25 Aug 2011
Lermoos, Austria to Nesselwang, Germany (50 km)
As we climbed on board, her strong (a.k.a., loud) American accent bellowed “Now THIS is a TRAIN!” No matter that people were now staring. Gina was beyond excited that we had just boarded a train with our loaded bikes with a simple push of a button and a quick heave-ho through double wide doors. Our usual panicky boarding routine, where we struggle to turn the door handle the proper direction, squeeze and squish and nearly throw out our backs trying to shove our bulging loads through doorways meant for people not panniers, and stand there struggling for space and breath, wondering if we’re even on the right train, was a non-issue on this train. What a relief.
Now we had no plans to take a train today. Today was to be about the bike, pedaling ourselves back into Germany, completing our Alpine loop and heading back toward the Bodensee and onward to Switzerland. But we have discovered that Austrian dirt is far inferior to German dirt. In Austria, the dirt cycling paths are composed mostly of stones. Stones that stick in worn out cycling shoes, stones that suck your front wheel in like quicksand and send your back wheel squirreling toward the tree line. These stones are meant for tires much fatter than ours. These stones were slowing us down to about 4 km an hour, a pace that would have us back in Germany sometime next week. No Good!, we said, followed by Where is the Bahnhof (train station)?!? Time to fast forward ourselves away from the stones and back toward the schnitzel.
After a brief 15 minute train ride that saved us at least 15 km and probably as many meltdowns, we debarked in Reutte, still in Austria but now just a stone’s throw (pun intended) from Germany. We visited Reutte before on that cycling trip five years ago, and it was here that we stayed with the friendly Austrian Irena, who, during our breakfast the following day, kept bringing tin-foil bubble after tin-foil bubble of mystery meat out of the freezer for us to consume (translation: stare at with wonder and pantomime that Oh no, we were so full, we couldn’t eat another bite) as she talked nonstop in German for two hours as though we could understand every word. Yes, we know Reutte but with such a late start to our day, there was no time to look up the dear Irena. Time, instead, to start pedaling back to the land of superior dirt where sticks and stones won’t break our bones.
