europeblog

Now here is something special. After emerging from the internet cafe, I thought I would go out and finish off sight-seeing Vienna. I was just taking some really bad pictures of a historic and artistic looking dome when I heard a really loud noise and trucks going past about 300m away. I had to investigate.

Coming closer, I saw it was a procession of punks and others and about a dozen floats with various types of music and noise coming out at a f/loud volume. So of course I found a beer and joined in.

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Last day in Vienna, at a rather expensive net cafe, because I forget where the cheaper one was, and was sick of the underage WoW addicts in the other cheap one.

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Slightly cloudy morning, first thing was to go to tourist information and get the right map. Rather unmemorable cycling to meet up with the EV-9 route. Lots of rolling hills through the country side and I was feeling a little bit hot. Walked the bike up a not particularly steep hill which was pretty pathetic.

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A roundabout day.

First around the lake and through the forest, past a run-down estate with huge palace, a big gothic St. Hubert statue in a clearing. (put photos here)

Went to the Austrian-Czech border at Valtice, with an awesome Kolonade on top of the hill. Didn’t realize that the other side of Kolonade was Österreich, and so accidentally entered the Prussian empire. Returned and took a rather bad road along the border until Hevlin. Not an interesting town except there was a potraviny there so I could burn my last crowns on lunch.

Then through to the Austrian town of Laa an der Thaya. First mission was to find the campsite. Of course on any map the tent picture means nothing — there was no campsite here. Went into the Rathaus for some maps. It took me a while to find the right room, the rathaus being a bit of a rabbit hole.

Received a quite good map of the area to the east of where I wanted to be. Nonetheless got a large-scale cycle route map with information that there is camping in Poysdorf, and headed there. The cycling signs in Austria are very good. It was no problem getting there, apart from the warm weather, the somewhat uninteresting farm land, and running out of water.

Followed a route called the Veltliner. I have no idea what that means but it goes around a hilly region, takes you up the side a bit so you can get a little view and see some grape vines, then drops you back down into Poysdorf.

I was the only one in a tent at the camping, until a Polish couple arrived on their bikes, Lukasz and Ola. They had caught the train from Katowice at 3AM to Brno and then cycled from there. Nice guys. Though weary, they offered to share their soup and still had time for a chat.

Dep 9:30, arr 5:00, dst 97.5km