifty feet to an apotheke (pharmacy) and then another fifty to a bakery for a strudel. As soon as we left we checked to see if we had all of our stuff, and lo and behold the key to the bike lock was nowhere to be found. Ahhhhhh shit. The bikes were locked together to a streetside rack.
I have a hole in my pocket (too cheap to throw away a pair of shorts for that!) and it must have fallen out. We looked up and down the block ad nauseum, on the sidewalk, street, manholes, gutters. No key. It wasn't out of my pocket for more than 5 minutes, yet it had disappeared, even quicker than I am losing my mind.
We need those bikes........We kind of need to know a little German to get some kind of help. Hardware store for cutters? New lock? Saw? Getting picked up by the cops for ripping apart a lock and taking two bikes from the street which we can't prove are ours? Throwing a fit for being so stupid? All this ran through our minds.
But practicality won out, and I went to the nearest hotel, a nice fancy one, and explained our situation to the clerk. She told us to come back at 5 and a guy would help, and gave us a lead on a sporting goods store. We found it, bought a lock (Laura suggested a combination lock this time), and at 5 returned to the hotel. The bellman reluctantly retrieved a saw, and after verifying we were guests of the hotel, which we were not, and which Laura unhesitatingly lied about, he sawed the lock off. We were home free, except for me beating myself up.
Maybe I need to get a sewing kit.
But the real excitement was caused by my increasing senility. I have already lost a pair of sunglasses by leaving them in a bookstore although we went back in two minutes later and they had disappeared, with virtually no other customers going in or out. Then the other dat we discovered that I was missing a pair of shorts. God only knows where those might have ended up. Alas, today I outdid myself. We went out on the bikes, because this town is too big to walk around. Immediately after locking them up, we walked fifty feet to an apotheke (pharmacy) and then another fifty to a bakery for a strudel. As soon as we left we checked to see if we had all of our stuff, and lo and behold the key to the bike lock was nowhere to be found. Ahhhhhh shit. The bikes were locked together to a streetside rack.
I have a hole in my pocket (too cheap to throw away a pair of shorts for that!) and it must have fallen out. We looked up and down the block ad nauseum, on the sidewalk, street, manholes, gutters. No key. It wasn't out of my pocket for more than 5 minutes, yet it had disappeared, even quicker than I am losing my mind.
We need those bikes........We kind of need to know a little German to get some kind of help. Hardware store for cutters? New lock? Saw? Getting picked up by the cops for ripping apart a lock and taking two bikes from the street which we can't prove are ours? Throwing a fit for being so stupid? All this ran through our minds.
But practicality won out, and I went to the nearest hotel, a nice fancy one, and explained our situation to the clerk. She told us to come back at 5 and a guy would help, and gave us a lead on a sporting goods store. We found it, bought a lock (Laura suggested a combination lock this time), and at 5 returned to the hotel. The bellman reluctantly retrieved a saw, and after verifying we were guests of the hotel, which we were not, and which Laura unhesitatingly lied about, he sawed the lock off. We were home free, except for me beating myself up.
Maybe I need to get a sewing kit.
Linz
We hear about earthquakes in New Zealand, ash clouds over the southern hemisphere, but here in Bavaria we see a river valley from a bike. Not much going on. Breakfast, ride, snack, beer, arrive at a new Austrian village, more beer, dinner, beer, ice cream, bed.
The German language is playing with us. Czech was just impossible. How can a two year old learn it, when they can't tie their shoes yet? They are the smartest people in the world. The rest of us can stick with the Latin based stuff, and try to catch on. It's really fun. I'm at the point now to where I can get a smile out of the locals just by giving a German word a lame attempt.
The ride today involved another look at a church we actually had to see again just to believe, Saint Sebastion church in Passau. Inspires a little awe. The organ music takes you back to Galileo's days. Then on to the little town of Aschach, Austria. A former toll station on the Danube, now a small fishing village. Just try to pronounce Aschach with out the hint of a word you wouldn't say in a convent.
Laura's butt still hurting a bit. Say's it's like siting on a two by four. We may look for a triple gel seat, or perhaps change out my seat for hers. Otherwise the bikes are perfect. Thanks Renata. It's been cloudy, cool, and drizzly here, perfect for a bike ride, and tomorrow we will end up in Linz.
The German language is playing with us. Czech was just impossible. How can a two year old learn it, when they can't tie their shoes yet? They are the smartest people in the world. The rest of us can stick with the Latin based stuff, and try to catch on. It's really fun. I'm at the point now to where I can get a smile out of the locals just by giving a German word a lame attempt.
The ride today involved another look at a church we actually had to see again just to believe, Saint Sebastion church in Passau. Inspires a little awe. The organ music takes you back to Galileo's days. Then on to the little town of Aschach, Austria. A former toll station on the Danube, now a small fishing village. Just try to pronounce Aschach with out the hint of a word you wouldn't say in a convent.
Laura's butt still hurting a bit. Say's it's like siting on a two by four. We may look for a triple gel seat, or perhaps change out my seat for hers. Otherwise the bikes are perfect. Thanks Renata. It's been cloudy, cool, and drizzly here, perfect for a bike ride, and tomorrow we will end up in Linz.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Guten Morgan
Things are returning to normal for our bike tours. Laura has been wondering why I don't eat or drink all day, why I like to walk around looking at old walls, and correcting my poor pronunciation of foreign sounds.
We spent last night at a Gasthaus outside of Schalding, Germany. Rode about 60 kilometers, luckily couldn't find a room in one unattractive town, and so rode on a while to a great with place along the river with a seven foot catfish fresh out of the Danube wallowing in a water tank outside the restaurant. It was starting to rain so we just made it, around six pm.
The food has been really great. Fleisch, schwine, schnitzel, strudel, eis, kaffe, wurst, suppen, speck, brot from the bakeri, plenty of bier and wein, and then more bier, usually dunkel for me. Next time we come here we should study up a bit because it is more fun if you can try the local language even a little. And I think the locals appreciate a try, even if it is butchered. Czech would take about a million lessons from Jana or Renata.
Today we made it to Passau, which is a really neat old town at the junction of the Danube, the Inn, and the Ilz Rivers. A high hill overlooking the confluence is topped by a castle built in the 12th century. Things around here are old, older, and oldest. Some of the walls and buildings have been built by the Romans! Enough about rocks, even if I am amazed at what the old guys could do with thousand pound blocks of granite.
We haven't had time to deal with the picture issue, barely enough Internet time to check email. Service is spotty at best, and with sightseeing and riding, drinking Bavarian beer and showering and sleeping, looking all over town for a connection gets put off. But we got an app that uploads to Facebook, so we will try our best to put some on there.
Route finding has been a no brainer since we started on the Danauradweg. If I lived in Europe I would make it an annual trip. Maybe camp some to save some cash. If riding a bike is fun, this is just the best. No hills at all, scenery from a movie set, and history and good food and beer in the towns. Wish you all could be here with us. Some way or another I am trying to figure out a way to keep the bikes in Europe so we can come back. I will post this in the morning, but after that who knows when the next post will be. We enter Austria tomorrow.
We spent last night at a Gasthaus outside of Schalding, Germany. Rode about 60 kilometers, luckily couldn't find a room in one unattractive town, and so rode on a while to a great with place along the river with a seven foot catfish fresh out of the Danube wallowing in a water tank outside the restaurant. It was starting to rain so we just made it, around six pm.
The food has been really great. Fleisch, schwine, schnitzel, strudel, eis, kaffe, wurst, suppen, speck, brot from the bakeri, plenty of bier and wein, and then more bier, usually dunkel for me. Next time we come here we should study up a bit because it is more fun if you can try the local language even a little. And I think the locals appreciate a try, even if it is butchered. Czech would take about a million lessons from Jana or Renata.
Today we made it to Passau, which is a really neat old town at the junction of the Danube, the Inn, and the Ilz Rivers. A high hill overlooking the confluence is topped by a castle built in the 12th century. Things around here are old, older, and oldest. Some of the walls and buildings have been built by the Romans! Enough about rocks, even if I am amazed at what the old guys could do with thousand pound blocks of granite.
We haven't had time to deal with the picture issue, barely enough Internet time to check email. Service is spotty at best, and with sightseeing and riding, drinking Bavarian beer and showering and sleeping, looking all over town for a connection gets put off. But we got an app that uploads to Facebook, so we will try our best to put some on there.
Route finding has been a no brainer since we started on the Danauradweg. If I lived in Europe I would make it an annual trip. Maybe camp some to save some cash. If riding a bike is fun, this is just the best. No hills at all, scenery from a movie set, and history and good food and beer in the towns. Wish you all could be here with us. Some way or another I am trying to figure out a way to keep the bikes in Europe so we can come back. I will post this in the morning, but after that who knows when the next post will be. We enter Austria tomorrow.
No cars!
We trained it out of Czech. After going over our options, it was going to take up too much time if we biked it all the way to Regensburg. Too much uncertainty with the trail markings, with too much of a lack of us knowing one word in Czech to ask for help. The random pedestrian in Prague knew a little English, but out in the countryside not so much. So we had visions of two weeks in the beautiful Czech forests, when we only had about two days left in our schedule to meet up with the Danube.
So we Luger the trains on to the train, where we assumed that for our five euro for each bike there would be somewhere to put them. But when we got hustled them onto the train, we got no further than the entryway. Any further would have required dismantling the bikes to fit in the narrow hallway. So we blocked the restrooms and doors, one bike in the way of two different doors each. The conductor just walked by each time, and didn't seem to mind. But after we came back once to check, people had moved them to use the loo, and they were now sprawled across the only way in or out of the car.
It ended up being a blessing in disguise, because Laura insisted on moving to a different car closer to the problem bicycles. There we met Lou and Manuela, two Germans from Chom who were nice enough to give us a personal tour of Regensburg when we arrived. It would be hard to find two nicer Europeans, except for our other new friends Renata and Jana from Prague.
The bikes that Renata acquired for us have worked out great. I talked Laura into switching back in Czech republic, and that helped. Since then we have tilted the seat forward and moved it closer to her hands. My pack has a few more items in it now which helped also. Today we rode about forty five miles, and she can still walk normally. Yesterday we rode about thirty five and things weren't so good.
Last night we stayed in Bogen, Germany. Very Bavarian. A nice little Gasthaus with breakfast included. The Danube is a stones throw away all along the bike path, and it is the most wonderful riding! How could it get any better than a smooth path with no auto traffic, fabulous scenery, a tailwind, and a smooth running machine between your legs?
Tonight we are in a little Gasthaus on the river just short of Schalding. Still in Germany. Tomorrow we will plan on getting to Passau, a border town with Austria directly across the Danube.
Internet service has been surprisingly hard to come by. No wireless anywhere, no service in the hotels, and once in a while an Internet station where you pay for a certain amount of time on their computers. I am trying to paste the blog in from the iPad, so can't put it on yet. We are hoping that in Pasau, a bigger city, we can access some kind of wireless.
Dirk Novitzki is in the papers here, but otherwise we are out of touch, so if the world blow up, hopefully it will spare Bavaria.
So we Luger the trains on to the train, where we assumed that for our five euro for each bike there would be somewhere to put them. But when we got hustled them onto the train, we got no further than the entryway. Any further would have required dismantling the bikes to fit in the narrow hallway. So we blocked the restrooms and doors, one bike in the way of two different doors each. The conductor just walked by each time, and didn't seem to mind. But after we came back once to check, people had moved them to use the loo, and they were now sprawled across the only way in or out of the car.
It ended up being a blessing in disguise, because Laura insisted on moving to a different car closer to the problem bicycles. There we met Lou and Manuela, two Germans from Chom who were nice enough to give us a personal tour of Regensburg when we arrived. It would be hard to find two nicer Europeans, except for our other new friends Renata and Jana from Prague.
The bikes that Renata acquired for us have worked out great. I talked Laura into switching back in Czech republic, and that helped. Since then we have tilted the seat forward and moved it closer to her hands. My pack has a few more items in it now which helped also. Today we rode about forty five miles, and she can still walk normally. Yesterday we rode about thirty five and things weren't so good.
Last night we stayed in Bogen, Germany. Very Bavarian. A nice little Gasthaus with breakfast included. The Danube is a stones throw away all along the bike path, and it is the most wonderful riding! How could it get any better than a smooth path with no auto traffic, fabulous scenery, a tailwind, and a smooth running machine between your legs?
Tonight we are in a little Gasthaus on the river just short of Schalding. Still in Germany. Tomorrow we will plan on getting to Passau, a border town with Austria directly across the Danube.
Internet service has been surprisingly hard to come by. No wireless anywhere, no service in the hotels, and once in a while an Internet station where you pay for a certain amount of time on their computers. I am trying to paste the blog in from the iPad, so can't put it on yet. We are hoping that in Pasau, a bigger city, we can access some kind of wireless.
Dirk Novitzki is in the papers here, but otherwise we are out of touch, so if the world blow up, hopefully it will spare Bavaria.
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