Five days on the trot

The days are flashing by in a spin of wheels, tent erections and laughter. Even if we complain about the food and its paucity of sustaining components, the noisy camp grounds, the lack of a good washing machine, the inability to find an internet cafe, the rain, the heat, the flies, the diversions along the path, the stinging nettles when you fall off, the price of an apple juice in Austria, the opening hours of supermarkets, the price of iced coffee in a cafe, the price of a beer that´s cold...we still laugh, often, ridiculously and spontaneously.

One thing that took the smiles off our faces was a side-trip to Mauthausen, a concentration camp where the prisoners of war were literally worked to death in the granite quarry. A photo of a young Italian man, dressed in his best suit, perched atop a hillside in his home town, his little white dog by his side, was my poignant moment. What did this man, and the other 120,000 plus thousand men who perished in the camp´s confines as a result of starvation, overwork and cruelty, ever do to deserve such a fate.

The villages we ride through are snapshots of daily life, a panoply of concerted industry: gardening, tending the animals in the barns, mowing and harvesting the fields, tying back the vines, picking the cherries and walnuts, shopping prior to midday for the two-hour close-down lunch break.

We have ridden the Danube valley in all its changing states: narrow high-wooded and rocky cliffs sprawling rich valley land dotted with villages and farms; terraced hillsides; barges pushing loads of crushed metal and cars and all manner of goods; then yesterday, pleasure boats, naked frolickers and fishermen. Tomorrow we leave Austria for a brief sojourn in Slovakia, then onto Hungary for a few days. New currency, new languages, new riding conditions.

I cannot always upload pics to the blog but there´s a great collection at http://www.tourdafrique.com/orientexpress/multimedia.html Check them out. You need to click on each country to see the progress.

More bloody gondolas, or technicals...
June 16: rest day in Regensberg
June 17: Regensberg to Straubing, 60 kms and about three hours
June 18: Straubing to Passau, 100 kms, four and three quarter hours
June 19: Passau to Linz, 105 kms, five and a quarter hours
June 20: Linz to Emmersdorf, 109 kms, five hours
June 21: Emmersdorf to Vienna, 120 kms, six hours, hot and sunny