Went soft, succumbed to the weather, chose luxury instead of nature. Viewed the longest castle in the universe.
It was a drizzly, cloudy morning, so I was pretty slow to leave camping. Wanting more liquidity than about €2.43, I went to a net cafe to refill my money card, and check if anyone had posted comments on the blog (no they hadn’t… why do I bother?). Then to the Spar for some food and to the bike shop for some degreaser. The dude at the bikeshop didn’t have a can of degreaser, and suggested it might be easier to put on a new chain than to clean off the filthy muck. Of course that might also mean new gear wheels if the old ones have worn a lot.
So my strategy is to wait until the chain starts slipping too much, or for it to break. Then new chain and gears. Unfortunately I threw away the instruction book for my multitool so I hope I can work out the chain link remover in the hour of crisis… otherwise there might be some walking. In the meantime I will source some degrease spray and try to clean it because it’s disgusting.
Just after 12:00 I was taking my bike down the stairs in the town wall, onto the cycleway. There were some quite nice roads through forest today. Stopped at a lookout over the convergence of the Inns and Salzach rivers, and then it started raining. Went down into the nice town of Ãœberackern, and then back up to the main road again. It started raining and I stood under the eaves of a barn while families of white ducks waddled past.
Took a very steep descent into Burghausen. I have to say the signs were quite stupid here. They took a very steep footpath down to the river, when there was a road with switchbacks next to it. The less steep road was much safer. The conditions were quite slippery. I would have taken the road if I had have known where it was going.
Admired the castle in Berghausen for a little while and then headed up the hill which goes behind it. The castle is about 1km long and supposedly the longest in Europe. After losing the radweg signs (because I was in Germany and the route was in Austria), I made up my own way. This was going OK until it started pouring with rain. So I stood under the eaves on the side of a garage and ate a cheese sandwich waiting for it to stop. This was OK until the owner showed up. She offered me a cup of tea and so I accepted on the 2nd “are you sure?” The house was only 4 years old and pretty bloody nice inside. It had a huge view over Berghausen and the castle, and the church in this particular village.
The rain didn’t stop so I resolved to go back to Berghausen, stay in the hostel, and visit the castle. The hostel was just one of those boring HI youth hostels, however it was full of little school children away on some song singing camp, and they were barely tolerable. My room mate Johannes was Austrian, in Berghausen for work. We decided to check the castle, then have a beer at a biergaarten somewhere.
So this was done, but we had our 1L glass (eine maas I think it’s called) inside because the soft waitress said they would they won’t go out into the garden because their costumes have short sleeves and it’s too cold. After that we got some more beers, I got a schnitzel burger, and we headed back to the hostel and watched episodes of Family Guy on his laptop. Good time, Johannes is a cool dude.
<li><a href="http://rodney.id.au/v/tour2008/07/14/">View all images for today</a></li>Dep 12:00, arr 4:00, dst 39km.
