We are chasing summer across national borders and over mountain ranges. From Switzerland we cycle east to Bregenz, Austria. It feels like we are doing something a little wrong, on a rainy evening following an elderly woman with a head scarf over the border. There is no pomp. No ceremony. The border guards do not even look up. It is just two, three pedal strokes, and we are in Austria.
It is just on dark, and we pull in at the first campsite we see. The owners look surprised that two Australians are after accommodation, but it is raining and I am splattered with mud from riding behind Matt, and so they pour us schnapps and find us a caravan because 'das Wetter ist nicht so gut'. Or something.
From Bregenz we catch a train to Linz. Six days worth of riding in six hours! Thanks to our visas, from Linz we need to get to Zagreb. This requires further border crossings and the small matter of the Alps. Hannibal could do it with elephants, so surely we can manage it (MI - factual update... <i believe he started with a number of elephants, but only one survived. Things did not therefore bode well at this stage.) Matt's bike, being heavy and grey, is aptly named after an elephant. Babar valiantly makes his way up to the 1300m pass. (My bike is Bertie - a name of ambiguous sexuality, which is handy since I keep forgetting what I have decided Bertie should be, and with a retro feel it is the kind of name I think a Mitford sister would give a bike.)
We had not planned to spend much time in Austria, but it turns out to be a convenient way of getting to Croatia. After Switzerland it feels noticeably different. A western country on the edge of Eastern Europe. Grittier, more industrial, with every driver either a crazed rev-head or blind. (Or both. I have lost count of the near misses and squealing tyres we heard.) The conversations we have with locals are abrupt, if not unfriendly. We go out for dinner and are seated in the non-smoking section, which is separated from the smokers by a row of plastic plants. After crossing our alpine pass we stop in a cafe for a well deserved bite and are cooly watched through cigarette haze by a room full of locals. I eat every bite of that cake, while Matt takes care not to make eye contact with the tattooed guy with the buzz cut in the corner. (MI- He looks very much like a Jorg Haider enforcer.)
Despite the somewhat cool veneer, we meet with a number of kind people here. I suspect Austria is somewhere worth investing more time in, in order to see what people are really like.
After the alps, another border crossing through a no-man's land of tattoo parlours and derelict trucks and we emerge into green Slovenia. One more day of riding, and we will be in Croatia. One more day, by which time Matt will have forgotten that he crossed the alps and will have stopped singing 'Edelweiss'. At least, here's hoping...
