October 3, 2022
Wesenufer to Linz (by bike) and then to Munich (by train) (Oct. 3, 2022)
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Happily and for the first three quarters of the day, the cycling gods smiled on us. We deserved some positive developments.
We got away before 9 am and it had stopped raining. It wasn’t exactly sunny or warm, but rainfree was a great improvement. We made good time on the Danube with a continuing tailwind and pulled into Linz at noon. The upshot of all this extra riding is that we wound up riding the Danube Trail all the way between Vienna and Passau. The river and trail meandered and we went into and out of beautiful forests which were just starting to show their fall colors. Dave remarked that he thought this to be the prettiest section of the Danube we had seen so far. The ride into Linz was entirely on a cycleway and it was a pleasure to arrive in a big city and not be stressed about traffic, etc. Linz was lovely with a charming old town although it has a more modern look than Passau. We found the bahnhof, with some help from a friendly stranger, and went into get our tickets printed out. I can’t tell you how relieved we were when, after printing them out, we learned our seat reservations AND our bike reservations were on the 5:46 pm train! Relief.
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To celebrate, we went and did laundry at the Green and Clean 2k down the road! Doing this would eliminate one further task we needed to do in Munich. It was the easiest laundry trip we have had in 2 months. Dave didn’t even need a helpful fraulein to walk us through the process because there were instructions in writing, in English! While the load was doing its thing, we rode a block away and had deer consommé and a Styrian fried chicken salad at an amazingly good Austrian restaurant.
Afterwards we rode into the center of town and did a shopping trip at Intersport. We were both tired of our clothes and had in mind making a purchase or two for our upcoming trip to Italy - on the train — to look stylish for our visit with our friends! We had a fun half hour and then proceeded to the Linz train station to deal with a train trip with the ebikes.
The Linz train station has working lifts for every track. That part was super easy. What was not so easy was that the train, when it arrived, was the type with 3 steep steps up, and just to make things worse, the bikes spaces were the kind where you have to lift the front wheel up and attach it to a hook. We have now learned from this experience that: (1) it takes two of us to lift each bike onto the train; (2) it takes two of us to lift the front wheel up to attach it to the hook; (3) we are capable of doing it but it strains our backs and necks in a way that we are still feeling it two days later; (4) we are going to have to minimize train rides with our bikes because it is only marginally feasible. Dave also thought that he should have removed the batteries before boarding and deflated the front tires since the hooks have proper clearance only for skinny tires. The hardest part of loading the bikes was getting the front tires hooked. A little extra front tire clearance would have greatly eased the problem.
It didn’t help that the train was late arriving into Linz, so the conductor was anxious to pull away. Somebody on the track lifted my last pannier up for me as the train lurched forward. All our gear and bikes were still sitting in the vestibule as the train started moving and then the conductor wanted us to pull out our tickets and seat reservations right then, and of course Dave couldn’t find our ticket on the phone (apparently the lady at the ticket office only printed out our seat reservations, not the ticket). We then had one of those excruciating conversations standing in the aisle with all our stuff around us, the other passengers smirking at our haplessness, while the conductor in a very irritated way, grabbed Dave’s phone to locate the ticket himself. We eventually did get our bikes and gear stowed and then spent 3 hours worrying about how we were going to unload at the other end!
We caught a break because Munich was the last stop. We waited until everyone else detrained and then worked on unhooking the bikes, which was almost as hard as the original hooking. (We took the batteries out to make it lighter and that did help). It took us a few minutes to load up for a 5 k ride to our Ibis hotel in the south part of Munich. In keeping with two days of challenges, Dave realized that in the bike loading/unloading his front wheel got misaligned with the disc brake making it impossible to ride. We needed to get out of the throngs of people at the Munich station so we limped outside and crossed the street to some lights next to a hotel.
And of course it was the end of Octoberfest in Munich and it was 9:30 at night. There were gobs of people all around and they were all drunk. We had to move several times to get out of the way of people and Dave had to unload and turn the bike upside down to inspect while I held the phone flashlight to give him light. Oh, and did I mention it was cold? He fiddled with the alignment for about 15 minutes and finally decided/hoped he made enough of an adjustment to get to the hotel. (We were planning to take the bikes in for service the next day so a temporary fix was all we needed.). We at last got on the road which involved picking our way through all these drunk people on the rare street in Munich without a cycleway. At one point my phone flew off and two guys grabbed it gallantly to hand it back. They were Americans and when they realized I was too they wanted to chat me up. At that point I was on the limit as they say, stressed, cold, and exhausted, and I just started laughing hysterically and rode away.
Dave’s phone was acting up so I was doing the navigation, working off a Komoot route I had loaded previously. About 1k into the ride he queried whether we were going in the right direction and when I double-checked the route (in a super irritated way, I have to admit) it turned out I had loaded the wrong route and we were on our way back to Bad Aibling, rather than the Ibis Munich City South! We hence resorted to google maps and then rode over some cobbles which caused Dave’s front wheel fix to fail, so we had to stop again while he readjusted things. It was constantly squeaking and he rode the whole way to the Ibis with the bike protesting like crazy. At one point google sent us into a barricaded construction zone. We were laughing at our plight and he just moved the barricade out of the way.
We arrived at the Ibis and felt great relief when they had our reservation and, to Dave’s relief, the bar was open. Apparently it's a thing with Ibis hotels that their bars are open 24 hours a day. It was a happening Ibis. (Because it was Octoberfest I could not get a reservation at our usual Novotel, and the Ibis, which is usually about 70 euros a night, was 250 euros. But, even though I booked 4 months ago, we were still lucky to find any hotel in Munich.)
We had arrived after two trying days. Thank goodness.
Today's ride: 65 km (40 miles)
Total: 1,787 km (1,110 miles)
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