June 22, 2014
Day 54: Steyr to Feldkirchen: Back on the Mother Road
The last little bit of the Enns was ok, and we did have glimpses of the still green river, but basically it was anti-climactic. We were eager to get onto the Donau, and to check out the two towns we had never seen before: Enns and Linz. What we were not eager to do, though, was to have any sort of an encounter with Mathausen, which is directly adjacent to Enns on the Donau. We know there is some sort of museum/memorial of the concentration camp there. We just don't want to be anywhere near the place.
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We followed signs into the old town section of Enns, which of course was up a hill. Towns are usually built on hills for defensive purposes. Clearly they did not have old cycle tourists in mind when they did it. Enns, in fact, bills itself as the oldest town in Austria. We could not quite figure out the German list of what got developed when, but 2000 years old could be a good estimate. The oldest buildings still standing would be from the 13th century. What it boiled down to for us, though, was a central square with a (closed) Roman museum, and a 60 metre high city tower in the centre.
There really was not a lot going on - certainly no market filling the square, or even much of restaurants or ice cream, so we wandered off vaguely in search of the castle or the basilica. We did pass the castle, but I guess they did a good job of having it be forbidding. We didn't immediately see where or what we could visit, so we just coasted on. We were looking for the basilica (honest) but stumbled instead on a bakery/ pastry shop. Time is running out on our trip in Austria, and we still have not found the good erdbeeren schnitte or Linzer torte. So we went in to check it out.
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The erdbeeren schnitte seemed to have fluffy dream-whippy stuff under the berries, so we gave that a miss. They did have an innovative combo idea, though - raspberry top on a Sacher torte base. We tried that, and another torte they called a little Munich. Both were ok, but not earthshattering. The search would have to go on.
Perhaps shaken by the pastry experience, we forgot about the Basilica and hurried on toward Linz. This meant finally rejoining the Donau (Danube) and the the Donau Radweg. The Donau Radweg has to be the premium bike path in all of Europe. From Passau to Vienna, it is insanely popular. It has terrific path surface, perfect route marking, and a chain of interesting cities all along. This day, it also had everbody, and often, their dog too. Everybody means heavily packed long distance tourists, lightly packed credit carders, people on tours where they carry your stuff from stop to stop, locals on roller blades, locals in lycra with racing bikes, kids in kid bikes, kids in trailers, kids on trail-a-bikes, old people, young people. We started trying to count the cyclists, but soon gave up. We figured there are about 100 per kilometer, counting both sides of the river.
This is not even the high season, and we perhaps remember even more from last time. On the other hand, it is the weekend, and numbers will be boosted by local dabblers. With so many people of so many types out, the somewhat loner Grampies ran into a few conflicts. The most common type is the lycra warrior, looking to flit by at 50 kph without ringing a bell or otherwise signalling that they are there. So if you happen to wander a few inches over, even still in your lane, whaaaaa!
The next type involves two or more riders approaching, and coming two or more abreast. We often have me swing out to assert our own right to ride two abreast, if they think that they can do it. So a game of chicken results. I am a tough competitor in this, as somehow I have no fear of a head on collision.
We ran into (but not literally, this time) a weird one, too. This was a lady on roller blades who passed us and then pulled in front of Dodie and proceeded to just dawdle there. So Dodie passed her. She then pulled in tight behind Dodie and proceeded to draft in that position. (There was quite a head wind.). Meanwhile, I was behind, trying to get the photo. Once I had it, I moved up behind the lady, creating a sandwich and rather unkindly suggested to Dodie that she could hit the brakes. Dodie didn't do that, because she is less willing to be in a crash than me, but the lady seemed to take the hint and pulled out and around Dodie. We then slowed down and let her disappear forward. We must have been getting fed up with the various other impolite cyclists, or this unique situation would not have almost boiled over.
Actually, rather than be generally irritated by all the cyclists on the path, we were more exhilerated. This was R1, the Route 66 of cycling, the Mother Radweg, and we were on it! Beside us, the Blue Danube rolled by. Yes, blue (or green). Despite Strauss, the Danube is usually grey, but now it was blue, with swans. Several of those long river boats raced back upstream, with no passengers for some reason. Next stop, the much anticipted city of Linz.
Linz is on the south bank of the river, and we were coming along the north.They slightly forgot to indicate which bridge to cross for the centre of town, or how to get up on it. We figured that out, though, and cruised into the main square of Linz. The square is large, and is surrounded by large buildings. Though there are few, or no, cars in it, it does not feel at all cosy or accessible. Along one side there are restaurants or hotels with outdoor seating, but this does not do too much to change the feeling. From the far end, the square exits to a main shopping street. This too has no cars, but the street is dominated by tramway. So you can not cycle there, and on the sidewalks are various pedestrians, creating an obstacle course.
The street features several churches. We stopped in at the church of St Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits. We found little of interest inside, except that our donation yielded a bottle of holy water. We kept the "user manual", but since this was in German, did not attempt to actually use the water. Instead we returned it to the shelf.
Back on the street, we found a familiar array of large city type stores - clothing shops, jewellery shops, toy stores, banks, etc. None of it was really remarkable. In the several blocks that we cycled, there were a few bakeries, but all were closed. There was no evidence that the Linzer torte, famous with us, was actually famous here.
We picked up a tourist booklet about the city, and this listed the top ten attractions. Attraction number one is Linzer torte. Hmmmppph. Other than that, they mention the old town shops, the new catherdral, the botanical gardens, and the opera. Ok, ok, but we headed back down the Donau!
We thought that after 4 the locals wouold be home watching soccer and the cycle tourists would be safe in their pre-assigned guest houses. But in fact, it remained quite wild out there. Like, a row of fifty oncoming miscellaneous cyclists, or twenty-five, all in the same red tee shirts of their excursion company!
We were still 75-100 km from Passau, which we consider our old stamping ground. We are looking forward to doing some dirndl shopping there, getting new chains for the bikes, and finding more food. Ah, food. Sundays really hurt. We are down to our last Knoppers. We are lucky that that Christian went out and found us some camping gas while we were at Irdning. Otherwise we would be crunching cold dry pasta as well.
Tomorrow we will try to make it to Passau, though we will not be in time to do any playing in the town. That will be the next day. Meantime, we will continue to roll up this most special of routes, with the Donau at our side.
Today's ride: 73 km (45 miles)
Total: 2,814 km (1,747 miles)
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