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Day 6: Thursday, May 30, 2002
Our room came with a fairly good breakfast buffet, which we shared in a room full of other bikers. We chatted a bit with the owner, who is a friendly (but somewhat fussy) older lady. Although the hotel does not have a dedicated place to store bikes, they make do by putting everyone's bikes in the downstairs hallway. When we checked in the day before, our tandem was the only bike there. The next morning there must have been more than 20 other bikes sharing the space with ours.
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| In front of the Post Hotel in Braunau, packing up for the day's ride. |
After checking out and loading up the bike with our bags, we went across the street to get some lunch food at the local Billa supermarket. However, it was closed for some reason (the posted hours said it should have been open). Confused, we looked around and saw that everything was closed. No sooner had we noticed a stage set up in the town square than a parade of sorts came around the corner from the direction of the church. A large brass band, followed by men and women in Trachten (local dress), a bunch of children, and church officials (some nuns and a few priests, followed by a priest walking under a large tent/umbrella being carried by four men). They all marched into the square and the priest began making unintelligible comments over a scratchy PA system.
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| Women in Trachten (traditional dress) parade through the main square of Braunau. |
The entire spectacle was very interesting, but we had absolutely no idea what was going on. Most of the other bikers from the hotel were also watching the procession with interest. After taking a few photos we decided to get going. The other bikers soon followed, and we all pedaled off to rejoin the path along the river (actually, I think they were following us, as they seemed confused where to go).
We followed the path for a while, but the neighboring farm roads looked inviting so we decided to ride on them instead, as they tended to be more interesting than the monotonous riverside path. Although the river is pretty, we enjoy riding through the small towns and past farms and houses.
As we came into the small town of Mining we were greeted by resounding applause! Alas, it wasn't for us, but for the brass band playing at a local biergarten where it seemed the entire town was gathered for the holiday festivities. Along we went toward Gimpling, where we saw many more people assembled in Trachten (clothing specific to a region) near the local church. Of course, they all stared at us as we rode past on our big yellow bike. We smiled and exchanged "Morgens!" with them. Later we read that holiday was “Corpus Christi,” and parades are a part of the day. We read that around 12,000 people were in the center of Munich for its parade! The Feast of Corpus Christi is a Catholic festival celebrated on the second Thursday after Pentecost (Whitsun in German). For planning purposes, it's a good idea to look online for dates for Austrian holidays. The Whitsun holidays usually fall either at the end of May or the beginning of June, and pretty much everything is closed.
We stayed on the small and quiet back roads to Kirchbach, where we rejoined the bike path along the riverbank. This is a really nice section, as the route goes through what's known as the Unterer Inn (Lower Inn) Wildlife Reserve. We stopped several times to marvel at thousands of nesting gulls and other waterfowl and birds. The gulls were so noisy that we heard them well before we saw them. An elevated deck just off the path provided an unobstructed view of the nesting area and a good photography vantage.
This area along the river was quite pretty, and I wished out loud that I had my kayak with me to enjoy the water. It reminded my of wildlife refuges that I've paddled in coastal Virginia. We later found out that canoeing day trips that leave from Braunau are very popular in the refuge. In addition to the myriad fowl we had a lot of human company, with hordes of day-trippers on the path taking advantage of the holiday and the beautiful weather.
A few miles after the refuge the trail came out to a road and then ascended a very steep (but short) hill up to the attractive walled town of Obernberg, which features a very nice town square. Of course, once again everything was closed because of the holiday, so we were forced to grab a quick lunch of wursts from the only open store, an Imbiss run by a chain-smoking Turkish man. It wasn't even noon, and there was a table of fairly drunk men outside, enjoying (?) their holiday.
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| Bikers riding through the main square of the Baroque town of Obernberg. |
After a short break we headed out of town on the road, ignoring the radweg signs when it turned off, since the road we were on was quite nice and meandered through farming country with lightly rolling hills. We stopped at the top of one hill to have a drink of water and, er, a "visit to the bushes," when Ginny noticed that the rear rack was kind of "floppy" (in her words). Turns out that one of the screws holding the rack to the dropout was missing, and the bolts to the braze-ons on the seatstays were really loose. Basically, the rack was close to falling off.
So, off came all the bags as I fished around in the tool bag for a replacement bolt. After a good tightening of all the nuts and bolts, we loaded up again and got on our way. Some more road riding to Stuben brought us back to the route, which we followed into the city of Schaerding. The ride into Schaerding was busy and unimpressive, following an autobahn for a few miles and then a busy city street for the last mile or so. Schaerding has a nice walled center square, surrounded by baroque buildings (very similar to Obernberg). There were a good amount of people lounging about in the square, enjoying the sun and the holiday. Schaerding gets a lot of bike tourist business, because several of the big Austrian bike touring companies are based here. They all pretty much start their Danube route itineraries here, in Austria, rather than downstream in Passau, Germany (the recognized "starting" location for the most popular part of the Danube bike path).
From Schaerding to Passau was pretty easy riding along a riverside bike path and some side roads. However, we had lots of company, as I guess the ride between the two towns is a popular one. We came into Passau on the opposite bank from the main part of town, and had a hard time finding a bridge to use. Finally found one, which dropped us off near the three-rivers-corner (dreiflussecke). We rode through the old town, looking for a reasonably-priced place to stay. Not finding any, we decided to decamp to the tried-and-true Rotel Inn (which I think is pretty neat). It's cheap and clean, and has a nice riverside location. The Rotel is called a "cabin hotel," and features tiny (really tiny) rooms that are only as wide as the bed. Bathrooms and showers are across the hall. It's very reasonably priced, and is literally right on the banks of the Danube. It caters to bikers, with a locked bike storage area and a big common room upstairs overlooking the Danube. It's literally right on the Danube bike route, and only about a three-minute walk/ride from the train station.
Over dinner we decided to head to Munich a day early and change our car reservation. The next day we took the train from Passau to Freising (only about 1.5 hours on a direct train), and then rode to the airport to pick up the car around noon. After the bike tour, we spent another week in southern Bavaria, doing day rides in the Garmisch-Partenkirchen area.
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| Our tandem loaded in the bike section of the train car, en route to Munich. |