Today would see us breakfast in Austria, have lunch in
Slovakia and dinner in Hungary…..but first a little reflection on last night.
It’s amazing sometimes, just how tired you can get….to the
point where you don’t take in your surroundings much at all. After a hard slog in the saddle yesterday,
fighting a head wind most of the day, we finally reached our camp destination
of Petronell, once again after spending a good half hour trying to figure out
where the place was, as the signs had literally just ceased to be. One lovely old lady had given us directions,
purely in Austrian, complete with multiple hand gestures and we were well on the
way to our destination, when a younger woman had cycled by and told us that it
was somewhere else. Turns out the older lady was right and we were virtually on
the spot, when the other one sent us on another 3 or 4km ride.
Arrived at the little site and were told by a man and his
wife that we needed to phone the caretaker and offered to do it for us. A man
would then come and take our money and fill us in on the details. Seems Gerd,
the man, had travelled New Zealand with his wife in 2002. The caretaker arrived
and showed us the facilities, within an indoor tennis building. Amazing, astro–turf
surface on three courts, with fantastic lighting, showers and a bar restaurant
area for afterwards, all in a tiny village, virtually on the Austrian border.
The grassy area we pitched on was lush with some nice smaller trees separating
each lot of campers, last night we had four couples and a single cyclist. An
Austrian flag flew from the flagpole overlooking the site.
Perfect….or so I thought, until I lay my head down. Julia
had, as only Julia can, gone out faster than a hypnotist can get his subject
hypnotised. So I lay awake, listening to the sound of the breeze and the
distant thunder, with the flashes of accompanying light, fortunately for us,
many miles away in Slovakia. During the night I woke on numerous occasions to
the sound of a bird making a metal on metal type noise. After a few times I
realised it was the metal cable of the flagpole, hitting the metal pole in the
wind….continuously. At the same time…. Early hours….I thought..’that’s a huge
amount of traffic for a small village’, only to realise we are camped just over
the railway lines from the Autobahn and the main access route to Bratislava, in
Slovakia. By 4am I had the tri-fecta, as the umpteenth freight train had also
clanged its way along the track. So, in
the immortal words of Victor Meldrew…..’I don’t bloody well believe it’….
Julia here…..I had a great sleep and we woke up at 7am. I did some yoga this morning while Pete wrote
the above. I have strained behind my
right knee – I think by struggling up a hill in too high a gear several days
ago. So I was trying to help this out
plus my old back pains have been flaring up.
I then rolled the back of my knee with a tennis ball that was attached
to our camping key (very handy!) while we had our first breakfast of bread and
jam (not quite so tasty without butter) and a cup of coffee. My knee felt a little better before we set
off from Petronell and we took the more direct route back up the road to Hainburg.
This was a nice little town and had several supermarkets all
in a row as do a lot of towns (including New Plymouth). So we got the day’s supplies and then found
another supermarket a bit further down the road which obviously couldn’t
compete with the others and had closed down.
This gave us a nice quiet, shady place to eat our second breakfast of
muesli and fruit.
Then we rejoined the Donau Radweg (cycleway) for our 10km
journey to Bratislava, Slovakia.
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| Quite the collection of tenement blocks |
This
was pleasant riding and soon we saw Bratislava rising out of the landscape like
a distant rubbish dump with one grand white castle standing prominently on the
right, while a cluster of the old Eastern Block style tenement blocks lurched
together on the left like a pile of abandoned refrigerators. As we closed the distance, that pile of
‘abandoned fridges’ seemed to grow and grow and we could see an attempt had
been made to brighten them up by painting them all different colours. They were all well out of the main part of
Bratislava so we didn’t see them up close but I feel they would have been quite
decrepit if you got close enough to have a good look.
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| Bratislava Castle |
Soon we were passing through another disused border
station. There was a long low building
with bunks in and all the rooms here were occupied. We thought these people might be refugees as
it looked like a pretty miserable place to be living unless you had to. Rode up to the bridge spanning the Donau and
cycled up the access ramp and across we went. Let me tell you, there was plenty
of movement on this bridge and as Julia took a photo, it took her all her time
just to keep her hand steady. Noticeable straight away were the cruise boats,
all docked for their visits into Bratislava.
Once over the other side we commenced more a walking tour of the old
town, which was really nice and seems quite vibrant, with lots of youngsters
knocking around who seemed well dressed. Got some good photos and during our
wander we called into Tourist Info where Julia had a very nice girl trying to
assist her. We’d decided to take the southern side of the river to begin with,
which would lead us into Hungary in a short while.
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| The park where we had lunch - still with an eastern block feel to it. |
But first we needed sustenance to get us through, so a nice
park was selected where we tucked into some grub. Eurovelo 6 was chosen to take
us alongside the Donau and it was a great ride. Still plenty of cyclists,
however they were now joined by roller bladers in high numbers. After an hour
Julia spies a lake where there were swimmers, a rarity as the water is usually
murky. So greatly encouraged we cycled
over to join the swimmers seeing as it was another stinking hot day. I felt a bit nervous about leaving the bikes
unattended but there was no stopping Ju.
As we got closer, we realised some of the swimmers were naked so Ju just
jumped in with her undies and crop top on.
She said the water was really clear and at least 20C but I couldn’t be
bothered. It was just what she needed as it had been warm for the last three
days and she had been desperate for a swim and when we carried on she cycled in
just her wet crop top (and dry shorts), whilst I rode shirtless.
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| Houseboats along the Danube |
Looking for Rusovce, but by-passed it. Approached a police
car and as the guy was outside I asked him where we were. That there, he said
pointing twenty metres ahead, is Hungary. Then his female partner began looking
at our map without seemingly any knowledge of the town, five minutes down the
road. We asked if it was Rajka and she
just shrugged and said “It’s Hungaria” as if how should she know what the
village was called – it was across the border so who cared?
Once in Rajka, I asked a girl well versed in the English
language for a supermarket. After picking up a can of Mexican beans to have
with our pasta, cycled about 3km out of town to a small camping site where we
paid 12 euros and set up shop. After showers, in the very basic amenities, we
retired to the bar for a well deserved Radler, great to end the day on before
tucking into tea.
The youngsters who were running the place and getting
well-hammered all finally left at 9pm – all driving and no doubt over the
limit. That’s if they have a limit over
here. NZ has made a lot of progress in
this regard and to making people realise smoking is no good for them – here
they either don’t know, or don’t care.
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