Sopron, Hungary to the Vienna Airport (Sept. 11, 2022) - CentralEurope - CycleBlaze

September 11, 2022

Sopron, Hungary to the Vienna Airport (Sept. 11, 2022)

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We had a mission today; to ride to the Vienna airport and find an adapter so Dave could shave and brush his teeth (And charge my camera batteries)!  Weather was cool and blustery  with rain in the forecast.  It was Sunday morning. but it was not as quiet as we expected because there was some event at a nearby lake and everybody was headed that way - in a car. The short story is that Hungarians are not nearly as polite to cyclists as other European countries so there definitely is a feeling that you are taking your life in your hands when you are on the road.

After we got out of this weird Sunday traffic it was a nice ride and we didn’t have any major goat track action. Because the forecast was for the bad rain to be in the afternoon we were motivated to ride hard and minimize breaks. We rode out of Hungary and past Lake Neusiedler which looked like a pleasant family resort and through a lot of  Austrian vines.  It continued to bluster and the wind picked up and it was the first time serious weather actually materialized on this whole trip.

We turned right into a headwind just as we were to do the only serious climb of the day, heading on highway 15 through the Burgenland. It was a long steady grinder but the Austrian cars were polite and the hill sheltered us from the wind.  I loved the descent - not too steep. Afterwards it started to rain but we were mostly on small roads or cycleways so it wasn’t bad. We rode the last 30 k without stopping because of  the weather and then through the scenic (?) area outside the Vienna airport. For almost the entire second half of the ride we could see planes landing in Vienna- it just took a long  time to get there! 

After getting checked in we had the “glitch of the day.” My mini pad announced it was in SECURITY LOCKOUT, which meant I couldn’t get into it at all.  My tech support - aka Dave-reported this usually happens when someone  tries to get in using an incorrect password, and (drumroll) it requires a FACTORY RESET to fix it! Now I had no idea what a factory reset meant, but it sounded bad.  (Do you oldsters remember the days when we travelled without being so reliant on electronics? It was easier in some ways.)

In any event he did some research and found out it is a "feature" on  the newer iPads and since I purchased this mini pad just before this trip I have it. Yippee. We had no idea how it could have happened - I use the finger touch feature to enter my password. As there is usually a silver lining in any cloud we lucked into one here: we were on our way into Vienna where there was an Apple Store. Plus we would be parked there for a week with no particular agenda so we had time to deal with any lingering electronic issues. 

We revised our morning plans (which had included a stop in the hotel gym) to ride into Vienna early to hit the Apple Store and hope they could do their magic.   

We had a very nice meal in the hotel and went to bed early. The NH hotel - being right across from the airport -has active boarding gate information and there a lot of really interesting places you can go directly from Vienna! So much of the world to see.

 

Today's ride: 70 km (43 miles)
Total: 1,230 km (764 miles)

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