Soggy Austria

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We arrived into Austria at the tail end of their flood of the century! Since a weeklong bike trek along the Danube River was part of our plan, we've had to reassess.

We spent four days in Vienna touring the city and staying with a couple different Servas host families. We visited Jim's old alma mater, hung out in cafes, toured the city's history museum and the Belvedre art museum and ate tons of wurst (sausage and brats).

The host families were terrific. One was a large family with folks wandering in and out. By the time we left they were building a sweat lodge in the backyard :-). The other host was a woman who engaged in all sort of interesting discussions.

On our first day of the bike tour, we decided to check out the bike path to see how bad it was. Big mistake. We were walking the bikes through sturdy sand and laughing at how we were eye-to-eye with lamposts when we took a couple more steps and started sinking. We ended up knee deep in schlem (river sludge)! Yuck! It took us forever to get out of that mess. A resident took pity on us and hosed off our mud-christened shoes, pants, bikes, etc. Needless to say, we stayed on the road for quite awhile before joining the trail again to Tulln. Yesterday we rode from Tulln to Krems and only had to make one detour. We hear that the bike trail west of here is not passable, so we are taking a train up to Friedstadt today to start our WWOOF farm volunteering a bit early.