August 1-6, 2018
A few days of cycling in Germany, Switzerland and into Austria mostly along the Eurovelo 6 bike route.
What happened…
Amanda writes: August 1 was a good team day. It rained during the night. On August 2 we arrived nice and early. We tried to get Stephs wheel fixed but no luck. We dried out stuff after getting rained on night before. I left the clothes on the line and they got wet and it was wet in the tent because I left the fly open like a total rookie. My shoes were wet, my new Brooks saddle was wet. I was annoyed at my poor planning. We took 2 trains with transfers which was a great system. Then we had a hotel fiasco that included tears and frustration; so much frustration. I know tensions are running high right now. That combined with some last minute planning is really starting to take its toll. I know Andrew is doing the best he can but it’s times like these where his lack of attention to detail really costs us. Not just financially, but emotionally. He booked a hotel that we realized while traveling late that you had to check in before 6pm and we didn’t make that. So then we were struggling last minute to find another hotel which he found but it was a ride to it in the dark. The room was incredibly small and had no AC, no fans; nothing! Did we mention yet it’s the hottest summer in Europe in over 100 years. At some heat to rising tensions; what could go wrong?!
August 3 we entered Austria which was cool. I’ve always dreamed of visiting this Country and I just wish it was in a better mindset. We’re on the heals of not visiting Nici and Philip and Andrew is so disconnected. The tension right now is palpable. August 3 included a tailwind, some thunder showers and it was a beautiful day of cycling. August 4 we made a big detour for groceries to have a nice meal. Over these few days Andrew realized he lost his chair. Usually when we stop we will pull out our camp chairs and relax. Andrew was sitting behind a building in the shade and then when he got up he just walked away from his chair and forgot to pack it up. When we were cycling away from the rest spot I did mention to him his pannier was open and he closed it. What we should have done instead was question why it was open and what was in there. The challenge there is its not uncommon for Andrew to forget to close his panniers.
Stephanie writes: On the first we woke up and paid for camping.
Simon and Beatrice didn’t because they were late and so we went separate ways with them again. There was some weird construction zone that we were allowed to be in which was so different from Canada. We stopped at a football field for lunch and watched this fun automatic sprinkler that moved. It was like a little mini lawnmower with no driver just going all over the field and it knew where it had been and where is was going. We got water from little pizza place and the two German guys washed my water bottles for me when I asked them for water. They also gave me cold water. They tried to speak German before they knew I only speak English. We stopped at a little ice cream shop and decided to go to a further camp site. We stopped for food and Amanda had an ice cream cone and Andrew had ice cream and spaghetti. I had ice cream and fruit pizza. Andrew and I raced the last 100m to the campsite and rung our bells multiple times for boys to get out of the way of our race. There are
lots of cyclists at this campground too. Nadia speaks German, Russian, Portuguese, English and french. She is from Russia originally and Sebastian is German. There was a nice guy that showed us what garbage went in which container. When I went to brush my teeth some guy couldn’t put his finger on the fact that I don’t speak German and just kept talking. We stayed in Germany the whole day.
It poured with rain overnight and all the clothes and shoes were wet. The tent and sleeping gear were wet. Andrew yelled at me for being one my phone when we were packing up. We went through lots of corn fields. He had a hill to ride with a 20% grade and had to push after a while. We stopped at a grocery store and couldn’t find any pins. We saw the tallest church in the world, literally the tallest. We went inside and in fact it was boring like all the other churches. We looked for bike shops and found three. The first one Andrew asked and they said make a reservation for September. After that Andrew didn’t come to anymore, and sent me alone. The second one I asked and the guy said they don’t do repairs but he’d try to help. They didn’t have anything that could help us so he gave me some advice and said bye. The third guy didn’t speak English or french and didn’t fix it. In our efforts to find a bike repair shop we ended up at some total drunk park with dudes everywhere talking super loud. We must have fit right in because we were drying out our stuff in the middle of the park. All the wet stuff from the rain. Some super drunk guy tried to ask us about the gear in German. Andrew gave away the pannier to the homeless guy that I was gonna give Jake that we found. We rode to the train station and didn’t have to unload our bikes at all which was nice. We had to buy tickets for our bikes when we got there and had two transfers. We got on the first station at track 28 and sat across from a Nigerian family with a Mom and two kids, Dahli and Osas. I gave them Canada bouncy balls. They spoke a little English. Some other lady was doing the same transfers as us. We got off at track 7 and got on at track 6. We thought they were ahead and almost missed the train. We saw the other lady with her bike on the train. Some nice girl came outside and told us that it was our train (we were the only ones on the platform). We squeezed on where there wasn’t really room for our bikes. At the next stop Andrew ran Amanda’s bike to last car where there was lots of room. The nice girl stood in the door so the train couldn’t leave without him. I did the same thing with my bike at the next stop. We left Andrews because it fit where it was. I sat diagonal from an English speaking girl who was interested in our trip. Some lady didn’t want to move her bag because Amanda needed a seat and Amanda moved it for her. We moved once some seats cleared up and then got off at track 6 and then got on track 5.
Andrew almost went on the elevator not noticing that we were already right there. The conductor rushed us over to last cart. There was tons of room for our bikes. We slept most of the ride since it was so late. When Andrew booked the hotel he didn’t realize you had to check in before 6 and then he had to change it. Andrew booked a new hotel 3km further. By the time we went to sleep it was like 1am. A nice family asked about our trip in the elevator. The room had no air conditioning and I slept in a terrible cot.
On the 3rd we woke up around 8 and went for breakfast on the second floor of the hotel. We made lunch with all the food selections. We got all packed up while taking cold showers because it was so hot and went into town before leaving Germany. We met some super Swedish looking guy with an accordion and some pipes he was smoking. I got a Germany pin after the accordion guy said it would be hard to find them. We FINALLY FELT RAIN. Super big raindrops and really loud thunder. It was so refreshing. We stopped in a town with tons of cycle tourists with guides. Amanda and I switched wheels because mine was so bad and she was concerned I might crash. We had our pre made sandwiches for lunch and started riding again on the google map route which sent us up an extremely steep dirt and gravel road. We decided to go around and some little kid started racing with us down the highway. I gave him fist pumps. When he was done he stopped, dropped the bike and just laid down in the middle of the path. Amanda said it is just as humid here as in Central America. It was only 24 but felt so hot because of the humidity. I couldn’t see in the rear view mirror of my bike as it was all fogged up. There were guys fishing everywhere along the river. We got cold drinks at a market and some super young girls were driving on mopeds with tons of alcohol. They stopped to drink and some other old cyclist dude stripped his shirt shorts right in front of us. We were camping right on the highway with the reception on other side of highway. Andrew helped a Bolivian/Italian start a fire using alcohol because of the humidity. There are no locks on shower doors at the campground. Andrew left his chair where he was teaching today. We cycled in Germany and Austria today.
On the 4th a little kid cried the whole night. The Italian and french girl played and then cried nonstop. Andrew ate all the cereal and didn’t share. I carried all the drinks and a butterfly landed on me at the grocery store. We went on super bumpy road and accidentally went off by the river. We rode past a pretty sunflower field and a French family gave us one of the umbrellas at a cafe as it was so hot. There were some Irish ladies at the restaurant. 4 older ladies talking about sight seeing in Ireland. We still had 25km to go in blazing sun. We found bathrooms across the street and some guy told us to move our stuff so we weren’t blocking him. We saw a 17 y/o girl riding from Passau to Vienna alone
On the 5th we rode along the water to a grocery store and a part of trail was marked off so we had to improvise. There was a cool little twig set up of kids playing football. My front derailleur broke. Amanda and I switched bikes and she tried to fix it but Andrew ended up having to fix it. There are little Austrian towns everywhere and super pretty with lots of castles and tons of vineyards. The grapes taste really good(sweet) both red and white. There are lots of super immature men that didn’t want girls passing them while cycling. We got pins at a shop in a little town on a hill and were done and at the campsite by 1pm. There were weird old guys with no pants everywhere and some guy on his scooter with mini tires riding around every 2 seconds. There was a really cute baby who stopped crying every time he looked at Amanda or me. We also met two Belgian cyclists, Gilles and David. They were
riding from Belgium to Kazakhstan and eat out every night. Austria is very very pretty. Andrew thinks I don’t need to wash my face.
On the 6th we rode 88km😂 which was supposed to be 75km. Andrew is in a pissy mood for us to hurry up maybe in part because his mattress deflated overnight. David came to look at the bike set up as we left and we went to a bakery and debated taking a train. We rode past the weird guys on recumbent bikes. We stopped for lunch and had the Austrian cheese danish things. Andrew chugged and back washed the ice tea gross. He lost my bag tag when he got ice tea and left my bag wide open. The recumbent bikes caught up while we were eating. We rode with them for a bit. Andrew took off on a gravel road and we didn’t know where to go. Some lady on a bike yelled at Andrew for riding in the middle and not watching where he was going. We stopped at map to read it and some kid came by skidding and smiled at us. His dad showed us where the subway is if we want to take it. He had a twin brother also showing off for us. Andrew wanted to stop again for food and back washed the drink again. Going into Vienna city part was kind of uphill but okay. Once we got to apartment we waited for Doris the AirBnB homeowner. Her daughter also came and we put the bikes in the basement and went to 4th floor with our stuff
Today’s Flickr Photographs
[flickr_tags user_id=”17145280@N00″ tags=”080118,080218,080318,080418,080518,080618″]Aerial view of rides with embedded pictures
Cycling Stats
August 1, 2018
Start Point: Wahlwies
Destination: Camping Radierrast, Mancherloch
72.42 km trip, 14.35 km/h average speed, 35.96 km/h maximum speed, 5:03 time on the bike
August 2, 2018
Start Point: Mancerhloch
Destination: Ulm
66.56 km trip, 15.26 km/h average speed, 34.6 km/h maximum speed, 4:22 time on the bike
August 3, 2018
Start Point: Passau
Destination: Hoflein
89.59 km trip, 18.76 km/h average speed, 42.7 km/h maximum speed, 4:46 time on the bike
August 4, 2018
Start Point: Hoflein
Destination: Willersbach
91.53 km trip, 18.62 km/h average speed, 35.4 km/h maximum speed, 4:55 time on the bike
August 5, 2018
Start Point: Willersbach
Destination: Krems
70 km trip, 19.09 km/h average speed, 38 km/h maximum speed, 3:40 time on the bike
August 6, 2018
Start Point: Krems
Destination: Vienna
88 km trip, 19.08 km/h average speed, 35 km/h maximum speed, 4:37 time on the bike
Route Description:
August 1, 2018 We took a different route than the ev6 to try and avoid some hills. The day included mostly nice bike lanes but also some busy highway sections which sucked. The nice part was going through towns and having access to stores.
August 2, 2018 The day was pretty flat and mostly paved. We followed the ev6 for some and other bike paths too. We arrived in Ulm nice and early.
August 3, 2018 Today our route took us into Austria along rivers most of the day. The route now has signs for R1/R2. It was super flat and maybe even a bit downhill. We had a tailwind.
August 4, 2018 After leaving the campsite we went down river on the R1 cycled route. We tried to go to a grocery store because tomorrow is a Sunday and everything will be closed so this included a big detour including a highway. This meant we ended up away from the river and back on the 3v6. The last 15K was back on the river which was nice.
August 5, 2018 The was a nice route through wine country on the ev6 route. It was mostly along the river and paved. And as a bonus it was mostly downhill.
August 6, 2018 We followed the ev6 almost the entire day. There was a very small section on the road with cars and a small section of gravel. There are many towns along the route with stores.
Accommodations:
August 1, 2018 We stayed at a campground and sorry can’t remember how much it was.
August 2, 2018 We stayed in a hotel in Passau. Not sure of campgrounds.
August 3, 2018 We stayed at a nice small campground called Hofmuhle.
August 4, 2018 We camped at Gasthof camping which was 17 euros.
August 5, 2018 We camped at a site in Krems for 36 euros for 3 people and 2 tents. It had good facilities including wifi.
August 6, 2018 We rented an AirBnB in Vienna for a couple of nights. There are lots of hotels and campgrounds.