Through Austria's Alps
Of Dreamlike Landscapes and GRAND Encounters
Austria is probably one of the best countries out there for cycling.
That may sound strange at first – after all, you have the Alps to cross! To our surprise, however, there are several routes through Austria with hardly any climbs, and instead leading through valleys of green forests with crystal-clear rivers and lakes surrounded by snow-covered mountain peaks. In addition to the usually quite pricey holiday flats, there are numerous affordable campsites with great sanitary facilities and a beautiful view.
Table of Contents
- Say Cheese, it’s the Police!
- Mountains and Peeping Toms
- Chanterelle Pasta and Travel Stories
- Procrastinator 2.0
- The First Hardship
- Camp it like Heidi
- A Chicken with Style
- Rain, more Rain and Rain again
- Joel Makes a Scene
- Bikepacker Community
- Bad Gastein and the Belle-Époque of Grand Hotels
- The Sadists from Komoot
- Joel Makes a Scene Part 2
- Let’s Talk about God!
- Busy Road to Italy
However, Austria is no longer an insider tip for cyclists
– especially (more senior) e-bikers have discovered the country for themselves – which can lead to problems and accidents if the power (or weight) of one’s own vehicle is underestimated. We saw an elderly lady falling from a standing position right onto her head – not wearing a helmet. Therefore, dear bikepacker friends: always wear a helmet and watch out for those e-bikes!
Say Cheese, it's the Police!
Strengthened, refreshed and with enough food for the next three days, we ride on from my Grandma’s house to the neighbouring country of Austria. Directly behind the town centre, the main road makes a U-turn and we can already glimpse the blue sign with the yellow stars: Republic of Austria!
However, we don’t make it to the sign just yet – the hill is too steep and we stop briefly at the bend. We chat to the two police people who are guarding the road towards Ellmau (just G7 things). According to them, we are the first ones without an e-bike today (they call bikes like ours ‘organic’ now …) and with so much luggage! When we tell them that we want to go on to Austria (and not to the lake Ferchensee, where Boris Johnson cooled off during the summit) they wish us good luck, because the road to Austria is much steeper than the one to the lake. After the obligatory picture of the federal sign we continue up the much too steep mountain, a first taste of Austria! And our navigation phone indicates that it will go on like this all day!
But then it becomes flat again. Luckily for us, Komoot had miscalculated the gradient, a peculiarity of the app that will often cause us to burst into huge relief or sheer despair later on. We are in the Leutasch valley, surrounded by massive, impressive mountains, green meadows with free-roaming cows and small villages in typical Austrian style all around us. It feels as if time has stood still, not last because of the Austrian motor vehicle prohibition signs: The car and motorcycle pictured look like they’re from another era.
Mountains and Peeping Toms
We come to an abrupt stop. For some unknown reason the hiking trail in front of us, which would take us to Telfs without much altitude gain, is closed. We have to go to the main road with a few kilometres of 7-8% gradient and are overtaken by some Speedies (our nickname for people on racing bikes). At least the views over the valley are great!
Finally, we arrive at 1310 metres above sea level, completely soaked with sweat and ride down the other side of the mountain into the Inn valley! Now it really feels like we are in Austria!
Arriving in Telfs, it’s time for an ice cream and a cold drink from the supermarket. We are a little nervous because we will spend the evening with Manfred and Ilse, who will provide us with a free place to sleep via the Warm Showers platform.
When we arrive, the family is still out, so we decide to go for a swim at the nearby river bank of the Inn. We meet a passer-by who tells us that it is customary to bathe naked here, but we put on our swimsuits anyway, as I can make out an old man watching us in the distance on the other bank of the river.
To call the Inn freezing cold would be an understatement. We can’t stand it for a minute, even though it’s hot and we’re sweaty. The old man still seems to be watching us. He gives me the creeps. Joel looks closer: “No, that’s not a man! That’s just a…strangely shaped trunk!” I don’t believe a word he says. But what’s a camera with 400x zoom for? So we bet on something and I photograph the man inconspicuously. And sure enough, it’s a strangely shaped trunk. I lost this bet.
Chanterelle Pasta and Travel Stories
Manfred and Ilse are our first hosts on the Warm Showers platform. We are prepared to camp in the garden, but they offer us our own room in their house and proper towels (not that microfibre stuff we’re normally using!).
We cook self-collected chanterelles in a cream sauce for everyone and have a long chat with Manfred. Ilse and Manfred are true free spirits and have travelled all over the world. We find their journey by canoe across the Danube to the Black Sea a few years ago particularly impressive. Ilse tells us that she finds the travelling somewhat addictive and that they have often considered staying somewhere permanently. Will we ever get rid of the travel bug? Who knows…
It is very inspiring to meet those two: we learn what permaculture means and I have a new favourite word: lässig (meaning something like relaxed/cool/casual; i.e.: it is so “lässig” to jump into the river after work).
When it starts to thunderstorm heavily at night, I snuggle up to Joel and am glad not to have to sleep in the tent tonight.
Procrastinator 2.0
The next day we fill up our water bottles with crystal-clear water from the local well, then we follow the Inn-Valley cycle path to – surprise – Innsbruck. The cycle path is very smooth to ride, but it leads along the motorway, so it is quite noisy.
We are pleasantly surprised by Innsbruck. A beautiful, very clean student town with picturesque scenery behind colourful terraced houses. We ride along the Inn until we see a young man in the city centre standing at one of the numerous bicycle stations, struggling with his bike. We have a repair kit (and an increasing amount of bicycle knowledge!) now, so we stop and offer our help. It turns out that André, a medical student from Germany, was supposed to be studying for his end-of-year exam. He then suddenly remembered that he hadn’t pumped up his bicycle tyre for a long time and came out here to do so. Now that’s what I call some proper procrastination!
Unfortunately, the pump provided at the bicycle station does not fit his valve. No problem, because as you all know from our Belgium Blog article, we have a great pump, so André can ride home again a short time later with a perfectly pumped up tire and continue to study (I wonder if his “thank you!” sounded a bit grumpy…?).
The First Hardship
In the evening we arrive at “Camping Inntal” and are thrilled: there is a pool and the sanitary facilities are from another world: ultra-modern, sparkling clean and every shower cabin is in a seperate room with a washbasin and a large mirror. Too bad we are only staying for one night! We put up our tent and check the weather forecast: it’s supposed to thunderstorm. Oh no, we still have to cook something for dinner (pasta). Luckily Joel’s father had given us a poncho/tarp, so I set about stretching the tarp between our tent and a power box. Joel checks the construction: well done! Now we have about 2 square metres of space in front of our tent that won’t get wet, so we can start cooking in peace.
15 minutes later: the rain whips down on our tent, so loud that we almost have to shout at each other. Every 30 seconds, a flash of lightning illuminates the deep grey sky, accompanied by a virtually uninterrupted roll of thunder. We huddle under the tarp on our camping chairs while trying to hold on to the construction with all four hands, which is tossed back and forth by the wind and pours down a torrent of water on Joel or me at irregular intervals. The downside of a tarp/poncho: it has a hood in the middle. Right over our camping cooker, unfortunately. Roughly every minute it completely fills up with water, which, if not emptied upwards, in time, pours completely over us.
Another flash of lightning lights up the darkness – crashing thunder right after. We are both hungry. It is cold and wet. I’m afraid there will be a petrol explosion if the rain or even lighning strikes the cooker. “We have to turn off the stove!”, I yell at Joel. “No!” he shouts back, “the pasta isn’t ready yet!” “…but the thunderstorm! We have to wait for it to pass!” After a heated discussion we actually turn off the cooker with the more-than-al-dente pasta and wait. But it doesn’t really get any better. After about an hour, at least the thunderstorm has moved on while the heavy rain persists – we finish cooking and eat half-drenched in the tent – it’s 10 pm.
Camp it like Heidi
When we leave the Inn-Valley cycle path, things get tough in terms of fitness: we ride on the Wilder Kaiser cycle path via Söll, St Johann in Tirol and Fieberbrunn and have to climb a few metres in altitude (“this must be at least 13%!”, I exclaim. “No,” Joel checks his board computer – “it’s only 10.5%!” “That must be wrong!!” I pant. – It goes on like this for quite a while).
But still it is the most beautiful of our cycle paths in Austria with breathtaking views of the surrounding mountains and valleys. We feel like we’re at Heidi’s (5-year-old protagonist of a very common Swiss Book/ animated TV-show).
In Söll we stop in the evening at a small supermarket for an ice cream and a cold drink (Römerquelle Emotion has become our absolute favourite!). In the field across the road, a farmer is driving his tractor, so Joel jumps over the embankment and seizes the opportunity to ask the man if we can camp in his field tonight. Shortly afterwards, the pasta is simmering in the camping cooker while we watch the sun slowly disappear behind the mountains from our camping chairs in front of the tent in the man’s field.
A Chicken with Style
Eventually we turn onto the Tauern cycle path to Zell am See. The campsite we had chosen here is packed – good for us, because we are allocated a small spot on the edge between two absent permanent campers. No screaming children and a view of the mountains!
Our only direct neighbour: A very posh chicken with an amazing hairdo (we affectionately nicknamed it Elton – unfortunately it didn’t want to give out the address of its hairdresser, Flo…). We stay for two days. In the evening it thunders again, but we have learned and this time we stay dry thanks to my new ingenious poncho suspension technique! Without getting soaked, the meatballs in tomato sauce taste twice as good!
And then – finally – after a few breakneck descents and climbs (18% and more – needless to say that we pushed the bikes most of the time …) we reach the Alpe Adria Trail at Lend (Andreas, we did it!).
Rain, more Rain and Rain again
Komoot has difficulties all day to indicate the gradients correctly – first for the worse then for the better. At lunchtime we are very happy to find that instead of a 15% incline for a few kilometres, only a dark (and very noisy) tunnel awaits us. The weather is unstable today, so we take our lunch break in a covered bus stop – good plan, because shortly afterwards it starts bucketing it down with rain. During the break we see at least ten bikepackers riding past us in full rain gear while we enjoy our lunch.
In the course of the afternoon, the Gastein valley increasingly clears up and we enjoy the view of the majestic hills. In Bad Hofgastein (the names are confusing: Bad Gastein, Dorfgastein, Bad Hofgastein…) we arrive at Bertahof Camping and I stay with the bikes while Joel checks us in.
Joel Makes a Scene
Suddenly I hear him shouting loudly: “HELLO, WE WANT TO CHECK IN!!!” Puzzled, I peek around the corner and see Joel literally screaming in the face of an elderly lady. I follow them inside the reception area. The lady hands us a slip of paper asking us to fill it out. “AH JANA,” Joel yells, “MAYBE YOU CAN FILL OUT THE FORM ALREADY!!!” “Ok, you don’t have to shout,” I say in surprise. The receptionist also looks at him in irritation. Later Joel explains that he knocked very loudly on the glass door and the lady just looked at him and didn’t respond, so he thought she was a bit deaf (she’s not) – she in turn probably thought Joel was a bit … special.
Bikepacker Community
On the camping ground for tents we are alone at first, in the course of the evening two other bikepackers join us, Birk on his way to Grado in Italy and the other (I’ll call him Theo for simplicity’s sake) in the opposite direction to Salzburg.
Bikepacker’s disease: We talk to someone all evening, but no one has thought to introduce themselves and so we often end up not knowing the other person's name/s.
Compared to us in particular and also in general, you could probably call Birk and Theo cycling professionals. We nearly choke when they tell us how many kilometres they cycle every day; and our bikes certainly do not ride in the same league either. Birk gives us some valuable tips about brakes (thanks, I’ve never heard of vitrification before!) and we were able to help Theo with strepsils and tea against his sore throat (as we have all sorts of medicine with us) – hopefully it wasn’t Covid…
Bad Gastein and the Belle-Époque of Grand Hotels
The next day will be our toughest so far: Firstly, it is significantly longer than our typical days through Austria – 90 kilometres, and secondly, with about a thousand metres of altitude, it is significantly more demanding than any other day so far.
That’s why we can’t wait for Theo to come back from the showers to say goodbye. Birk, who is travelling in the same direction, will catch us up anyway. After the first few easy kilometres, it is a heck of a climb up to Bad Gastein, so much that we have to stop and catch our breath every 20 metres or so, no pushing (only just …)! Shortly before the town centre, Birk catches up with us and sends us greetings “from the other colleague” (correct, Birk doesn’t know “Theo’s” name either, and we only come to learn Birk’s later). We snap a few pictures and then realise that we have to hurry: We have to catch a train through the mountain range of the Hohe Tauern, more precisely from Bad Gastein to Mallnitz, and the train only runs once an hour. We have to start pedaling harder.
In Bad Gastein we feel like we are thrown back in time into the Belle Époque. One Grand Hotel with pillars and large windows in Art Nouveau style is lined up alongside another, in the middle of the town a waterfall roars into the valley below. Unfortunately, the sad truth is that Bad Gastein has not been spared the ravages of time and is long since passed its prime. Most of the luxury hotels had to declare bankruptcy and are still empty today. Tourists now prefer to go to other places in Austria for winter sports.
With a feeling of melancholy and nostalgia, we continue – still uphill, by the way – and my ears are already ringing from the exertion – but we are late!
Luckily we catch the train at the last minute and also see Birk again (it’s about time now to introduce ourselves). When we arrive in Mallnitz, Birk wants to ride with us for a while – no problem, but we are … quite slow. Too slow – Birk realises after the third bend and we say our Goodbyes.
The Sadists from Komoot
We are going downhill for quite a long time and again, we have a brilliant view.
Nothing lasts forever though and after only 20 kilometres (reminder: out of 90 kilometres in total) we are back to alternating between 50 metres uphill and downhill. Our thighs are already pretty tired from the morning’s heavy climb. Eventually we figure out that the Alpe-Adria Trail actually runs constantly in the valley, but Komoot sends us up and down the mountains on both sides of the valley. Why? I suspect sadism on the part of the person who fed this route into the app’s system, but who knows. We start ignoring Komoot from now on and the route becomes more bearable, but at some point (around 60km in) our bums just hurt (yes, even Joel’s with his special Brooks saddle!)!
Joel Makes a Scene Part 2
We call our couch surfing hosts Varun and Eszter in Villach and tell them that our ETA will be about 2-3 hours later than planned. This doesn’t seem to be a problem as we suggest do the cooking and buy the necessary ingredients. At 8 pm we arrive in Villach completely exhausted. Let’s just cook, eat and then go to bed we think.
Varun and Eszter are not home yet, so we sit down in their garden and drink loads of water from the tap.
When they finally come home, we realise that they live according to a completely different rhythm than we do. Dinner at 10 pm, bedtime shortly after midnight, sometimes later. So we first have a beer on their beautiful balcony as they are not hungry yet. I find it hard to concentrate, because I have a mad headache. When Joel finally comes back from the toilet, face as white as the wall and asks if he can lie down quickly, we realise that we may have overstepped the mark – electrolyte loss and food deprivation – we have definitely reached our limits here.
Joel is lying on the kitchen floor and I hold his legs up in the air while I convince him to eat a Snickers. Varun and Eszter must think we are complete muppets. After about 20 minutes we feel safe to cook again and after a proper dinner we fall onto the couch completely exhausted.
One of the big pluses of our trip is that we meet people we would otherwise never have met. Most of our friends in Germany and England come from similar backgrounds, so in the broadest sense from the healthcare or business sector. At some point you forget that there is so much more out there.
Like Varun, a microchip architect from India and Eszter, a graphic designer from Hungary. The two met in India through Couchsurfing, as Eszter designs and paints large wall graphics for hostels and used to travel around the world before Covid.
Let's Talk about God!
From Villach we continue the next day via Italy to Slovenia. Shortly before the border, we fill up our supplies at Aldi. An elderly lady curiously looks at our bikes, whereupon Joel speaks to her and tells her what we are up to. (Anyone who knows Joel knows that just the slightest spark of curiosity in a stranger’s eyes can lead to them having to listen to our entire life story for at least 20 minutes – whether they like it or not).
The lady in question, however, seems genuinely interested. She thinks we are doing just the right thing, that one should not get too attached to material things. She hands us a little card her friend has made. There is an online workshop next week, free of charge of course, about peace. We seem to be just the right people for it. We should just have a look.
That’s nice, I think to myself and take the card. “This is exactly what God wants,” the lady continues. “That we spread peace. But for that to happen, all bad people must first be eradicated.” I smile tensely as my alarm bells go off, say goodbye and then to Joel: “Surely she was a Jehovah’s Witness or something?” – “Yes,” Joel shrugs his shoulders, unimpressed, “it says so right here on the card: www.jw.org.”
Well, Joel has actually spoken to a Jehovah’s Witness. You often hear that Jehovah’s Witnesses ring doorbells and want to engage you in a conversation about God. But that someone accidentally approaches the Witnesses … I’m sure they rarely experience so much initiative.
Busy Road to Italy
There are a lot of cyclists on the road between Villach and Tarvisio in Northern Italy – including a lot of speedies. One of them is so fast that I don’t see him when starting and he rides at full speed with his elbow into my handlebar. The man’s got a bleeding wound, but he insists on riding on. It is not a nice experience, but unfortunately there are moments like that on popular cycle paths. Since then, I always check three times before I start riding.
Shortly before Italy, we meet Thomas, a family man from Nuremberg, who is on his way to Udine in Italy during his holiday. Together we ride all the way to Italy and Thomas thanks us, because without us he wouldn’t have had the motivation to ride so far today, he says. In Tarvisio we say goodbye and turn off towards Slovenia.
Some more Impressions
