Vienna to Bratislava to Budapest

Vienna:
Lots of old buildings and museums. I mostly wandered around looking at the architecture, and visited the arms museum and the imperial treasury. The best meal I had in Vienna was from a Turkish fast food place where they served something called a schnitzel semmel which was basically a standard Turkish gyro except with the gyro meat replaced with schnitzel.

Pretty much the whole city looks like this:

The arms museum had, well, lots of arms and armor:

Double barreled rifle!

One day I hope to own a hat this ridiculous:

Apparently at some point they put faces on the helmets which just made them look incredibly creepy:

 I bet this helmet gets all the ladies:

The imperial treasury had some of the most amazing gold and silver crafting I have ever seen. The pictures don't really do them justice.

Forget that painting I posted earlier, the bavarian kings had a real life holy hand grenade:

Trying to leave Vienna the next day, I had been warned that they were doing the Vienna marathon, but that didn't make it any easier to get past. I saw runners with numbers up in the 8000s, and there were certainly a lot of people there.

After finally making it to Bratislava I met a host there who is apparently the biggest bike activist in the city, and we spent the evening with a bunch of his friends tinkering with really old bikes trying to fix them.
The next day I walked around the Bratislava old town. I made it to the castle, which of course was open every day of the week except Mondays, and it was a Monday.

A lot of the churches in the old town were closed as well, like this weird looking one:

I walked all the way to the top of the city to see Slavin,which is a monument to the 6000ish soviet men who died liberating the city in WWII.

Eisenstein would've been proud of the staircase leading up to the monument:

Two days in Slovakia, and it was off to Hungary. It only took about an hour in the country until I found my first Hungarian, drunk out of his mind at 10am trying to drive into town on a small country road. About 10 minutes later I found another two drunk Hungarians walking bikes home. Apparently I am now in eastern Europe.
I had a long day as I was trying to make it to the unesco site of Benedictine Abbey. I made it there, but not before they closed (of course). The abbey sits on-top a hill, and you can see it for about 12km in any direction

I already had a reservation in Budapest for the 17th and I knew it was a long way, so I continued as long as I could to make the longest day yet, for 85 miles and I camped along a set of train tracks where my earplugs came in handy.

As I was eating my pasta dinner around 9:30 I sat and watched someone driving a huge piece of farming equipment roll up and start tilling a chunk of field literally 10 feet from where I was camped. Not wanting to end up torn into tiny bits has been moved to the top of my list of reasons to not camp in someone's field.

Today I continued on the Eurovelo 6 route which brought me through Esztergom which is home to this:

I rolled into Budapest around 8, and so far it looks quite cool. That made today my longest day yet with 90 miles cycling, for a total of 175 miles in two days.

Some random thoughts:
Now that winter is behind me, at least stopping to take pictures is quicker and easier without having to remove my gloves, and waking up and breaking camp in the morning isn't slow and painful.

Someone needs to compile a list of translations for "still water" in all languages. I absolutely can't stand the taste of sparkling water and that seems to be about 99% of what stores want to sell. The grocery store crapshoot of emergency water purchasing is getting old.

It's not a camera! I wish I had a dollar for every time I was asked if this was a camera, especially from other cyclists who honestly should know better:

At least it keeps them acting friendly if they think they're being recorded.

Munich to Salzburg to Vienna

Munich - A city with a large but extremely busy city center. My right handlebar wrapping had come undone, so I dropped my bike off at a shop to have it rewrapped. Turns out the duct tape I had put over it to keep it in place had stuck to the wrapping so well that it ripped the wrapping when It was taken off, so it wasn't rewrapped, just retaped. While the bike was in the shop, I did learn one thing. Munich, and also Vienna has their bike paths as part of the sidewalk. This makes it safer for the cyclists, but it means cyclists are constantly avoiding pedestrians who wander onto the cycleway. When I was cycling I found myself getting very annoyed with pedestrians, and yet when I was a pedestrian myself, I couldn't help but wander into the cycle paths.

I spend several hours wandering the German Museum, where I found an 8 inch floppy:

and a bunch of WWI and II replica airplanes, such as this one, painted to look like the Red Baron's plane:

And they had some cool prototype supersonic jets:

Munich also has a lot of old buildings, churches, monuments:

One thing I must say about Munich is that I have never in my life seen so many people not jaywalking. I honestly felt like I was instantly marked as a tourist since I would get odd glares from people when you could clearly see no car coming for miles, yet no one would cross until the green walk sign was showing.

After one day in Munich, I went to the Dachau prison camp. The hostel was organizing a tour there that cost $20 euros in transportation costs, but it was only about 12 miles away so of course I saved myself the money, stashed my gear in the hostel, and cycled over there. It was fairly depressing and I'm not sure why I went.

After that it was half a day riding, and another full day to arrive in Salzburg and stay at a hostel there.
The next day was spent in Salzburg, which was fairly interesting, as well as an incredibly warm day.

I went to the first non-gothic church so far, and it was quite impressive:

Leaving Salzburg, there was a bit of a climb. However, the slow, constant descent after made it worth it, and I dropped 400ish feet over 10ish kilometers through a valley, and following a few lakes. I even had some tailwind. Austria is everything Switzerland wishes it could be.

I ate lunch here:

Just as I was looking for a place to camp, it started to rain, but the rain stopped before morning, so that was a welcome change.
The next day I joined the eurovelo 6 route, still enjoying the crazy tailwind, doing 20mph on flat road along the river.
I ate lunch here:

I met up with a german cyclist who was also headed my way, and we rode along the river to Vienna. He is going about the same speed as me, but will be staying longer in the main cities. We camped outside a farmhouse the first night, then made it all the way to Tulln where he had already arranged to stay in a church in town where we got a free warm bed and breakfast. With the tailwind, I/we have made it 70+miles each day for the last few days. It has been nice to ride with someone going the same direction and the same speed. Also, he just started his tour a week ago, so it has been interesting being able to share some tips with him. For example the day we met was the first day he had camped on his journey, and we shared pasta and a beer.

Apparently thousands of people ride along the eurovelo 6 route each summer, but so far we've only seen a few.

I am now in Vienna and I will be for one more day before riding the 50km to bratislava, then on to Budapest.

Interlaken to Munich

Well, I got my nice day in postcard switzerland, and I spent the morning heading up into the mountains. This time I took the train from interlaken to Lauterbrunnen, then the cable car and train to Murren, then the cable car to the Schilthorn. All told it was about 85 swiss franks to make it to the Bond restaurant.

Lauterbrunnen in the sun:

 At the top:

Leaving Interlaken, I had a nice ride until around 6pm I ran into the Brulig pass, which left me walking the bike 5km up a 10% unpaved grade as the sun set.

The most swiss picture I have taken:

Not finding anywhere to camp, I started heading down the other side until I got the feeling I was missing a decent view, and finally set up camp next to a farmhouse about 100m from this scenic overlook:

Of course I paid for my one nice day with the next 4 days being nonstop rain or snow. This was the first time riding in a downpour since I tore my rainpants in half outside Dijon by catching them on the crankset. I made it through Lucerne and Zug and foolishly tried to camp when all my clothes were wet. I awoke to still being soaking wet, and stayed in my sleeping bag half the next day knowing that I would have to break camp while it was snowing, in wet gloves and wet everything. I made it about 10-15 miles before I stopped in a hotel to warm up my hands and dry out everything. It also turned out that after 2 months of rain my phone finally seemed to have given up after getting too much water in it to turn on. Next day was another day of all day rain while the temperature hovered at about 35 degrees. I put in my 50 miles and found another hotel to stay at since everything was again soaking wet. I stayed across from this lake:

Since I was using my phone as a map and I had no other map of switzerland, I had to be extra careful at each turn. I opted not to buy a map of switzerland however, since they mark the trails quite well with signs and maps like this posted:

Next day was Easter Sunday, and despite snow and annoying headwind most of the day, I made it to near Bregenz. I even crossed this river/canal to spend about five minutes in Liechtenstein:

Finally making it out of Switzerland, I had bought a map of Germany anticipating that their cycle routes wouldn't be marked as well. I followed the Bodensee-Konigsee Radweg, which is probably the worst designed cycle route I've been on. I spent the next two days climbing my way up and down through tiny German towns, weaving all over the map with no apparent direction. It was also still about 40 degrees with plenty of snow on the ground. At several points I noticed I was riding on the main road and there was a cycle path to the right that I should be on, so I of course aimed for safety. I may have underestimated how deep this snow drift was:

Random scenic overlook of Nesselwang:

After two days in Germany, I set up camp within sight of Hohenschwangau, hidden (fairly well I’d say) in what I’m fairly sure was a park of some kind. Someone needs to give Germany the memo that spring has started.

View from about 20 feet away from my tent:

Spent the morning at Neuschwanstein, which was fairly underwhelming. After ~17 years of being built, the castle was never finished, and never lived in. The king financing it was killed and 6 weeks later it was open to the public. They only allow you in the castle as part of a guided tour that takes about 30 minutes and they rush you through without time to admire the paintings and woodcarvings which were actually finished.

After that it was off to Munich. My phone apparently is working after all, just the power button is unreliable, and I've replaced my rain pants. I’m staying in an enormous hostel that has way too many people trying to use the internet connection, so it’s very slow.