ALICE'S HERITAGE TOUR - THE CZECH REPUBLIC (Sept 17-23)

Another rainy day started off this portion of our trip. We took a train from Wels to Vyssi Brod, right on the Austrian-Czech border. We left our comfortable Austria train and transferred to a Czech train that was to take us to Cesky Budejovice, a UNESCO heritage site. The train ride was the beginning of our understanding that the Czech Republic was very different from any other country we had visited so far. The train was a relic of the 60s, dirty, slow, and very little room for us or our bikes.

We arrived in Cesky Budejovice (also known as Budweis - home of the ORIGINAL Budweiser beer) in pouring rain. The train, rain, and the dismal state of the train station reminded Peter of his 'impression' of a communist state. However, hopefully we made our way into town and enjoyed a nice local hotel and a wander around the main square. The next thing we noticed was how shockingly inexpensive things cost were. If Switzerland cost 30-50% more than the other countries in the are, the Czech Republic cost 30-50% less than anywhere else.

Cesky Budejovice

The next day, with better weather, we started out equipped with our Czech bicycle route maps, towards Pilsen, where we were to meet up with relatives of Alice.

Evidence of the all the rain in the past few days...

We had a couple of days of good riding, except for yet another of Peter's tire going flat. This event had riding riding back to the largest village in the area to attempt to find a better pump, with some success. Though the rides were good, sometimes on the road and occasionally on a bike path, it was impossible not to notice that the charm of the small villages and rural areas we had seen in the other countries in which we rode, was not present here. Eroded infrastructure, crumbling buildings, and dusty people seemed to abound. It was an extreme contrast to the rest of our Europe experience. It was also noticeable that there did not seem to be gasthauses (or a Czech equivalent) along the routes we were taking. Thanks goodness Alice speaks Czech as it was also clear that no one spoke a word of English, French, or even much German. Peter was quiet, maybe for the first time ever...

Also, we felt like we had to make bigger cities a final destination of each day so as to ensure that we had a place to sleep. Luckily we came upon a great inn in Strackonice, Hotel Splavek, which seemed to us like an oasis in an otherwise gray, dreary city.

The one nice building in Strakonice

The riding terrain in this part of the Czech republic was quite nice, replete with many bigger rolling hills, decent roads, and accommodating drivers. Nice!

Pilsen was a stop we were both looking forward to (not just for the beer!), but to meet and hang out with Alice's grandmother, aunt and cousin. We opted to stay at the Hotel Slovan, once a grand hotel where Alice's mother took dance lessons and had her high school prom. In its heyday the Slovan must have been magnificent. Now despite the faded gold leaf paint, worn wooden banisters, threadbare carpets, and high-ceiling large rooms, the Slovan was a fine and historic place to stay.

Spending time with Alice's extended family was a great experience for many reasons, including the fact that Alice had not been there herself for 7 years, and Peter had a chance to meet them.We hung out at Alice's grandmother's house; went to the pub with Aunt Jitka and Cousin Oldrich. They were lovely hosts and made our stay enjoyable. Spending time with Alice's grandmother was of particular interest to Peter. Though he could not understand what they were saying, it was clear Alice's grandmother really wanted Alice to know her and her life, showing pictures, artifacts, and things around the house, from her everyday routine to the historical and familial. She talked and talked and talked, admitted to talking and talking and talking. It seemed like she was trying to fit in a lifetime of relationship in 2 days. Lovely but a bit sad as well.

Thankfully, Jitka and Oldri spoke English beautifully, thus including Peter in the conversations that took place. Oldri's intense interest in military planes was obvious, and Jitka's love and support of Oldri was equally so. Great tour guides, Jitka joined us for a tour of the Pilsener Urquell brewery and later, took us on a car tour of the entire city, allowing us to see the local 'make-out point', where we took in a great vista of the city (and got to smell the local pot variety). We also visited Oldri's school, where he is completing his PhD in electrical engineering. Another academic in the family...

With mixed feelings (sad to leave the family but eager to get to Prague) we left Pilsen and took the train to the capital. We based ourselves in a great hotel/micro-brewery (is it all beer here in the Czech Republic?!) right in the heart of the Old Town area. Prague proved to be another glorious urban stop - Alice had been there many times before but for Peter this was his first experience.

Prague is as beautiful as ever, and despite the hoards of tourists, the gothic architecture and ornate buildings are overwhelmingly beautiful. Each has its own facade, gargoyle, fresco, or highlight that keeps one "looking up" while strolling the narrow, winding streets. Peter noted that more than anywhere else we had been that the statues and imagery were rather brutal, showing suffering and torture, as well as an interesting connection between the once large Jewish community and the clear orientation towards Christianity.

Of course, we had to take in an evening at Old Town Square - Alice's favorite restaurant being Staromesta Restaurace where we dined outside on roasted duck and goulash as the sun set. Followed by sipping Becherovca (a national digestif) while taking in a jazz band in a medieval, subterranean (seriously from the 1400s) jazz bar. During another evening, Alice took in a modern dance production at Magicka Lanterna, which proved less than impressive unfortunately, while Peter came in 7th at a poker tournament at a local casino. Peter has decided that this is where he will launch his poker career as the tournaments are so inexpensive relative to other countries with a decent pay-out... he may be back! During daylight hours, we managed to cover key areas of Prague Castle, the Jewish Quarter, and Charles Bridge, largely through wandering aimlessly about, which is so lovely to do in this city.

Leaving Prague by bicycle proved easy given the clearly marked bike paths along the Vltava River. Sadly, about 40km south of Prague the bike path simply ended and we were left confused and literally in the middle of nowhere (e.g. no bus, no train, few routes to choose from). It took us two hours trying desperately to cross the river to get to a main road; we were unsuccessful and gave up. So we rode to the nearest train station (which meant doubling-back, something we immensely dislike) and returning to our favorite Czech gasthaus, the Splavek in Strakonice where we re-grouped after bickering and arguing with one another out of pure frustration with our abandoned cycling day.

Tired of trying to "find our way along bike paths" we decided to take a train the next day to the Czech/German boarder so that we could hook up with the Danube route on the final leg of our adventure. We took a train to Lenora, in the middle of the Sumava Mountains in Southern Bohemia and started to ride towards Germany. We had a lovely day including a lunch stop at a clean, pleasant rest-stop and biking through beautiful vistas of this region. We both noted that it was actually a really nice way to leave the Czech Republic - picturesque landscapes, good roads, and a nice rest stop. We ended up finding ourselves another lovely gasthaus in the little town of Aicha vom Wald, about 10 kms from the Danube route, which will be the final route that leads back to Freiburg, the end of our bike trip.

We have decided not to grade this portion of the trip, as the contrasts were to great to average out. Visiting and making/renewing links with family; lovely cities like Pilsen and Prague; villages of rubble and dust; antiquated trains and little infrastructure for biking and rural tourism - all these left us with mixed feelings about the Czech Republic...and some wondering about what Alice's life might have been like had her parents not emigrated to Canada...

INNSBRUCK TO SALZBURG, AUSTRIA (Sept 12-16)

Leaving Innsbruck we began our journey to Salzburg by first abandoning the official bike route along the Inns River given its tendency to get swallowed up by construction or to disappear completely. Instead we opted to take some lovely country roads north of the river (and the major highway). We lucked into a local cycling race day in the town of Schwaz and took in the action, as you can see in the photos below.

This segment of our journey we will remember as marked by stays at en-route, rural-ish gasthaus accommodations in places like Munster and Rosenheim - the ones along the side of country roads, loaded with flower pots on the balconies and windows, and equipped with restaurants of good ol' home cooking. It will also mark the start of Peter's-flat-tires, the first of which occurred approximately 3km outside of Worgl. We pulled into a sheep farmer's laneway, just in time to see him sheer his first sheep of the afternoon. Aside from this entertainment, we did our best to change the tire (which went well) and then struggled to pump it up with the f*&@-ing little pumps we had brought along. They do NOT work - we pumped and pumped and then pumped some more. Then we abandoned the activity and Peter chose to run the bike (Alice rode hers really slowly) into Worgl where quickly we came upon a cycle shop. Problem solved and we rode on to Rosenheim (and another quaint gasthaus).

A highlight of this segment, and indeed our european travels in general, was our two day stint in Salzburg. What a beautiful city! Alice was thrilled to take in a four hour (yes, a four hour) Sound of Music tour while Peter wandered the city; we also took in a local beer hall (one of the largest in the country apparently) at St. Augustine's Church (in the basement) where we indulged in huge steins of beer and delicious tapas-like goodies.

And who could resist the traditional marionette staging of the Sound of Music - it was hokey yet a sight to see and Alice now has her fill of the SoM soundtrack for many years to come. Yes the hills are alive!

Peter managed to fit in one last climb up Gaisberg, one of the highest peaks around the city - a one kilometre climb over nine kilometres of distance, including a super steep 20% grade finale to the very tip top.

Alice opted to take in the Modern Art Gallery and buy herself a new outfit (three months of the same garb is starting to get to us). Amazing how bright and shiny new one feels with a new pair of pants :)

Salzburg easily entered into our top five cities of our trip and we highly recommend it!

And as a final note to this blog, we have been taken aback by the number of retail stores selling (for real) traditional costumes of leiderhosen for men and drindls for women, as well as the number of Austrians wearing them on a daily basis. People are very traditional, nationalistic in their dress - it is very surprising to see. We cannot imagine what would be a similar fashion in Canada?!

Innsbruck to Salzburg grading:

• weather - B (chilly mornings but sunny afternoons - solid cycling weather)
• landscape - B+ (Salzburg pushes up this grade definitely but Innsbruck and rides in the area were picturesque)
• cycling challenge - moderate
• physical and emotional response - C (we were definitely meandering, cycling fatique, landscape let-down after the alps and focuses was starting to turn towards Czech rather than our original cycling intensity)
• food - B+ (still enjoying home comfort foods from gasthauses)
• accommodations - B+ (loving our accommodation in the gasthaus settings and city settings were nice)
• other people - n/a (we met absolutely no one - seriously just the two of us - is there anybody out there?!)
• entertainment - A (great - Sound of Music overload, Salzburg cultural sites, birthday party celebration in Munster complete with local musical sensation on keyboard playing traditional Austrian sing-a-long songs and telling bad jokes

Overall Grade: A (this grade reflects our love of Salzburg and our cozy stays in gasthauses, especially in Munster where we felt completely at home)

The Alps Part 2 (Sept 5-11)

Sleepy towns, rainy days and missed climbs, but it is still the Alps.

We decided to try to extend our stay in the Alps because the first part was so good (see previous blog). We had a choice to meander around the Innsbruck region or to head straight east through the Alps towards Slovenia. We decided to head towards Innsbruck with stops in Kitzbuhel and Garmisch, two skiing meccas, along the way. Although we had a great time biking through the valleys and along lovely rivers, we found ourselves wearing down a bit, for a few reasons:

1) We both were getting antsy about staying in small villages with nothing to do and being in bed watching the US Open by about 9:30 every night;

2) One of the big climbs we anticipated, from Matrei to Kitzbuhel, became nothing more than a bus ride when we were told that the secondary road was closed due to rockslide and the main highway was too narrow for our comfort, requiring us to take a bus the 60 kms over the pass we had wanted to climb;

3) For the first time, rain interrupted our plans three times. We lost one day to a downpour in Brixen, another ride on the day we were to go from Garmisch to Innsbruck (it rained instead), and finally we had intended to leave our bags behind and try to climb, on our bikes, a ski hill in Innsbruck. Unfortunately the path was hard-packed earth and it rained the entire night before, leaving nothing but mud puddles that our bikes could not have maneuvered.

We did have some lovely rides, specifically out of Kitzbuhel on the way to Ubersee.

Kitzbuhel itself was a highlight. We were there on a lovely day and got to take a cable car to the top of the horn and had some great views. We spent a few hours with a group of British ex-pats, making their living mountain biking and skiing. The city itself was lovely, and it was a great stop.

By the time we got to Innsbruck, on a rainy afternoon, it was clear that travel fatigue had set in and perhaps an afternoon apart would not be a bad thing for both of us. Alice spent the afternoon unsuccessfully trying to buy a new outfit and Peter wandered, preparing to lose that evening at poker at the local casino. A great dinner and accommodations helped a bit, but the rain overnight negated any benefit, given our excitement about trying to climb one of the local ski hills.

All in all, this part has been underwhelming, though the weather has played a significant role, as has general travel fatigue (it has been 2.5 months after all) and a lack of the climbing we were hoping to try one more time before leaving this fantastic region.

The Alps Part 2 grading:

• weather -C- (rain, the threat of rain, and a bit chilly)
• landscape - B (fantastic, but it somehow felt further away than in the previous section)
• cycling challenge - easy to moderate (a disappointment as werer looking for a few more climbs
• physical and emotional response (B-) ( we were a bit lackluster, and wondering where the next adventure and challenge lay for us. Not here, we think...)
• food - A (Austrian restaurant fare feels like home comfort food; especially warming as the weather cools)
• accommodations - A (Gathaus settings, smaller hotels, good breakfsts and good sevice)
• other people - B (We met Uwe, a fellow cyclist, several times in one day as we leap frogged eachother on a similar route. And the British ex-pats in Kitzbuhel were a pleasure and very helpful. We also met a woman from Hong Kong, a British couple and a young man from Fort Lauderdale, all on the train from Garmisch. Nice to speak English with others who speak English)
• entertainment - C The cable car ride up Kitzbuhel Horn was lovely as was the view. The only other form of entertainment, besides watching the US Open, were the memories of us bickering a few times, leading to our 'day off' in Innsbruck)

Overall Grade: C+ (maybe meandering in order to extend our stay in the Alps without a plan of what to do or where to go was not the best route to take, so to speak...)

The Alps (Aug 30-Sept 4)

Peter's fav picture - Bernina Pass

We left Bodensee with the intention of conquering the Alps. We bought ourselves a 'trans alps' bicycling touring book (in German, unfortunately), and picked a route meant for beginners that led from Bodensee through Switzerland to Lake Como, Italy. The book, for each route it offered, had a variety of difficulty levels, ranging from beginner to 'go wild'. As the pictures in the book were all of road bikes, with no paniers, we decided that the beginner routes would be sufficient.

So off we headed, slowly climbing, then more and more and more. And steeper and steeper. We noted that although there were a lot of cyclists, we were the only ones with bags, and Alice was the only female cyclist we saw. The day was supposed to have been (according to the book) a gentle slow rise, kind of a warm-up day... Well, after Alice stopped crying, halfway up the steepest part of the mountain (we later learned it was about a 15% grade), we decided to take another look at the book. At this point, we realised that we had followed the wrong route and were solidly into intermediate territory. We became even more concerned when we realised that there had been NO mention of this one climb that was killing us in the book at all, implying harder climbs to come. So we turned around and went downhill retracing some of our route and intersecting with the beginner route some 40 kilometers back...

Alice cried...

The end of the ride into our final destination for the night (some 90 kilometers from our start) was down into a town called Altstatten. The town was fine but mostly it was a relief to get there. as the ride down was one of the hairiest and intense downhills yet. Steep grade (-10%), sharp hairpin turns, barely any shoulder, and Ferrarris and sport motorcycles doing what they were made to do (race!). It went on for 10 kilometers, and caused Peter's fingers to actually cramp from squeezing on the brakes so hard for so long. It was WILD!

View to Altstatten

The second try, the next day, had us going through a valley until a big climb. But after the previous days' excitement, we decided that the ride would be too boring and took a train to the base of the first climb, which we considered to be a tester of a beginner ride through the alps.

We started from Chur and Alice soon noted that her tire felt low and perhaps mine looked low as well. We passed a tire pump and stopped to fill it up. Well, two tubes and three hours later, after visiting a bike store to finally get it right, we decided that our day of riding was done. Instead of wasting another day, we decided to take the train up the first climb and start from there the next day.

The ride to St Moritz was lovely, and gave us a sense of the elevation, the scale of the Alps and how much colder it was at 2000 meters than at sea level. St Moritz was odd. The contrast of Chanel-type shops along the street and non-descript 'budget' hotels in the lower part of the town. An undeveloped lake front and lack of central/historic/restaurant/walking areas left us a bit bewildered. So did the price of the train ride and hotel. Switzerland is waaaay expensive! On the train ride up, we looked through the cycle tour book again and decided to change our route to bike through the alps instead of over them towards Como. The ride from St Moritz to Innsbruck looked lovely and doable, but challenging.

The first leg was from St Moritz, Switzerland to Livigno, Italy and included two climbs that we nervously anticipated. The first, called Bernina Pass, took us from an elevation of 1700 to 2330. The climb took place over 17 kms or so, and the average grade, we estimated was no more than about 6-7%. We were challenged, but had not too much difficulty, climbing slowly up to the serenade of cow bells and little else. Alice noted the different levels of vegetation that we passed through as we climbed - from evergreen covered slops to bushes and flowers to rocky outcrops to glaciers.

The view and the ride down the other side was unbelievably beautiful. We did have to be careful as the hairpin turns really are sharp and steep, but no real problem. We descended about 500 meters and immediately entered Italy and started the next climb, the Livigno Pass. Though only about 300 meters ascent in 3 kilometers (which would make it a 10% grade average), there were climbs within it that equaled up to about 13%. Peter was able to make it slowly, but Alice was only able to make it about 1/4 of the way.

Alice walked...

We stopped at the top to have a coffee and enjoy the view, which was indescribable. See the pictures below and use your own adjectives... The ride down (16 kms) was gradual, gentle and lovely and we felt rewarded for our days' efforts. This whole day only had us cover 45 kms or so, but we decided that the effort was enough and we ended up staying in the town Livigno.

It was a lovely town, mostly oriented towards skiing and winter activities, though many tourists and cyclist were partaking. The architecture was markedly different from anywhere else we had been so far in that many of the buildings were wooden-plank structures, clearly old though in great shape. A lovely town nestled in a valley of ski hills.

The next day had us take on our third Alps pass, the Offen Pass. To be honest, we did not even really pay attention as on the map this did not seem equal to the other two that we had attempted. Leading up to this was a ride of several kilometers in a tunnel on the side of a mountain, protecting us from erosion and no doubt snow fall in the winter months. It was a lovely ride along a lake on the side of a mountain. When we reached the bridge, we were told that we could not ride out bikes and had to take a shuttle through a 3.5 km tunnel that was too narrow for bikes and cars. The ride over the Offen pass was a surprise. It rose about 450 meters in about 10 kms and included up to a 15% grade climb. Peter laboured his way up and then started to walk back, thinking that he could help Alice as she walked up the final part of the climb. To his surprise and thrill, he saw Alice making her way up to the top. It brought tears to his eyes, amazed at her persistentce and ability.

Alice CLIMBED!!!

This dog-on-the-move also climbed!

In the one and a half days since Offen Pass we have descended 1900m over 130km! The landscape has been apple orchards, riversides, and beautiful mountains lining the valley. We stayed in Naturno one night and made our way to Brixen the next night where we were rained in the next day - so we took a break. We decided at that point to extend our stint in the Alps by weaving our way further through the mountains before our intended arrival in Innsbruck. We also enjoyed taking in the Italian Alp culture, with its Austrian overtones and wonderful pasta, gnocchi and pizza.

Naturns

Alice in Naturns

Brixen

The Alps grading:

• weather - B (beautiful sunny weather but cold! time to put on all of our gear...)
• landscape - A+ (how can it not be an A+?!)
• cycling challenge - moderate to very difficult (definitely pushing ourselves on the passes and on the downhills)
• physical and emotional response - although Alice cried and walked, Alice then climbed; Peter was like the energizer bunny (kept on going uphill :)
• food - A (Italian food was unbelievably delicious and Austrian/Swiss breakfast buffets are to die for)
• accommodations - B+ (nice hotels, good sevice)
• other people - n/a (people, what other people?!)
• entertainment - n/a the passes were our entertainment on this leg (and then we slept or watched the US Open)

Overall Grade: A+ (we decided to extend our stay in the Alps because we were having such a great time... see next blog!)