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A BIKE TRIP THROUGH THE CZECH
REPUBLIC, AUSTRIA, AND GERMANY
MAY 2004
INTRODUCTION
Cast
of characters: Brian and Ginny Wasson, a married couple in their
late 30s from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (USA). This was our fourth unsupported
bike tour in Europe together on our tandem, and
Brian has toured a few times in Europe and the
USA on
his single bike. We've toured in Germany, Austria, and France, but
this was our first trip to the Czech Republic. Ginny was a bit over three
months pregnant during the trip, so we tried to keep the daily mileage
reasonable (Matthew was born in November 2004, if you are curious; we've
already bought him his first bike helmet!).
The route: By air to Munich,
Germany. By train
to Prague, Czech Republic
(CZ). By train to Tabor, CZ. By bike to the CZ/Austrian border. By train
to Zell am See, Austria.
By bike round-trip from Zell am See to Krimml,
Austria, then on
to Salzburg, Austria,
via the Tauern bike route and eastern Bavaria and
Bad Reichenhall. By train to Munich,
Germany. By car to
the Bavarian Alps (Garmisch-Partenkirchen
area) and back to Munich.
By air to home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. All-told, on this trip
we only rode about 256 miles on our bike. Much of the time was spent sightseeing,
with major distances traveled by train. If you're just interested in the
part of the trip where we biked, you'll only want to read the write up
for days 1-11.
When: Friday, May 21 to Sunday, June 6, 2004.
Our preparation: We don't have a rigid
schedule on our trips, preferring to be flexible and able to respond to
weather, interesting scenery, and the like. However, we do a lot of research
beforehand to know what our options are and things we might like to see.
We usually only advance-book our first and last nights in a hotel. On
this trip we were torn between riding the Via Claudia Augusta bike route
from the Danube in Germany
to Venice, Italy
and doing a bike tour in the Czech Republic.
Believe it or not, we still weren't sure which we were going to do until
we landed in Germany,
although we were leaning to the Czech Republic
because we knew more about it from our reading. Because of this, we had
no advance train bookings to Prague,
or any place to stay for the first night. We did have tentative (cancelable)
room reservations for a few nights in Prague,
but apart from that we were on our own.
The bike: Santana
Fusion tandem bicycle with S&S
frame couplers. 27-speed drivetrain with 28-38-48 chainrings and an
11-34 cassette. Blackburn Expedition rear rack and a Tubus lowrider front
rack. Ortlieb
panniers front and rear, and an Ortlieb handlebar bag with the padded
camera insert. We always bring along our mascot "Hans the Hase,"
a dollar-store bunny (Hase is German for rabbit); Hans has a Ziploc baggie
for foul-weather protection. For transport on the airplane the bike was
disassembled and packed in one S&S hard case and one S&S soft
backpack case. When we unpacked the bike we put the soft case inside the
hard case and stored it at the airport left-luggage counter at the Munich
airport. See the trip pages for more detailed info on storing bike
cases at the airport.
Notes:
1. This trip description is fairly long! I apologize
in advance. I was going to edit it down a lot, but thought that maybe
some piece of information that I thought was worthless might be useful
to someone else who is planning a trip. Believe it or not, I wrote all
of this in a tiny little memo book that we brought along. It didn't seem
like so much at the time! Also, in most instances I will abbreviate Czech
Republic with "CZ," to avoid
typing it repeatedly.
2. Approximate currency conversions to US dollars are
based on the exchange rate in June 2004 of 1 euro = 1.23 USD, and 1 Czech
crown = .039 USD. As of early 2005 the euro is higher against the dollar,
with one euro equal to around 1.30 USD. A useful currency conversion utility
on the Web is at http://www.xe.com/ucc/.
3. Many links in this report will open in a new
window. I usually don't like doing that, but I thought it would help keep
the integrity of the trip report.
4. The larger-scale scanned maps on the site will
open in reduced size on some browsers. To view them at higher resolution,
usually all you have to do is click on them. They are large enough to
view properly.
5. Please excuse the quality of the scans on this
site. The lab developed the photos on matte paper, which is difficult
to scan. When I get more time I'll rescan the negs to get cleaner images.
6. Do you see any mistakes, typos, or other things
that need to be corrected? Please e-mail
me and let me know!
ON TO THE TRIP REPORT! >
INDEX
Start
page
Day
1: Munich airport to Pilsen, Czech Republic by train (2 miles
by bike)
Day 2: Pilsen to Prague, Czech Republic
by train (4 miles by bike)
Day 3: Prague, Czech Republic
Day 4: Prague to Tabor via train, Tabor to Hluboka
nad Vltava via bike (38 miles by bike)
Day 5: Hluboka nad Vltava to Cesky Krumlov (via Ceske
Budejovice) by bike (34 miles by bike)
Day 6:
Cesky Krumlov
Day 7: Cesky
Krumlov to Horni Dvoriste, CZ, by bike (28 miles +/-)
Day 8: Zell
am See, Austria to Krimml, Austria (42 miles by bike)
Day 9: Krimml to
Zell am See Austria (44 miles by bike)
Day 10:
Zell am See, Austria to Bad Reichenhall, Germany (47 miles by bike)
Day 11: Bad
Reichenhall, Germany, to Salzburg, Austria (17 miles by bike)
Day 12: Salzburg,
Austria to Munich, Germany by train and on to Grainau, Germany by car
Days 13-16: Auto
touring to Austria and Italy; Munich; flight home.
Conclusion
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