Europe 2013: Into Austria

September 1, 2013

Side note I forgot to mention on the Nuerburgring story: if you noticed all those flags up in the corner on the GPS's track display? I discovered mid-Ring that my first-aid kit, which is only loosely attached to the tank bag, had bounced up at some point, and was feverishly pressing random buttons on the GPS. Fortunately, that didn't stop it recording speeds or tracks, but it was still a bit goofy to see this bag bobbling up against the GPS, and the GPS asking if I wanted to record another waypoint. In all, I can't have looked at the GPS more than about three times on the whole Ring.

I also, out of curiosity, filled the tank just before, then just after, the trip around the Ring (including the trip to and from the campsite, so it's not the whole story). I've been averaging about 44-45 MPG over the whole trip. I've gotten up as high as 48.6 MPG, but for that trip to the Ring, one lap, and back, I dropped down to 35 MPH. Give it, as Bertie Wooster might say, a snootful of the good stuff, and it goes with gustso, but it does drink heartily from the fruitful cup. Interesting side-side note re gas mileage: I got 33 MPG while riding around in Cork traffic, to put things in perspective.

Today's trip was from Lauterbach, in upper Bavaria (if I may rightly call it that) to Linz, in upper Austria. Lauterbach is a miniscule ort in the middle of a bunch of fields, the highlights of which include cows, or corn, but never cows *and* corn. The campsite itself, Mohrencamp, is nicely situated next to a little man-made lake, with a largeish area for tents next to the lake, separated by some hedges from the standing ground for trailers and motorhomes.

As I was eating my breakfast for the day, a small, tow-headed child tripped over to me and said, "Coffee?" I smiled back at him and said no, thank you, I didn't much care for coffee. He tripped off, and a few minutes later, another, slightly older and slightly less tow-headed child walked over and said, "Would you like some tea?" I should note that the first child actually said "Coffee?" in English, while the second child (having realized that, despite my Irish license plate, I could speak German) spoke to me in German. I said sure, and introduced myself to the family, all of whose names (except Jan, which is also how I introduce myself in German sometimes) I have of course forgotten.

There followed a polite but more or less meaningless conversation on general topics, as I drank my hibiscus tea, which was quite nice. I'd also gotten an initially-English conversation from another gent last night, who introduced himself and, it turned out, had worked in Detroit for a few years. It's pleasing to note that we generally defaulted to German, so clearly my German is still good enough. We concluded our conversation as I finished my tea, and I excused myself to go finish packing and get under way.

The day threatened rain, but it never quite materialized. It was certainly never sunny, until much later in the day. Yesterday, I had a bout of confusion when I realized that the crossed-out route on the signs I kept passing was the route the GPS was trying to send me down. The GPS has absolutely no way I've been able to discover to mark a road as closed, and ask it to reroute based on that closure. So I spent ten minutes riding around more or less at random before I finally pulled over and examined the map to see what alternatives I had. As soon as I go far enough along an alternative route, whatever algorithm in the GPS's program will recognize that it's shorter to go the way I'm going than to turn around and use the road that can't be traversed.

Today featured another such closure, on the B8 to Regensburg. Fortunately, I caught it in time, and followed the signs that indicated an autobahn route to Regensburg. The GPS was mightily confused, but I pretty much just ignored it, since the German road signs are quite good as long as you know the name of the town that's in your direction of travel. As long as I was on the autobahn, I gave the bike a snootful of the good stuff again, and got it up to 167 km/h (or 2 km/h faster than I reportedly went around the Nuerburgring). This was with gear on the back and paying close attention to what the wind felt like. The prevailing winds must have been different around the Ring, since I could swear I got double the strength of wind at 165 than I did at 167 on the autobahn. Anyway, I've now broken a hundred MPH on the autobahn, whee! One of my neighbors from a few nights ago said he had his car going 145, which I don't think is achievable with my bike with all the crap strapped on the back. It might just be possible with just me and the bike, but it doesn't sound like much fun.

Today, I was musing on the odd sort of traffic you see in Germany. Specifically, two things. The first is something I initially noticed in Holland, which is that 50cc scooters are allowed on bike paths, and helmets are apparently not required. I found this distressing. It's also true in a lot of Germany, although the helmet situation was different. I dislike that bicyclists should have to share the path with castor-oil-smoke-spewing scooters, invariably driven by 15.5 year olds with only the faintest sense of empathy. But it does seem to be so, and I didn't notice any problems among the many examples I saw in action.

The other odd sort of traffic is that quads (by which I mean the sort of four-wheeled off road bikes you see in the rural US, not the slick street quads out of Switzerland, which are basically a supersport bike grafted onto a new set of wheels) are allowed on the road, and indeed have license plates and everything. It appears that they're treated as motorcycles, but I saw a number of them that were fairly street appropriate: non-knobby street tires, headlights, even the LED running light surrounds that are so popular on new cars now. It seemed oddly lenient for a country that has a car inspection process so strict that you pretty much only see new cars on the road.

In any case, Bavaria rolled by at 90 odd kilometers per hour, and I found myself musing about how, at least in this part of Bavaria, it doesn't look very Bavarian. That is, I always picture steep valleys and snowy peaks and quaint alpine villages. I guess I was too far north to be in the Alps, but it seemed odd that these broad river valleys and open, rolling hills would also be Bavaria. Perhaps I'll see a bit more of the mountains and alpine villages on my way to Switzerland. Certainly in one of the towns I stopped at (perhaps Ahrweiler), there was a shop with a pret-a-porter lederhosen outfit in the window for a mere EUR199.90.

I was thus riding along, through Passau, in fact, when I passed a sign that said, "Republik Oesterreich, 1 km" and passed it by, thinking I'd get a picture with the real sign. Then, there wasn't another sign, but there was a gas station next to the "Don't forget to buy your road toll vignette!" sign, so I pulled over and got my vignette. This is a method of paying road taxes where you pay for a sticker, instead of paying per liter at the pump. Speaking of which, the gasoline in Austria is at least 20 cents per liter cheaper than it is in Germany. It's kind of a shocking difference. I saw 1.389 per liter on the way to tonight's campground, which was the price of diesel, in Germany. The most I paid in Germany was 1.699, and I think that's actually also the highest price I was aware of (silly American).

But once I crossed the border and had my vignette sorted out, I noticed that the landscape did indeed change a bit. Of course the road changed, and the signs were a bit different, but I was riding along this road next to the Donau (wich I suspect is called the Danube in English), and suddenly it all looked different. Then the sun came out. It was like crossing from Scotland into England all over again. I had to stop every five minutes to take another picture, since things were sunny and beautiful.

It had clearly just rained, since the streets were quite wet, at least in the shadow. I was getting that delightful post-shower sunshine, but without the part where I got all wet. Kind of magical.

Some 70 km later, I found myself pulling into the campground, just outside of Linz. It's near a little lake, where I saw a decent attempt at a sunset (although nothing like yesterday's fireworks show), and tried with moderate success to photograph some black swimming birds that I'm going to call ducks for convenience's sake.

Top that all off with having arrived early, having had a good dinner, plus a nice shower and a shave, and despite the 411 km and over 6 hours moving-time (which doesn't even count the time I was sitting at stop lights or whatnot), I'm going to call this a pretty pleasant day.

Tomorrow, an easy 3 hour jaunt to Vienna, and I get to meet up with all of Cori and Jens and Reinhart and Marta. Should be a jolly old time.

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Created by Ian Johnston. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net.