Mile Zero: South of Mistelbach, Austria, about 25 miles from the Czech Border

Well, I hit another Mile Zero milestone on June 10, on a nice little stretch of road south of the Austrian town of Mistelbach

Over the course of the trip, I've now gone about 1100 miles total, which is completely unbelievable to me.  If you were to poll all of my friends and family for list of Ben-descriptions, I highly doubt that "Naturally-gifted athlete" or "Endurance Bicyclist" would ever be uttered.  So it's shock to me that I've managed to come this far all by bike.

I found it interesting that these last two Mile Zeros were on the far opposite ends of Austria.  The last one was at the very tip of the westernmost edge of Austria, and this one is close to the most Northeastern spot on the map.  In Austria, of all places...

(and in case you missed the previous explanation, a Mile Zero is when I hit a multiple of 1000 miles on my odometer)

June 10, 2010 - Vienna, Austria to Valtice, Czech Republic

Estimated Mileage: 70 miles
Trip Route Link
Photo Album Link

Getting out of Vienna was much more difficult than I had imagined. I spent the morning, from about 8:30 to noon just manoeuvering my way through the inner city, then the suburbs, then the suburbs of the suburbs, then the exurbs till I was finally at a place where every single intersection didn't offer ten differing paths. However, while on my way out of the city, I happened upon this:

The Ferris Wheel from The Third Man! How exciting. Man, I love that movie.

It took forever to escape the city. For some reason it really got to me, and I was thoroughly perturbed by how I spent 3.5 hours going about 15 miles, completely blowing my entire day's schedule. Once out of Vienna, the landscape turned predictably beautiful. The day was spent winding my way through one of Austria's major agricultural centers, the Weinvertel. Tons of vineyards on top of many strawberries, grain, potato and pea fields. But it was also unrelentingly hot.

It is strawberry season around this area, so I stopped and asked a lady if I could have 10 strawberries.  She said "10 kilos?"  I said no, 10 strawberries.  She looked perplexed, since there was a field of hundreds of thousands of berries and here was this sweaty, foreign man who wanted just 10 of them.  But then she saw the bike and saw that I just wanted a snack, so she just gave them to me, and then grilled me about where I'd been and where I'm from in the States.  Here's a photo I call "Still Life with Bicycle and Strawberries":

There were some other interesting things that day: I hit another Mile Zero milestone

I passed through a town that hangs all of it's extra socks on the edge of town

But it wasn't all fun and games.  As is my wont, I was completely unprepared, moisture-wise. It gets harder to find places to top off your water bottles the more sparsely populated the area. By the end of the day, I saw myself as Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, flinging himself down sand dunes before slowly ascending the next one. The hills were endless and there was very little in the way of shade.

70 miles on a bunch of fairly hard riding and I managed to do it, albeit with some griping and moaning. I begain talking to constructs of Political Geography as if they were capable of listening: "God damn you Austria, are you making it difficult because you don't want me to leave?", "Holy Crap, Czech Republic, where are you already?!?!?!". Well, despite the difficulties and the thirst, I made it to the town of Valtice, just inside the Czech Republic.

What was odd was that immediately upon entering the new country, things definitely changed. People smiled back at me. I got a few waves. The lady at the guesthouse actually seemed happy to see me. This is in marked contrast to everywhere I went in Austria and Switzerland (and to a lesser extent, Germany) where everybody in the tourist industry acts like they're performing judge-mandated community service. Come to think of it, the tourists also look like they're performing community service as well. Very few people seemed truly joyful.

Anyway, I was thrilled to make it to another country, albeit exhausted, sweaty and a little on the ripe side.

A Tip for Those Who Find Themselves A Bit Tired on a Long Bike Ride

If you stick out your hand and touch all of the tips of the grasses, just pretend that all them are giving you a high-fives. It'll make you feel like a million dollars.

June 7-June 9, 2010 - Vienna

My thoughts on Vienna are a bit unformed at the moment.  It was an incredible city, and I saw some incredible things.  But I was so relieved to get out of it, that I think I'm a little down on it.

On top of that, a lot of the stuff that I've read over the last year or so about Austria, the Habsburgs, the Holy Roman Empire, all the wars etc...is insanely negative.  How can I look at priceless Italian Renaissance painting at the Kunsthistorisches Museum and not be reminded of the fact that the Habsburgs were fervent Counter-Reformationists and the masterpieces of religious pastiche were all in services to their religious insanity.

All of the various Franz Joseph statues, squares and monuments were impressive, but just brought to mind that this man, as dilligent and hard-working as he was, had no small part in bringing about the catastrophe of WWI, and presided over the dying embers of an enormous empire.  He was a zealot for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, even as it was obvious it was on it's way out.  The whole center of town has the feeling of an enormous mausoleum for an Empire.

That being said, the Egon Schiele exhibit, and the rest of the Leopold collection was mind-blowing.  The art at the Kunsthistoriches museum was the best I've seen since I went to the Prado at 16.  In particular, there's a room of some of the best Brueghel paintings there are.

Anyway, like I said all of these thoughts are half-formed.  It was an intense 3 days.  I had a very difficult time just getting out of the city on my bike and on to the Euro-Velo 9 trail which took me to the Czech Republic.  It tacked an additional 20 miles onto my already difficult ride, and made me fall short of my goal of camping at the Free Star tonight.

So, to sum up: Vienna = intense, amazing, but insanely difficult to leave on a bicycle.

Some Notes on Things That Have Gone Wrong

So far, this trip had been mostly problem-free.  But I don't want you to think that it's not without it's challenges.  Here are some of the standout issues I faced, and how I bravely tackled them with grit and determination.

1) The Time When I Bought the Forearm-sized hunk of Off-brand Sausage - I went to a supermarket in Tuttlingen that specialized in selling their store brand next to the brand name competitor.  The store brand was called "Ja!", and they sold "Ja!" everything: shampoo, chocolate bars, rice crackers.  Me, being a cost-conscious bicycle tourist, bought the 1 Euro slab of sausage, figuring it's pretty much the same stuff, right?  Three days later, I threw the last 2/3rds of it away after the toxic aftertaste became too much.  My bicycle seat thanked me, too.

2) The Time When I Rode Through Mud for Three Days and Then Didn't Do Basic Maintenance -  It was about 3 days of rain with about a half of it on dirt roads.  Mud and clay sprayed up onto my rims, gears, brakes: it got everywhere.  On the fourth day, the higher gears started skipping, making it impossible to do any kind of climbing.  I put the Chump Steamroller in the humiliating "Emergency Road-side Repair" position, cleaned the bikes, lubed up all of the joints on the derailleur, the cable housings and the chain, and gave the rear gear cable about a 1-2 mm tightening.  Problem solved, though I probably wouldn't have had to do anything if I had just given the bike a wipe-down at the end of each day.

3) The Time When I Watched the Reality Show About the German Bodybuilder - I will never have that hour back.  And I didn't even understand a word of it.

4) The Time When I Opened My Mouth And a Swarm of Gnats Flew In - At least I got my protein for that day

5) The Time When I Thought I Didn't Need Sunscreen - I got actual blisters on my forearms from the sun!  I'd never seen that before!

6) The Time When I Thought that European Coffee Didn't Need Cream and Sugar - It does.  And shame on me for ever thinking different.

7) The Time When I Was Faced With a Choice Between a Regular Schnitzel and the House Special Extra Large Schnitzel - God help me, I got the extra large schnitzel.

That's about it for things that have gone wrong.  Hopefully future travellers will learn from my mistakes and avoid these pitfalls.

June 7, 2010 - Traismauer to Vienna

Estimate Mileage: 50 miles
Trip Route Link
Photo Album Link

The biking and the scenery were fairly uneventful on this day: most of my headspace was taking up with the logistics and worries of biking into a very large city.

The road in was chock full of some actually quite interesting grafitti art.  For example:

One thing I was unprepared for on this trip is the feeling of disorientation that I get when I find myself in a city with my fully-loaded touring bike.  One minute I'm alone in your head, in the middle of nowhere, singing "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah" to myself over and over again ("...boys becoming men, men becoming wolves..."), and suddenly I'm faced with maneuvering the streets of the one of the biggest cities in Europe.

I've got no place to go, no map, no idea of how safe the neighborhood is and am a bit hungry to boot (thought that's a given).  My first reaction was slight panic, but I calmed down and just did what I've done in a bunch of other cities on this trip (though in much smaller places).  First thing, I go to the first hotel I see, and ask how much for a room.  I never take it, no matter the price, and ask where the tourist office is.  They gave me a nice street map to the tourist information office and sent me on my way.  So now I've got a few things that I didn't have a moment ago: a map, some directions, a rough sense of how much I'm going to be paying that night and a little bit of human contact to assure me that folks in Vienna are pretty much the same as anywhere else.  That calms me down, and now I can go about the business of getting settled without all of the anxiety that goes along with it.

At the tourist office, I give my best impression of a dumb, sweaty and exhausted bicycle tourist who really needs a place to stay (I'm a Method actor) and give my tourist agent a rough budget.  I get a place at this hotel (short review: cheap, clean but every employee there was a total asshole.  Up yours too, Hotel Attache employees!!!!) for 55 EUR a night, just a 20 minute walk from the center of town.  Not bad!

There's a grocery store across the street which just happened to be selling baguettes fresh out of the oven.  I get a jar of pickles to go along with it, and 2 hours after first pulling into Vienna, a bundle of nerves, I'm settled with fresh bread, cold pickles and unlimited Internet in my room.  Looks like things worked out just fine...

June 6, 2010 - Melk to Traismauer

Estimated Mileage - 40 miles
Trip Route Link
Photo Album Link

So, I've been riding a river trail for many days now, with very minimal hills.  I did the major climb up and over the Black Forest, and then a very small amount of climbs after that.  So, I decided to give myself a bit of a challenge and climb to the Aggsdorf Ruin, first thing in the morning.  Here's a ground level shot, looking up at where I'm heading:

This is a 300 meter ascent in 2 kilometers, with stretches of it at 20% grade.  A very difficult climb indeed.  But I Did It.  And holy crap was it worth it.  Check it out:

This was a castle built originally in the 1200's, destroyed by the Turks, then rebuilt a number of times.  Each time, it's ostensible purpose was extortion and control of the river trade, whether under the auspices of the ruling government, or under the auspices of simple pirates.  There's even a starvation pit where the pirates used to put the crews of the river barges if they didn't pay up.

The descent was also difficult.  My brakes started to smell and I had to hose them off with my water bottles to keep them cool.  It actually made the water steam!!!

The rest of the day was spent meandering through the Wachau wine region, going from town to town, from wine tasting to wine tasting, and appreciating the ancient terraces where they've been growing wine on the south-sun facing slopes for centuries:

The day ended at a Austrian guest house on the banks of a feeder canal to the Danube.  The sun was shining, the cottonwoods continued to drop their goods, the hotel proprieter slept red-faced in a deck chair for 3 hours while I stared out at the river and ate an abnormally large mutant schnitzel.  Eventually I fell into conversation with a Polish farm worker who rented the apartment across the hall from my room.  He sketched me a nice custom map of the north Polish coast (where he's from).  We chatted in our broken English/Polish/German and ended up exchanging email addresses.  His roommate, a Bulgarian, steered clear of our conversation, and the hotel owner clearly wasn't a huge fan of her Eastern European tenants mingling with the hotel guests.