Shortcutting

Some cities cannot be exited by anything other than a car. But the no-bike signed road in Hungary is a sliding scale and once you find out that the minimal safety requirements cannot be met, your often too far in, kilometres away from a turn-off and sweating profusely while trying to stay away from either falling off the curb to your right or getting sucked into the wooshing flow of heavy traffic on the left. Its a miracle we're still ok.

But then again, its also a miracle that almost ever single night we effectively meet marvellous people who put us up, often feed us and share with us parts of their lives that would be unreachable in any other scenario. These stories often unravel slowly, are sprinkled with misunderstandings due to gaps in the storyline and impractical translation but are woven in their totality into a wide array of the daily life so appealing to a stranger like me.

Sometimes it’s a household of architects who funnily enough have a shower installed under the slanted roof that needs the opening of the window to allow enough space for me. Another time it’s a retired Dutch couple that have moved permanently to the Hungarian countryside and live their lives like one continuous holiday.

One thing that is definitely not lacking in these late summer days is the sound of lawn mowers and grass cutters. Not one day has passed in the last week that our rest was not disturbed by trigger happy government officials of the green department. So if we end up getting driven off the road eventually, at least we will crash in a neatly kept slope.

Ups and downs

Where there once was an iron curtain, now there is nothing besides to debilitated border control buildings a few meters away from each other. In Austria the asphalt roads are flawless, but the German spoken is not really discernible from Czech, a language that even after a few weeks of hearing it on a daily basis still amazes me with the variety of unpronounceable consonants. The Republic has been a colouring picture for me, as I knew Havel, Kundera, Kafka and Dvorak, but never connected them to this par2ticular geographical area. The history book of Cesky has both its colourful and dark pages: oppression from fascism and communism in a long stretch communism are not easily forgotten or forgiven.

Maurice predicted that after our trip we will have had so many repairs that end up with completely different bikes from the ones we set out with. I have so far changed two tubes, a back tyre, a chain and the back blades and procured a new pump. Maurice has had less tyre trouble, has a continuing and ominous squeak around the front blades and also experienced a broken chain, but this time on the bottom of a hill, having to push the bike up 10 kilometre to find a fire fighter on holiday with construction worker's cleavage willing to help with a temporary solution. After two hours all the bikes in the vicinity had come apart, we had moved to his fathers tool shed and upon leaving the old man had shown his gold medal from a 1960 motorcycle race with tears in his eyes.

Other people that have proven to be of mayor help this trip are engineers: three in Germany and one more in the Czech Republic have hosted us. Old ladies have a similar knack to be of help: sitting in front of their house they gladly provide the odd travellers with a bit of water or a place to camp in the garden. Couchsurfing has since Berlin served us with a handful of surprisingly positive experiences as generous hosts have opened their homes and lives to us for the time of our stay.In the flat stretches of the Netherlands, wind was a factor to take into account, but since we entered our third country its all about elevation and we have noticed a certain upward mobility, definitely stretching into Austria as well. But vineyards and a very quaffable young white announced arrival at the Donau, and on its way to Vienna the river doesnt climb any maountains', so we're sticking close to it today.