Bratislava is a pleasant mid-size city although without too many fancy monuments like its neighboring Budapest and Vienna, but green and pedestrian, so we just took an easy day off wandering around – after a visit to a bike shop to replace the entire front drivetrain. We had to explain the mechanics that the size of chain-rings doesn’t matter, it’s only a matter of ratios, and thus got some brand-new top parts with flashy colors – originally for an Enduro-MTB – but whatever, it is not the first weird part that we have added and we’ll now both be able to make it through the next two weeks! Through a discussion group that we used the whole year, we contacted a fellow cyclist from Spain (and actually living in Munich) – Jose – also in Bratislava at the same time and heading in the same direction to finish his year-long trip and spent the evening together over some Glühwein and beers.

We left early the next morning with the objective of the day to get into our last country before Germany: Austria. The easiest and shortest way would have been to simply follow the Danube, but it seemed on our maps that the path was not quite paved – which at this time of the year would have meant muddy areas on the side of the Danube. We would also pass through the Soviet iron-wall on that day, which meant that apart from recent large highways, there are still surprisingly few roads connecting Slovakia and Austria. Luckily a border crossing only for pedestrians and bicycles was created in the northwest of Bratislava, which allowed us to avoid going half way up to the Czech Republic like we would have had to with a car. That path brought us along the Morava under the Devin castle and later past several monuments commemorating the death of people who tried to cross into the west during the communist time (several hundred shot trying to go across a river only a few meters wide). The bridge took us across the border right into the large Schlosshof castle.

The first reaction in Austria was that it felt weird to be in an almost immaculate country: every single house well-maintained, farms perfectly clean, no dirt on agricultural machinery, etc. Well, basically Austria – but we had just gotten used to more unkept places! We stopped in a local restaurant to get our first Wiener-schnitzel since Thailand (back then at an Austrian expatriate!).

Somehow, even if we had progressively gone back to western Europe, we had to readjust again – prices had just tripled by crossing the Slovak border, dogs were not chasing you or barking like half-wits (some even going into restaurants with their owners and quietly staying under the table!), we had to park the bike to the dedicated bike-parking area, etc. We yet got some weird interactions, first Austria was the first country where people started to speak German to us – taking for granted that we had to be locals, when we were obviously foreigners anywhere else, then Austria still remains the only country in western Europe where smoking is allowed in public places – which makes local restaurants not enjoyable.

After our warm lunch in a small village, we decided to return to the Danube to avoid the Vienna traffic. Traffic was light in this region, but we knew it was going to pick up as we approached the capital city – so we wanted bike paths! Just as we got on the official Danube route, the rain once again started and we made our way up the Danube and into Vienna without many issues, enjoying what we could of the paved way. As it was approaching nightfall, we found our AirBnB and were happy to unload our wet things from the bike.

All the accommodation prices skyrocketed once we entered Austria and we were desperate to find places that were still within our budget. Hoping to once again use Warmshowers, we contacted a few people along our path in Vienna, but they didn’t seem considerate of a winter cyclist’s needs (arriving at 8pm and leaving before 7am would be fine in the summer, but not in the freezing cold and 8 hours of daylight). We instead found the cheapest (but not cheap!) AirBnB along our route. Because we arrived in a new capital, we couldn’t help but checkout the bike store across the street (looking for a new battery for the dead tachometer) before turning in for the night.

The next morning, with all our bags dry, we got back on the EuroVelo 6 and continued up the Danube. We immediately noticed that the bicycle infrastructure was worlds apart from anything we had been riding on this entire trip. The signage made navigation incredibly easy, we rarely cycled on the side of the road, and nearly everything was paved. This was a huge surprise because our navigation apps showed few bicycle lanes, so we were expecting a lot of dirt trails on the side of the river. In addition to the superb infrastructure, the weather was also sunny – making the day that much more enjoyable. We took a detour from the trail in Tulln to see the St. Stefan church, find a bakery for snacks, and peek at the Christmas market. Although it was sunny, we had no desire for a cold picnic lunch, so we found a small inn in “Langenschönbichl” (yeah, we also had to get used to German words!) to take a break. Once we had our fill, we continued along the EuroVelo and made our way through a small forest. The rest of the afternoon, we followed the north side of the Danube and enjoyed the extremely flat route. We cycled into Krems an der Donau and met up with our Warmshowers host in the downtown. Thankful for him opening his apartment to us for the night, we made a hearty pizza and chatted about our tour.

The next morning, we left Krems and cycled through the historic downtown before rejoining the Danube. Now back on the southern side of the river, we followed the EuroVelo through vineyards and up a few small hills. The weather wasn’t as great as the day before (it felt much colder without the sun), so we were both happy that we decided to take a break in Melk to do some sightseeing. In the late morning after cycling 35 kilometers, we arrived at our guesthouse, dropped our things, and headed up to the gigantic abbey looming over the village. As we were milling around the inner courtyard, we realized that we got lucky and were able to join the afternoon tour without reserving a ticket in advance. The next two hours were filled with discovering the abbey’s history and gazing at the impressive Baroque architecture. Unfortunately, the abbey doesn’t allow photography, so our dear readers will have to visit to see the inside (or do a quick Google search). We finished the day with a Glühwein at the Christmas market before returning to the hotel for the evening.

After a hearty hotel breakfast the next morning, we saddled up and set out for Ennsdorf. We were having difficulties finding simple, cheap accommodation along the Danube, so our destination was now determined by places that fit within our budget – today, this meant a 30€-Airbnb, 80 kilometers away. We left Melk and crossed the Daube to the northern side (the navigation said that this way was faster). Shortly after we left, the clouds started to become denser and a downpour erupted just 20 kilometers after we left Melk. After we threw on our rain gear, we decided to keep riding until we found a warm restaurant for lunch. We stopped at a large restaurant and bit-by-bit, peeled off our wet layers to hang up to dry, and relished the hour in a warm room. The rain had subsided that afternoon to sprinkles, so we continued along and rushing to get to our destination before nightfall. Throughout our trip, we wouldn’t consider 80 kilometers to be a long day, but now with extended restaurant lunches and only 8 hours of daylight, we would consider this distance to be the maximum that we could achieve in one day. The EuroVelo took us more inland in the afternoon, avoiding some marshy areas of the Danube, but we decided to deviate from the route and follow the river so we wouldn’t have to add extra time zig-zagging through fields. At the beginning, this seemed like a fantastic decision because we were following a newly paved path, but it suddenly turned to ancient cobblestones, concrete blocks and rock piles with a sign stating that cycling wasn’t allowed. We stopped and deliberated for a few minutes and looked at a few maps to figure out our best option: 1. Keep on going straight, 2. Cycling through the wet and muddy forest, or 3. Turning around. We decided to continue going forward despite awful trail conditions and it turned out to be the best choice because the path became paved again in two kilometers. We quickly stopped for a quick break before continuing the last 10 kilometers to Ennsdorf, rushing because it was after 4pm and we could notice daylight rapidly receding.  

Just as we were closing in on our goal, it started to rain again so any hopes of arriving dry and not needing to hang all our gear had diminished. The family hosting us were surprised to find that they were still having cyclists so late in the season; they mentioned that another young pair of cyclists had also stayed with them two weeks prior. For being a cheap AirBnB, the family was very accommodating and let us wash and dry our clothes and even said that we could have used their jacuzzi if it hadn’t been raining. After a day soaking wet, a jacuzzi was not quite are greatest envy anyway and we would have better dreamt of an open wood-fire! We set off the next day feeling clean and refreshed.

Leaving Ennsdorf, it seemed like the weather was cooperating when we cycled through Enns and back to the northern side of the Danube (since Linz is mostly on the southern side, the north side would have less traffic). As we approached the city, we passed the steelworks and were happy that we chose the north side – the Sulfuric smell was intoxicating a few hundred meters away, we couldn’t imagine what it would have been like right next to us. We wanted to see some of downtown Linz, so we crossed the Danube and pulled up to the Christmas market in the main square – and had a very Germanic snack (sauerkraut and sausages) while we enjoyed bit of sun. Afterwards, we pushed the bike through a little bit of the city before we decided to cross back over the bridge and continue west. For the most part, the weather seemed stable as we were cycling along, so we were considering stopping for a picnic lunch on the shores of the Danube. Just as we pulled off the trail at a rowing clubhouse for a bit of shelter, a major downpour had caught up with us… which wasn’t making an outdoor lunch enticing. As we were looking around the premises for a dry spot, we noticed that there was a restaurant on the top floor of the club house AND it was offering warm lunch specials, so we decided to save our lunch for another day. As we sat inside the warm restaurant munching on warm falafel, we watched the torrents roll across the Danube and were happy that we pulled over when we did. By the time we left, the rain had significantly subsided, and we continued along the EuroVelo 6.

This part of the bike path wasn’t very developed, so we cycled for quite a few kilometers on the flat river banks before needed to turn off and navigate. However, just as we were reaching the next village, we noticed that the hills west of us had disappeared completely due to another storm closing in on us and we cycled like mad towards Feldkirchen an der Donau, looking for some shelter from an impending downpour. We pulled up next to a small supermarket just as pea-sized hail started pelting us. We stayed under the roof for a few minutes as the worst part of the storm passed, mostly laughing and taking videos of our situation, and then continued cycling the last few kilometers to our hotel in Aschach-an-der-Donau. This night would be our last (and most expensive) in Austria, and we couldn’t be happier.

Every evening, we were spending hours scrolling through internet websites trying to find the cheapest places to stay along the Danube, shocked at the hotel prices. Even in the low season, there were no deals in the hotels and half of the guest houses weren’t listed on internet aggregators like Booking – leaving us to look through every single directory in every village’s homepage. (Pro tip for cyclists: type ‘pension’ in Google maps, for some reason it will show guesthouses that are not listed anywhere else).

We are not quite sure what is going on in Austria, but yield management pricing still has not been discovered around there – the price is the same, fixed, yearlong, no discounts even when the area is deserted: we were wondering why anyone with a car would stop in those villages when they can get much better places for much less from international hotel-chains in Linz. With bicycles, things are a little more difficult, but given that we have not crossed a single cyclist in weeks, the business model is perfectible. This hotel was yet our last in Austria and although glad that we were not freezing outside, we just couldn’t understand what made accommodations three times more expensive than the neighboring countries for a poor service – here we didn’t even have a water boiler or studio kitchen, and had for only exchange with the owner a key and post-it left in the mailbox. Austria was our 20^th country on the way this year, and not our best recommendation for the value-for-money! We were feeling deeply annoyed to give away daily 4 months of average wage in Tajikistan to a ghost-host while we had stayed at amazing families in Central-Asia just a few weeks ago. We did not linger long in Austria!

After an evening with the heater on full-blast, we work up and put on our rain gear once again. The rain never really subsided overnight, so we were wet immediately. We spent the first hour cycling through a ‘remote’ stretch down a narrow country road along the shore, shocked by the frosted hilltops just a few hundred meters higher than us. Even through we were well into December, this was another reminder of cold winter weather to come. Once we reached the main road, we cycled up and down a few hills and made a lunch stop in Engelhartszell-an-der-Donau (“the spot of the hard fishermen on the Danube” if interested in the translation of weird Germanic locations!) to dry off. This time it was hearty-yet-expensive venison ragout and Schnitzel with a warm coffee. Shortly after Engelhartszell, we reached the first border crossing with Germany across a dam and decided to leave Austria behind. We could have continued cycling a few dozen more kilometers in Austria but found it too tempting to not cross at this juncture. As we rode along the dam, it was soon apparent that we couldn’t simply ride across… instead we had to carry our luggage, the bike, and the trailer up and down two flights of stairs. This added a little extra stress, but then we could finally say that we entered Germany. Shortly after the border, the rain subsided, and we rolled through some small German towns along the Danube. We reached our hotel in the middle of Passau in the late afternoon a bit stunned that we were so close to home. Cedric had worked tens on times in this area a few years before. As we cycled up to the hotel, many people were about in the streets and we received many stares. Ah yes, the return to Germany, were it’s completely normal for people to stop dead in their tracks and just stare at you if you look out of place (the Pino and trailer don’t help). Passau is the starting point of many river cruise ships on the Danube and before we carried our rig up into the hotel, we became the focus of a group of English-speaking senior tourists who apparently seemed more impress that we had been outside in December than biked non-stop from eastern Kazakhstan (because that’s probably just a few miles east of their cruise’s final destination in Budapest…)! We spent the evening walking around town, not too much in the churches and monuments (we had already seen enough and had been in Passau previously), but more interested in German shopping chains: Rewe, DM, Saturn, etc. Not because it was anything interesting, but probably just to make sure we were back!

From Istanbul, we had tried to figure a route back home by splitting to way into three parts: first Istanbul-Belgrade, then Belgrade-Budapest and finally Budapest-Augsburg (the three parts not being equidistant, but the road after Budapest is very obvious all the way to the end. So, getting closer to Augsburg, we could finally be able to estimate the number of days left on the saddle, and starting to count backwards with the constraint of being back in Augsburg the 18^th of December (Cassie’s parents arriving the 19^th in Germany), we figured that we could spend three days in Budapest.

After days of cycling in the rain, the weather turned to sunny but freezing cold in Budapest – we are still not sure what is a better weather for cycling versus sightseeing – and we started by visiting the most remarkable building of Budapest, the parliament building. Just as we imagined it, it is a very impressive construction, and very scenic on the shore of the Danube. We however felt that the visit was deceptive, overpriced and more of a tourist trap than anything else: you mostly see the corridors and stairs, a short glimpse at the parliament room, a long explanation at the very important symbols of the Hungarian monarchy (which is funny since Hungary is a republic and has not had a king for a quite a while now) – this very much felt like the story of “King Ottokar’s Scepter” or maybe an attempt to sell monarchy-crap-souvenirs?

A bit incensed by the high price of entrance tickets everywhere, Cédric and I decided to wander around the city and enjoy the sights from the outside. From the parliament, we crossed to the Buda (west) side of the city and wandered through the Fisherman’s bastion and Citadel area. Despite the odd time of year, there were still plenty of other tourists hanging around and posing for their online social media narcissism pictures. We find normal posing and picture taking okay, but things get bizarre when people take off their coats, take some high-heel shoes out of the bag for a few minutes, in freezing temperatures, hop up on a ledge, and do a range of poses, imitating a few tens of thousands of other people that have already taken their shot the current year, while their friends snap away. The rest of the day, we wandered around more of the city and searched for a cheap mulled wine (which we finally found at a Lidl). The next few days in Budapest were spent walking around more corners of the city, taking us from City Park to the Gellert baths. We also visited the Hungarian National History Museum to gain a better understanding of the country and its origins (along with avoiding the cold outside). It was peculiar that we didn’t find any of our sartorial friends mulling around the museum.

After we spent enough days off of the bike, Cédric and I packed our luggage and continued following the Danube northwards. The first hour or so was again through the chaotic industrial suburbs and shopping centers before getting back onto the EuroVelo 6 bike lane. The conditions had gotten colder and colder every day – although the plus side of bitter-cold temperatures in the winter is usually sun – and we were now leaving Budapest with -7c and our gloves were on the very limit of supportable.

We took our first break in Szentendre, a cute little artsy town on the shore of the Danube, that we would have probably enjoyed a little more if our main focus was not to just get warmer which basically meant to quickly get back on the tandem to produce our own heat. Cedric had contacted the mayor of the next village – Dunabogdany – a few days before, because somehow, he had some memories of that village being the hometown of a part of his family (hence his Germanic family name). The mayor having the same family name, being not much older than us and speaking German, plus Dunabogdany being small enough, he figured that we could meet up – just because “why not”! A coffee turned into a generous lunch while we tried to compare some genealogy trees that proved to be either uncomplete or faulty as many names were matching but not quite the structures. We may need some additional genealogy data about all that – there are a surprising number of Josef’s but none of the dates match – yet we nevertheless had some interesting conversations.

Given the short days of December, the temperatures well below freezing, our numb extremities and the different breaks during the day, our originally planned destination was far from being within reach and we decided to stop at the first guesthouse right after Visegrad, shortly before the sunset. Back in Western Europe, Sundays meant all shops closed so we spent the evening buying everything edible in sight at a small food stand (this meant burgers, chips, all the pastries… I think we were the best customers that day).

The next few days were a continuous amalgam of rain showers and following the spotty paths of the EuroVelo 6. We noticed traffic also started to increase along the Danube, so we were happy whenever we could follow a bike lane. Fortunately, the temperatures increased ever-so-slightly, and our digits weren’t as painfully cold as before Budapest. After leaving the guesthouse, we arrived in Esztergrad in the mid-morning and were surprised to find an enormous basilica looming over the city. It was a bit of a detour, but we cycled up the mount to the doors of the basilica and caught a glimpse inside Hungary’s tallest building (and head of the Hungarian Catholicism) before Sunday mass started. After cycling another 40 kilometers, we decided to spend that night in Komárno on the Slovakian side of the Danube – instead of Komarón on the Hungarian side. After doing a bit of research, the hotels appeared to be significantly cheaper in Slovakia and the town had its own small Christmas market where we could enjoy a bit of mulled wine. If you are wondering why the two cities have a surprisingly similar name, it is not a lack of imagination, but simply that the two sides of the city was one single Hungarian town until the reshuffling of borders after WW1 in central Europe, and even a century later the Slovak side still speaks mostly Hungarian.

The next morning, we re-entered Hungary and were surprised by the number of trucks dominating the road. Now that the work week had begun, goods and products were being shipped and we were getting soaked from the traffic driving through the roadside puddles. Luckily, we only had to share the road for a few kilometers before we could turn off to a quieter road. The proximity with Austria and further to the west of Europe also seems to make that region an attractive location for the plants of various companies. A quieter road didn’t come without its disadvantages, however, and it progressively degraded into a muddy track. Without many options, we (meaning mostly Cédric while I filmed) pushed the bike three kilometers through slick mud to the nearest road. Once we got back on the road tried to clear all of the mud and sticks from the wheels (i.e. finding puddles on the asphalt and trying to dissolve the mud on the frame with the hands…), we hoped that this was the last mud track of our trip. Now significantly dirtier, we cycled into Györ and made an absolute mess as we brought our things into a fancier than usual hotel (with spa, breakfast included, etc. … luxury!). We spent the last remaining hours of sunlight walking through the historic downtown and drinking mulled wine at one of the stalls. Again, after Pècs and Szekszárd, Györ is a little known town, almost no tourists (especially compared to nearby Budapest and Vienna on both sides) but remarkable architecture.

The next morning, we packed our things and prepared for our last day cycling through Hungary. It seemed like the weather was going to cooperate this day and we saw blue skies and sun for the first time in a few days. We enjoyed the large breakfast and realized we weren’t that far from Germany. Short anecdote: we saw our first non-tourist German, a worker on a business trip who had apparently just got up on the wrong side of bed and made a grumpy scene in a barbarian broken English because he the fresh fruits weren’t fresh enough for his needs! That entertained us later on the bike for a few days, and whenever something wasn’t working well we would yell, immitating the guy, “I need fresh fruits”.

Back on the road, more good news was that we were going to have paved bike lanes all the way to Bratislava – 75 out of 80km on a separate asphalted lane, the dream! Although the weather might have finally been on our side, the bike mechanics weren’t. Just a few kilometers after our start, we were struggling (again) with the front-chain sliding on the chain-ring, but the chain-ring had now reached a point that playing with zip-ties to push the chain on the sprocket was no longer an option. We had seen the problem coming for a few thousand kilometers and had hoped that we would make it back home without visiting another bike shop – at that point less than a thousand kilometers. Being in Europe made us less nervous than we would have been in Central Asia; we are never too far from a bike shop anymore. The situation yet was that Cassie was now pretty much wading through molasses. We thus decided to shorten the chain to have the tensioner pulling as much as possible – but the next problem became that chain was so extended that quick-links were not usable anymore, and managed finally to remove even more links to connect the two ends of the now very-shortened chain (and hoping that the connection or the chain would not break, although the area being completely flat we had the possibility of Cedric pushing the tandem alone to Bratislava…).

We entered Slovakia – almost without noticing it – along the Danube, apart from the sunny weather turning around and welcoming us with torrential showers and sudden strong headwinds. We just tried to pay no mind to that and pushed the last hour soaking wet before reaching our accommodation for the next two nights. The way getting into downtown Bratislava by bicycle is probably one of the best we have seen so far for a capital city; there are good bike lanes everywhere and bridges across the Danube for bikes and pedestrians only. We went from farmland to our accommodation in the city center almost without having to stop, dealing with traffic or struggling with car-only paths (Belgrade…). The good thing with traveling in central Europe during the low season is that you can get great bargains in the larger cities – and we enjoyed having a 6 people apartment to dry all our gears with the heaters full-on!