June 9, 2014
Day 41: Kramsach to Nussdorf (Germany)
We spent the morning picking our way from town to town along the Inn. Most times when we looked around we would see mountains, meadows, the river, or towns with little churches. Dodie also counted other cyclists. In the first few hours, she averaged 80 cyclists per hour! After that, she pretty much gave up - but there sure were a lot!
The large number of cyclists might be normal, but there was also something else going on. Today, a Monday, is a religious holiday - Pfingstmontag. We think it has something to do with the Pentecost, not sure. What was clear was that everything was shut tight, so this is no doubt a legal holiday. That would give everyone a chance to go out and do activities like cycling,
For touring cyclists, who do not have pantries or freezers for storing food, holidays like this can however be a real bug. We had managed to secure a few overpriced plain buns from the campground, but that was it. Dodie also cooked up our normal oatmeal (actually now we are running with an enhanced muelsli concoction), but oatmeal seems to do little for me in terms of powering the bike.
The mountains, meadows, river, and towns that filled the day today were really a wonderful thing to be cycling through and we really did enjoy it. For me though, it was not quite as vivid as it should have been, the reason being the lack of pastries. I really didn't have the energy that I should. This was despite eating a whole pizza at lunch, plus two scoops of ice cream! Dodie says I have convinced myself that Danish is an essential food group. But whatever the reason, this cyclist runs better on mohn kuchen or kase taschen (with coffee) than any other fuel.
Even in my "weakened" condition, I could appreciate the beautiful chalet style that is used for almost all houses here. They look (naturally enough) like the chalet style cuckoo clocks. Of course, some look more like cuckoo clocks than others. Here below (as soon as they upload) are some samples. It turns out the best one, we think, was the gasthaus we ended up in today. Amusingly, the window where the cuckoo would normally come out of -- is our window!
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The "cuckoo clock" houses are beautifully complemented by the mountains and the meadows. My camera has trouble showing just how beautiful the mountains and meadows are - I think it would do better with a polarizing filter. Still, here below are today's attempts to show how beautiful it is here:
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Half way through the day we came to Kufstein, the town that had been promised by the direction signs ever since we left Innsbruck. Kufstein sits right on the Inn, and is dominated by a fort on a high hill right by the river. The old town is naturally just below the fort, near the river, but there is also more to the town around behind the hill.
The town has put out a pamphlet listing the sights are one passes along the river below the hill, and then circles around to cover the entire under the hill territory. There are 23 points of interest, and each is marked by an explanatory sign that can be read as you walk around.
Our first point of interest was the Tourist Information, where we got the list of points of interest in the first place! There were lots of bikes parked all around the Tourist Information area, as many of those hundreds of cyclists sat to enjoy eis at the several cafes which were actually open. Among the open establishments were three Italian restaurants. An Italian restaurant where we come from just means a style of restaurant, and probably that it features pizza and pasta. However here, we are so close to Italy that the staff, and the food, really are Italian. Anyway, I thought my pizza was good. I got the variety that at home is (properly) called Hawaiian (pineapple and ham). Here, for some bizarre reason, it was a "Florida".
Because of the holiday, the two sights that perhaps would have been the most interesting were closed. The first was a sewing machine museum, in the birthhouse of Josef Madersperger, who apparently invented the sewing machine. Madersperger was born here in 1786 and died in Vienna, 1850.
The second thing that would have been interesting was the display of the Riedel Glass Company where one can see glassmaking up close.
We did get to see some of the interesting and decorative buildings around the town. We also saw cannon balls imbedded in the walls, from the Siege of Kufstein, in 1504. I have read over the description of who was beseiging who a couple of times, and still can not quite come to grips with who was who. See if you do any better:
One other part of Kufstein history concerns how it fared in WWII. It came through mostly unscathed, until an American bombardment in 1944, that caused heavy damage. Fortunately, as was the case with Rothenberg, the town was surrendered before it would have been destroyed.
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We lingered in Kufstein for a couple of hours, circling the fort and eating the Italian food. Really good was the town fountain (actually we found two) where very cold water poured into waist high receptacles. This was a great chance to not only fill up the water bottles but to soak the arms, Kniepp style. With the temperature at about 100 F, this really hit the spot.
On the way out of town, we encountered a TV reporter, with camera. He asked Dodie what must have been his question of the day - why are you out here cycling instead of cooling off at the Schwimmbad. Dodie had a ready answer: "Because I don't have a swimming suit, while I do have cycling clothes". Soon we did pass the outdoor swimming pool, and indeed 95 percent of the town must have been there!
Despite the heat, we pushed on down the valley. We soon ran into signs for the Mozart Radweg - which circles in the Salzburg area, and has a spur out this far. We really like the name, but will not explicitly be cycling on it, except where our way overlaps with it, as it does here.
Our Inn Radweg book showed camping along the route, not too far off, so we were confident of reaching something reasonable at a reasonable hour. We now had a quite strong headwind, as well as the heat, so we took the luxury of a 30 minute nap on a shady bench. Restored a bit, we set off in search of camping. It turned out to be not so easy. We drew abreast of where the first camping was, only to find that we were locked away from it by the autobahn.
We scouted up and down, but really could find no way through. So we headed off to the next one, marked on the Bikeline map. When we got there, we found only an empty corn field!
The GPS offered us a way back around to the first camping - about 8 km - or a more distant one, 16 km. We chose instead to backtrack 2 km into Nusdorf. There we found a gasthaus and called it quits. The gasthaus, as mentioned before though, won the prize for looking like the model for a cuckoo clock. And now, it has two cuckoos (crazyguys) living right at the top!
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p.s. Trucks - a little mentioned part of our days is the noting of the various new to us models of cars, not to mention all the vans, that I wish I had. Actually, that is a part of my day - Dodie has no interest in cars, and little in vans. A final category is big trucks - which also differ a lot here from back home. Here is a shot of some of the local models:
Today's ride: 64 km (40 miles)
Total: 2,193 km (1,362 miles)
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