Friday, June 22, 2018

Riding to places such as Landshut, Passau, and the Starnberger See--and even "racing" in a triathlon

Bavaria at its best
Austria was fun--but it lasted only for a week or so. But luckily, the weather in Europe kept holding for weeks on end, and I made the best of my time while Sabine had to slave away in the mines of the City of Munich. Actually, I did get to see her in action when she met with a team of Kampfmittelspezialisten at one of her projects where the tiny threat of WW2 bombs is on par with the tiny number of lizards, which are protected by European law (and are thus under her tutelage).
Easy now on that shovel, Felix, we don't wanna get blown up by a yet-undetected bomb!
On that particular day, after watching her in action, I used her trusty Skoda (which currently is in the shop with four blown shock absorbers after just 100,000 kilometers--WTF, Volkswagen???) down to the Ammersee and went for a 50-miler that included another two minor lakes. Really, riding my bike beats the heck out of having to work, especially with lizards and sweaty dudes. All these six pics are from the Ammersee Runde, including the one of the gravel section that I had to traverse.
Artwork in the middle of the forest






During my remaining three weeks in Germany I went on daily rides in the immediate vicinity of Freising as well as longer excursions, made possible in part by a cool mapping app that I had downloaded (and paid for). One day I rode down to Landshut and its beautiful castle (as always, up on top of a damn steep hill) and old town, both of which were reminiscent of Burghausen. Great ride!






Another good trip was my overnighter down to the Starnberger See where my old friend Jutta lives. We (and that includes her late husband Gerhard) go back to the early 2000s when the two of them participated in Lubbock's Buffalo Springs Triathlon and Judy and I adopted them. Nothing like friends, even if they now, thanks to progressing age, rip it up on eBikes! This roundtrip yielded more than 115 miles over two days. (The pic of Jutta and me was taken during a torrential 10-minute downpour while we walked down to the Starnberger See from her home. The cows? Don't ask me why they were in the middle of the road in Oberpfaffenhofen.)







Every day (except one rainy one) yielded a different ride. Some were longer than others, and some ended up with a final stop at the "nekkid" lake where people like to stop on their way home from work--you know, no clothes makes it easier to just cool off for a quickie. Others included a lunch stop in some biergarten a couple dozen miles from home. And some took us to a new brew-pub or even the Hallertauer Bierfestival in Allershofen.






On one Friday, when Sabine didn't have to work, we took the train to the tiny town of Plattling, about an hour east of Freising. There, we got on the bikes, rode to the Danube, took the pedestrian-and-bike ferry across the rain-swollen river, and then rode down to Passau, a city at the confluence of three rivers. Dude, that was one cool day with lots of sights (and here I'm not chronicling the planned encounter with her old boss, Hubert, a Bavarian original). Did you know that you can ride the bike path along the Danube all the way from its spring down to the Black Sea? And did I mention that the Danube is the second-longest river in Europe?












So, my time in Europe was spent riding my bike, when I didn't cook, went shopping, or did other chores around Sabine's place. Retirement is not such a bad thing. And if you're a mega-stud like am (ahem....) you get invited to race with one of this year's 19 City of Munich teams in the world-renowned (so the announcer) Erdinger Stadttriathlon, as the fill-in cyclist for a team that lost its rider thanks to an injury. You even get invited to the post-event Bar-B-Q cum cake-eating extravaganza at Familie Brunner's compound. All this is true, except the mega-stud part: Holy Moses, how can one lose so much speed over just a few years? I'm too ashamed to tell you how pathetic I was. No wonder only one of about two hundred million sizzling-hot babes is still interested in me...




Just this Tuesday I returned, and since then I've been adjusting back to the dry heat and generous breezes of West Texas. Why? Shit, I don't know. I really don't. I really like it here (and I love my place, which is my home), but there must be a good reason why I'm about to leave in about 24 hours for the California wine country....
Last view of Freising and Sabine's place somewhere
Jürgen

Monday, June 11, 2018

Cycling in Austria's lake district in the Salzkammergut


For the better part of three weeks I have now been in Europe, enjoying a glorious early summer that has none of the insane eat and weather extremes that West Texas has to offer during this time of year. Imagine "hot" temps of 78 degrees Fahrenheit and wind gusts of 8 mph! Almost every day has been sunny, with occasional afternoon thunderstorms that bring moisture to the fields and allow the world around me to appear in more than just fifty shades of green.


It is Sunday morning, I'm sitting on the balcony, the birds are singing their songs, and the sun is shining from the blue sky. Later in the day we'll go for a long ride to Erding to scope out the course for next weekend's Stadttriathlon, but now I'll take some time to think back of the one-week trip to Austria that Sabine and I took recently.


When I arrived in Europe, we had not made any plans yet in regard to what kind of summer vacation we wanted to take. Sabine had been using up some vacation time for this and some for that, so a longer stay in Italy or France was out of the question as that would have required a fairly long drive. We wanted to take the bikes along, and a few recommendations from some of her colleagues prompted Sabine to check on places to stay in the Salzkammergut--and one day later we were on the way to the tiny community of Mattsee just about 30 kilometers north of Salzburg.

Downtown Mattsee
The lake
Marina 
Quite frankly, I would have never thought that we'd find such a cycling friendly area with diverse cycling opportunities in spectacular countryside just about 120 kilometers from Freising. Here we read about Tuscany and Provence, but then a gem like this lies almost at your doorstep. When I grew up, I had always heard that the Salzkammergut, with its focal point of Salzburg, is always wet and always cloud-shrouded, thanks to the way the mountains funnel into a perfect cul-de-sac, but at least during our week we were shown that not preconceived notions about a place are necessarily right all the time.
Towering late-afternoon thunderstorm somewhere in the distance
Riding along one of the many lakes in the Salzkammergut
The weather pattern was very similar to what we've been experiencing here in Freising: cool nights (with temperatures as low as the high 50s), lots of sun at somewhat higher day-time temps than Freising around 82 to 85, occasional localized afternoon and night-time thunderstorms, and mild to non-existing winds outside of those micro-bursts. It doesn't get better.

The two-lake panoramic view from our west-facing balcony
The Salzkammergut encompasses a region north and north-east of Salzburg that one could broadly classify as the pre-Alps. While south of Salzburg the really big mountains are located (by New World standards these mountains, thanks to their age, are really not all that tall on paper but they are, well, the Alps!), and the Salzkammergut sees more of medium-sized ridges and occasional solitary peaks as well as rolling hills that are used mainly for hay-making, thus making the landscape appear even more soft and undulating.
Tiny roads amidst mountains--what more could one ask for?
We arrived in Mattsee on the Friday after Pentecost--gosh, they have lots of religious holidays in this part of the world! Our apartment was situated just outside of Mattsee, in Ochsenharing, an even smaller community where all street addresses are simply "Ochsenharing" plus a house number--who needs street names? We had rented the top half of a beautifully situated house with a spectacular view of two lakes, a large open-concept  living/dining/kitchen area, two spacious and comfortable bedrooms (one of which we never used), and two balconies--one to the east for breakfast, and the other to the west, for afternoon chichis and dinner. For six nights we paid 600 euros, and compared to other vacation domiciles that we've had this one ranked at the top.
Our vacation home with the west-facing balcony
Every day we would either start at the house or drive the car a few kilometers to make it possible to explore as many routes as possible. Mattsse itself is adjacent to three different lakes--the Mattsee, the Obertrumer See, and the tiny Grabensee. All of them are leftovers of the last ice age when glaciers scraped out these huge indentions, leaving tell-tale mounds of rock and earth that now are hills. On our first reconnaissance ride we touched all three of these lankes, plus the Wallersse, which is only one good set of rollers to the southeast.
Our captain for our free afternoon boat ride around the Mattsee
The Mattsee from almost water level
If water levels are just right, this little e-boat can cross over into the next lake
If you were to see one of the cycling-specific maps that the local tourist authorities give out, you'd go nuts, at least if you are a cyclist. The detail of the maps is astounding, and the number of different mapped (and signed) routes is immense. There are mountain bike trails, and there are road rides that can take days--for example the Mozart Radwanderweg covers several hundred kilometers and is lined with cycling-friendly hotels and pensions. Route descriptions use a ranking system that allows you to tailor your ride to your abilities, and the sheer number of routes makes it easy to combine or abbreviate various loops. Most of the established and named routes (think Grosse Seenland Runde or 4-Regionen Tour) can be downloaded as a GPX file so you can use your smartphone to navigate. And let me tell you, lots of people do just that!

Pondering the fork in the road
E-bikes, gravel paths, and good signage are all part of the experience
Negotiating yet another town
And pondering again ...
It's exciting to see so many people on bikes, enjoying the outdoors. Of course, there are those of us in Lycra and on svelte machines (even if we're not always that svelte ourselves!), but the number of mountain and especially trekking bikes is so much larger. Come into any small town where people congregate around the ice cream shop or the Konditorei, and you will see tons of normal folks stopped for a coffee and some cake. The advent of the e-bike has definitely had a positive impact on cyclo-tourism as it now enables anyone to ride roads and unpaved trails that formerly were accessible to only the really fit. There will be whole families out for a ride, with the kids on non-assisted bikes while the parents (and often the grandparents) will easily keep up on their e-bikes.

Never underestimate the power of the strawberry ice cream bomb!
Our daily rides varied in length from about 35 miles to 60 miles, often topped off at the end with a swim in a lake. Probably the most spectacular of all those days was the one when we hit the Mondsee, Wolfgangsee, and Attersee. This was definitely the most Alpine of our rides, less so because of the elevation gain (no ride had more than 4,500 feet of climbing, and all of that gentle with very, very few really steep sections) but rather because of the spectacular mountain backdrop in this area due east of Salzburg. The color of those lakes was like that of the Caribbean, ranging from turquoise to light and deep blues, depending on the angle of the sun. That final dip into the Mondsee at the end of the day was delicious!





The towns that we passed through are as picturesque as what you'd expect when in the land of The Sound of Music. St. Gilgen at the west end of the Wolfgangsee was probably the most "Austrian" of all of those places. Bad Ischl, Mondsee, and Fuschl am See took close seconds. One day we rode another spectacular road through the Strubklamm where a tiny road clings to one of the two steep sides of deep ravine. We had to cross through a few short tunnels, and there were a few steep pitches, but overall it was amazing how easy this ride proved to be in steep terrain like this.





We are beyond training for something (even if we are going to participate as cyclists in the team portion of next week's Stadttriathlon), so it didn't take much to convince ourselves to stop here and there to take photos and always have a beer-and-something lunch. And, to stay true to my true desires, we also made time for a visit of the Obertrumer brewery, the Trumer Privatbrauerei. We enjoyed the best brewery tour I have ever been part of. For more than 1 1/2 hours, the two of us and one other beer aficionado enjoyed the explanations and tales of Johanna Panholzer, the rotund beer sommelier. This is one of the few commercial breweries in the world that uses an open fermentation process. You should see the huge stainless steel tanks that are open and allow you to watch the yeast do its slowly bubbling work. Our tour ended with the pouring of four different beers in the attractive, modern tasting room. Johanna gives only one tour a week, and she obviously enjoys what she's doing.




Frau Panholzer's likeness at the Trumer Privatbrauerei
And the real Johanna Panholzer in action
Ultra-modern open-fermentation tank
Old-fashioned brew-pan that's no longer being used
So, all in all, this was a very, very nice short vacation that required minimal driving to an immensely attractive destination. And even on the way home we took in another attraction, the world's longest castle in Burghausen, just right after crossing back into Germany. Burghausen, which is well-known to those interested in jazz thanks to its annual music festival, is a medieval town on the banks of the Salzach, superbly preserved (and obviously not touched by the bombings of WWII) and scenic as hell. The castle with its six separate courts is built on a ridge overlooking the city, and it's exactly 1,051 meters long, making it the world's longest. Very cool stuff! (I should also mention that a few days later I went on a long ride to Landshut, which also has a beautiful castle and an equally well-preserved old town--and both cities were ruled by the same duke, prince, or whatever he was.)
Panoramic view of the longest castle in the world, Burghausen, at 1,051 meters
Old Burghausen
A model of the castle in Burghausen
One of the six castle courts
So, the takeaway from all this is: We unexpectedly found a cycling destination with fabulous infrastructure, variety, and a slow way of life, just the right thing to unwind and cover a few quality miles.
And what would a blog entry be without a snapshot of beauty, now and then?
Jürgen