Saturday, 6 July 2019
42 miles from Passau, Germany, to Aschach, Austria, mostly flatBike route: see Danube Bike Trail 2
Accommodations: Gasthof de Sonne. Guest house with cafe right on the trail, on main street in center of town.
Meghan and J2 flew home yesterday. We miss them! We had a wonderful time with them and are so glad they were able to join us. Today was an easy ride along the Danube/Donau (I am starting to think of it as the Donau, which is what it is called in Germany and Austria). We started on the south side, crossed to the north side via a bike ferry in Engelhartszell, crossed back to the south side via the second bike ferry in Schlogen, and ended in the quiet town of Aschach. We found frequent refreshments and services all along the trail--many more than along the German stretches. It was nice to grab a sandwich when we were hungry, and an eis kaffee when we were thirsty.
 |
| Just another day along the Donau. Still smiling! |
 | |||||||||||||||||||
Bike ferries were a fun change from riding on busy car bridges.Sunday, 7 July 2019
40 miles from Aschach, Austria, to Mauthausen, Austria, mostly flat
Bike route: see Danube Bike Trail 2
Accommodations: Gartenszimmer, Familie Marksteiner (Barbara and her husband and four sons), Mair z'Haid, Haid 8 A, 4310 Mauthasen, +43 7238 2416, Mobil +43 676 821252023, schlafen@gartenzimmer.at, www.gartenzimmer.at. Beautiful family farm (formerly a pig farm) about 4k outside of Mauthausen. New guesthouse with large kitchen, dining room, and garden. Barbara and her family were incredibly nice and friendly. Our room was large, airy, and spotless. The breakfast included eggs from the host family chickens, ham smoked with honey from a neighbor, an assortment of local cheeses and butter, rolls, local yogurt with apricots, a nut cake, and home-made elderberry juice.
Restaurant: The Jagerwirt in Haid, a family restaurant and gasthaus that specializes in local cuisine and especially apricot dumplings, which the 76-year-old matriarch has recently perfected (according to Barbara).
Biked mostly along the Donau, through small towns, moving from south bank to north bank by ferry and bridge. It rained lightly on and off the whole day. We stopped for lunch at an Italian restaurant, one of the few places we found open on the trail. (It's Sunday.) Pulled into Mauthausen about three in the afternoon but couldn't check in until four or later, so we had cake and coffee in the main square and then biked out to our guesthouse in Haid, 4k away on a quiet gravel road in a small farming community. (We decided not to visit the Mauthausen Concentration Camp and monument; from the pictures in the guidebook, it looked much like Dachau, which we visited a couple of weeks ago.)
Our host, Barbara, greeted us with a refreshing home-made elderflower drink and made a reservation for us at "the perfect" restaurant/gasthaus just 1.5 kilometers away--the Jagerwirt. We showered and hopped back on the bikes, and had an incredible dinner of smoked trout, venison pate, bread, salad, and apricot dumplings. Got back to our room just as it started to rain again--and Barbara, her husband, and son met us at the gate and invited us to drive with them to Mauthausen for a music festival in the square. We went and enjoyed a rollicking evening of locals dancing to a regional band as well as a visiting group from the southernmost part of Puglia, Italy--where we were last month. Great fun, and totally something we could not have planned.
Monday, 8 July 2019
Biked 27 miles from Mauthausen, Austria, to Grein, Austria
Accommodations: Maria and Johann Kloibhofer, Private Zimmer, Brucknerstrasse 1, 4360 Grein, +43 (0) 7268 378, ma.kloibhofer@aon.at. Comfortable room with private bath and balcony, 1.3k from Grein town center on the edge of the country. Breakfast included. Nice.
Restaurants: lunch at the Gasthof Parlament, with a wooden pear in the garden (including pear juice with sparkling water from the nearby perry) near Leitzing on the trail, dinner at Gasthof Schinakel on the riverfront in Grein (Donau catfish kebabs with grilled vegetables and potatoes and a salad, Donau fried perch with a salad and vegetables).
A combination of biking along the river and through the farmland. This area is a fertile valley, with hills in the distance. The river enters a steep gorge in Grein, so tomorrow will be a little different terrain again. It has been cooler--in the 70s--today, and cloudy, but no rain. We had a short, steep climb to see the castle and market in Wallsee along the way, and another at the end to get to our room outside of Grein. It was good to remind our legs that they can climb.
Today we felt a little lazy after all the excitement from yesterday, and missed the activity and chatty times with Josh and Meghan. We continue to be surprised at how much every day is different, and how interesting it is to experience it unfolding.
|
