High Roller

42 Days, 1310 Miles

It was one last day of rain, cold rain, 46-degrees all day, it gave me flashbacks of Norway. I spent the better part of the day tramping through muddy cow pastures, finding the meadow from The Sound of Music. I might have been a shivering mess, but I had an ace in the hole today: a hotel reservation I had made 5 months earlier, it was perfectly timed!

And it was a fancy hotel; as I checked in, dripping water all over the floor, the reception gave me a run down of the amenities: there was a dedicated bicycle garage, and a bicycle shoe warmer (“you have a what now!?!”).

The next day dawned brilliantly, the sun was warm, it was dry, I could go up to the castle bell tower and see the meadow on the right where I had been tramping the prior day in the mist.

It was such a nice day the castle turned all their birds of prey loose. There were hawks and eagles and gryffins (which I think are mythical, but that’s what I heard the speaker say), and falcons.

I hit the ATM to withdraw cash, and I guess the bank got the wrong impression of my trip after the fancy hotel stay, because it spit out a 100-euro note, what am I supposed to do with this?

I decided to continue the high-roller approach by using it for an all-inclusive 3-day camping and sightseeing stay in Salzburg, with $9 in change! Took the Salzburg pass up the cable car for a view above the clouds.

Went to both Mozart residences, I liked the dioramas of the set designs from Mozart’s operas performed in his day.

Walked the city walls, and even went to the zoo. The only American contribution to the zoo was the crowd favorite, the Prariehund!

Which we now know lives on the Amerika Prarie, specifically….Utah! See, Europeans are bad at geography too.

At the modern art museum, the erosion piece was captivating…until a person dressed in all black started loudly dragging a chair across the room. He set up under a spotlight, and started taking his shoes off…”oh, this must be one of those performative art pieces!” He stands up on the chair (“yep, definitely some sort of statement concerning industrialization”)…and…adjusts the focus on the projector! What, that’s the IT guy? What was with all the dramatic chair dragging, and shoe removal?

I capped my 72-hour pass with an evening climb to the castle tower, with stunning views all around.

The Salzburg campground was one of my favorites to date, with nice walking paths. This started a whole run of good campsites…

There was the dairy farm…

Then there was the sheep and honeybee farm….

And the Apple Orchard.

Downriver from Salzburg, I entered Perry County landscapes, short steep ridges, covered bridges, plots of corn tucked between forested sections. The road names were unpronounceable, so I gave them equivalent names, “Clouser Hollow Road” was my favorite, rolling through woodlands with deer stands, but instead of spitting me out at Elliotsburg…

It spit me out at Bravaria, at the confluence with the river Inn.

The ridgetop castle, not the largest in Europe, but the longest!

Further downstream, and the river merged with the mighty Danube!

Starting downriver in the morning fog, it was four days of nearly perfect riding.

With some great hikes to fortresses perched high above the river. I changed sides more times than I could count, the North side the “Barbarian” side of the Roman empire.

The South side, the “Civilized” side, with Roman outposts dotting the river.

Some of the Roman buildings survive totally intact, in people’s backyards, maintained in continual use for nearly 2 millennia.

Around each bend a new town, a new clock-tower, a pretty church.

It started to become an evening routine to watch for the Viking river boat to sail by the campground, I found the quiet swoosh of the propellers a rather calming way to end the day.

As I boiled up some pasta, I could see dinner service just rolling out.

I made a mad dash up the hill to the Melk Abby to catch the 10:55 English Tour, which ended up being a personal tour since no one else signed up. As the guide tapped his umbrella on each exhibit for dramatic effect I stared at all the other tourists, I felt a bit silly with a personal guide explaining the signs to me, like a high roller. It was a good tour, it was worth the 3 euro add-on.

Descending further, into apple orchards and then to the grape vineyards of the Wachau valley, and the first sign of the impact from Storm Boris (I guess it had a name) last week. All that rain had overflowed the Danube, row after row of cold soaked grapes, rotting. I don’t know how the 2024 Austrian Riesling will taste, or do these grapes end up in the 2025 vintage, or maybe the bottles that do get produced will skyrocket in value from rarity, overall I have no idea how the wine industry works?

There was a clear water level marked in mud on the vegetation, 3-feet high. I could look across to the other end of the valley, and see the same water mark, it was all underwater last week.

Further downriver, entire towns were underwater, in front of every house a stack of mud soaked appliances.

Further downstream, bridges across the tributaries were just gone, necessitating long detours to get around.

But above all, it was a lot of mud! Perhaps it was good fortune to get stuck in the Alps, lower Austria was hit much worse.

But thanks to the clearing efforts of the Austrian Army, the route was passable, and I had arrived at the outskirts of Vienna, where the stupid ATM kicked out another 100-euro note, agh! So it was an all-access, 7-day National Library exhibits pass…..