November 26, 2013
One Fine Day - Part One: Let it snow!
I crossed the Inn river into Austria at Braunau am Inn, which as a town has some rather unwanted fame as the birthplace of Adolf Hitler. It was also the same place where Hitler himself crossed the Inn and led the invasion of Austria in 1938, although it wasn't really much of an invasion given that he was welcomed by cheering crowds. There were no cheering crowds to welcome me though and as it was evening I quickly cycled out of town and set up camp on the Austrian side of the river.
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It was a cold night but my two sleeping bags kept me nice and warm. In the morning when I unzipped my tent I got a most pleasant surprise indeed. There was a soft white coating of snow on the ground! I was super happy about this as I really love snow. It makes everything so pretty and terribly adventurous too. I ran around merrily taking pictures of everything and then packed up my things to get going. An Austrian woman walking her dog came by just as I was getting the last of my bags on the bike. She asked me if I slept here and if it wasn't cold? I said "No, its beautiful!"
I was really in a good mood as I cycled on along empty white roads and bike paths. This was really a magical feeling. I have cycled in snow plenty of times before, most notably three years ago in Canada and New York, which I often think back on as being my favourite time bike touring. This is because I was in the early stages of a planned world tour, and the adverse weather made everything very adventurous and exciting and beautiful, and I also had a girl that winter who I was at stages cycling towards which was pretty good too. It was a really special time that winter, and now, on this morning in Austria, I had very much the same feelings. Here again was the cold air in my face, the white powdery surface, the twinkling of light on the snowy fields, the adventure, even the girl ahead of me. Everything was perfect - the past was behind me, ahead along the snowy road lay the future and the future had the potential to be perfect and I was so, so happy.
In my buoyant mood I was cheerily saying hello to everyone I saw (which admittedly wasn't so very many people.) But one guy stopped me and asked me just what in the hell I was doing. His name was Fritz and he was a tremendous good friendly guy. He was working on a house by the banks of the Inn river. He told me in summer there are hundreds of cyclists coming along, but not in winter, not in winter.
"There must be some in winter" I said,
"No, no, really none"
"Well, there is one!" I enthusiastically stated. Fritz smiled and shook his head as I cycled merrily on.
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The Inn river cycle route now took me north, which was a bit of a pain, but it was the most logical route to take this until the Inn merged with the mighty Danube, which I could follow east all the way to the Black Sea if I wanted to. Unfortunately the Danube rather rudely doesn't flow through Ukraine and Moldova, so in reality I probably won't follow it all the way to the Black Sea, but I could still follow it for a really long way and avoid the hills.
As I got further north on the Inn I left the snow behind and entered an area where it had apparantly not snowed at all the previous night. This was kind of annoying, because of the aforementioned delight at seeing snow, and there were also some rather ominously dark clouds overhead. It really looked like it was going to start raining, which would have seriously killed the mood. But then, like magic, it started instead to snow! Soft white flakes of heaven. I put on my music at full volume and cycled like a maniac into the snow and it was so, so, so wonderful. Really I was almost euphoric at this stage, it was absolutely the most fantastic moment of this trip so far.
And then, rather rudely, Germany got in the way. That is to say, at the apex of Inn and Danube the town of Passau, a German town, overflows onto the Austrian banks and claims a little piece of what geographically should surely be Austrian. If I wanted to keep following the rivers, I was going to have to dip back into that boring country, that I really thought I had left behind, one more time. This was something I didn't really want to do as Austria had replaced it with, as I think I mentioned, euphoric snowy wonderfulness. Still, going back to Germany was the only logical course of action...
Today's ride: 66 km (41 miles)
Total: 9,897 km (6,146 miles)
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