September 8th, 2012 Saturday
The next day we awoke to gobbles and strange thumping noises which both came from our turkey neighbors. We loaded up and decided to get some food from a grocery store in the next town over. After the staples of bread and cheese, we got going on our trail. This would be our last day of biking in Czech, as we would soon cross the Austrian border. The biking was mostly flat and enjoyable, and with less km to cover that day, we stopped for a leisurely lunch of an amazing appetizer of warm goat cheese with honey, balsamic, and tomatoes, and pizza for our main meal.
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| The lovely bikeways of Czech, until next time! |
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| Alex almost gets eaten |
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| our lunch destination |
We set off to the last few km in Czech with some lovely rolling hills only to come to a crossroads where the numbered trail we were on went both ways. Huh? Another cyclist stopped and told us that we had gone way out of our way in the wrong direction. We could either continue on the path to our right to cross the Austrian border and figure out how to get to the town near out camping place, or backtrack. Seeing as how we didn't have ANY maps of Austria except for what was shown on the trail map (we weren't even on the trail map anymore) we decided to backtrack. I refrained from reminding Alex how the town we went through was in a valley, and the downhill we coasted down before would soon be our uphill.
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| The rolling hills of... wait, we went the wrong way didn't we? |
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| Helloooo Austria!!!!! |
FINALLY we reached the Austrian border, took pictures, and cursed the signage and map way that led us astray.
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| good bye, Czech you later! |
We were tired and frustrated an still needed to put in a few more km before we reached our campsite in Poysdorf (the same one that Beth had recommended to us a few nights before). We raised our heads in appreciation for the wonderful sky veiws and made it into town just as it was getting dark.
We were welcomed warmly by the campsite owner who gave us a key to the restrooms and told us where to set up. We knew we were in a different country because the showers weren't timed! Yay! After a good long shower to decompress we headed into the main part of town. Before we ended up anywhere to eat, we were distracted by the tons of people in traditional Austrian garb, old AND young people, headed in the same direction. We worked up some of our German which was getting rusty (if it was ever there in the first place) and asked if anyone spoke English. They did and told us they were headed into the towns major festival for the wine season. The town is normally around 700 people, but everyone from the neighboring cities and towns come out for the food, the people, the traditonal music, and the Sturm. What is Sturm you ask? Well it is a drink that is in the middle of its fermentation process, inbetween being juice and wine, which means sweet and delicious, which means it will get you drunk quick. Everyone who told us about it told us to be careful, and we were, drinking tons of water at the same time. Everyone around us... not so much.
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| Our new friends in traditional dress |
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| 2l of strum for 15€ |
We had excellent conversations about American and California life vs life in Austria. Differences in healthcare (ie the reason ciggarette packs have those smoking kills messages is because healthcare is free in Austria aka it is taken out of taxes aka if you get lung cancer from choosing to smoke, everyone is paying for it) smilarities in "democracy" (corruption is getting to everyone everywhere), and even ID cards. We all talked for a while until the Sturm started to hit everyone else pretty hard and conversation dwindled to unintelligble jabber and German. We walked around, tasting the different foods and treats, then headed to a big tent party close by. We joined a party train through the tent for a few rounds, watched people on the carnival rides (which seemed like a bad idea to get on after drinking), then headed back to the campsite for a good sleep.
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