This marks my first day in Hungary. The ride out of Slovakia was frustrating despite its gorgeous scenery. I pedaled past adolescent sunflowers eager to outcompete each other for the sun’s rays like newborn puppies blindly in search of a teat. The roads were so full of sand and gravel though that I couldn’t look away from them to admire the sunflowers’ glow for more than a just couple of seconds at a time.
Perhaps the prettiest invasive species on the planet apart from people
I’m spending tonight at a campsite here in Komárom called Hotel Thermal on the recommendation of my Polish friend, Simon. Thermal baths included in the price of admission.
Once I checked in and set up camp, I headed straight for the baths to relax. Today’s sandy ride was especially hard on my knees.
After returning shivering from the baths to my tent, I met a nice family from Belgium who offered me a chair in which to read and a beer to drink. Both of which I gladly accepted.
The object of many-a-curses
Tomorrow it’s on to Budapest (I hope), one of my favorite cities.
“Sunflower fields forever.” – John Lennon, first draft
Today’s Miscellany
America’s cultural contribution to this part of Slovakia is the name of a 24-hour roadside strip joint called the Hollywood Club.
Our weekend in Bratislava was wonderful. Bratislava is a well-kept secret to most Americans. Anyone going to Vienna should consider at least a couple of days here in Slovakia’s capital. It’s a day’s bike ride and an hour or so bus or train ride from Vienna.
Bratislava is home to plenty of good vegan food, cheap local beer, a fantastic selection of local wines for less than two euros per glass, a depressing but “nice” American styled mall, a charming old town, and Soviet-era buildings still in use.
Abby and I stayed at the Marrol’s Boutique Hotel. This is a great place to stay in Bratislava because it is walking distance to anything you’d want to do here on a 4 day trip. Plus it has a more than satisfactory hotel breakfast replete with veggies, sweets, unlimited espresso drinks, filter coffee, and the like.
I’m not one to shop except out of necessity, but even I must admit that Bratislava has a nice assortment of boutique stores with quality clothes at unbeatable prices. I picked up a linen shirt and fall jacket.
Just past the Aupark mall lays the city’s collection of dense soviet prefabbed housing. They’re called panelaks and they are bleak.
This neighborhood is among densest in Eastern Europe. It has thousands of units tucked beneath and along the freeway leading into the city center and feels more like public storage for humans than a neighborhood. This is no knock on the people who still live here. Mistakes in urban planning are hard to reverse. One generation’s fuck up can keep screwing people long after the builders die.
Abby and I had so much fun in Bratislava that we realized she needs to visit me in Budapest next weekend too. We bit the bullet and bought her plane ticket.
Abby arrives in Bratislava in just a few hours. In the meantime, I’m relaxing in the only open cafe here, Káva. Today’s a bank holiday and Slovakia is taking it very seriously, as they should.
I’m sitting here re-reading Letters to a Young Contrarian and Hitchens is urging me “travel as much as (I) can.” I am, I promise. The more I travel the farther I want to go. And with this thought, I took his advice and travelled across the street to a French-style bakery called Le Miam.
I stumbled into the best almond croissant I’ve ever tasted. The bakers at Le Miam are dedicated professionals, croissant craftsmen.
I finished Letters and my croissant then walked over to a bus station to wait for Abby, the wrong bus station as it turned out. On the way, I stopped to have some fun on a swingset. Pure enjoyment. What is it about whooshing back and forth and up and down that’s so fun?
I awoke at 6:48 am to the loud sound of a Serbian guy snoring in the bunk across from me. But it wasn’t until 9 am that I’d managed to pack up, eat the hostel breakfast, and start riding.
Today’s ride was pretty boring. The normal route was under maintenance so there was a large detour that took me on some busy roads past endless and uninspiring wheatfields. The highlight of the ride was meeting an Australian family that was on a day trip from Vienna to Bratislava. The dad and I rode together for 3km or so.
Ok, “uninspiring” might have been a little harsh
He told me how he’d spent four years straight traveling overland around the world. He saved up as a bartender (he even lived above the bar) in London for a year, then off he went for the next four to slow travel and work. He talked about being in Ireland for the end of The Troubles and having experienced other world events at a personal scale.
Returning to the humdrum of one place after four years on the move must have been quite the shock. I didn’t get to ask him about it though because he decided to hang back with his family – fair enough – and I zoomed onward toward city center to find a room.
A warning to riders who are sensitive to loud noises: the way into Bratislava is, mercifully, separate from cars but holy shit is it loud.
I was hungry as hell so I fired up my HappyCow app as soon as I made it into Bratislava. Lucky me, a spot with rave reviews called Vegan Kiosk was nearby. I had the Tempeh Burger. Yuhm. I ended up back there for dinner too and had the Classic Cheeseburger, and a slice of their sweet bread. Yuhuhm. This place gets 10/10 from me. I recommend their Tempeh Burger without reservation but I’d avoid the panini, it does not compare to the other items on the menu.
Between meals, I found a craft beer pub where I thought I’d sit down for a pint and search the internet for a room. €23 and a couple hours later I had made four Slovakian friends and drank a lot of really good Eastern European beer. One of the two couples were into cycling. The guy was a bike messenger and the woman a photographer. They suggested my next tour should be around the Baltic Sea. I’m in!
I rode with this couple for a few minutes toward my hostel then said goodbye. My first night in Bratislava was a success.
I moved on from The Leopold and lucked into a vegan counter service restaurant called Venuss. This place was awesome. The prices, portions, and quality were all just right. I got up to the register and learned that they do a 60% discount after 6 pm! What a find.
After my first round, I ran it back with another serving of Viennese dumplings, goulash, and beer. I enjoyed a nice chat with a German woman who was in Vienna for her work in hospitality. I declined her invitation for dessert at Venuss and instead went back to Veganista for two more scoops of their ice cream: one basil and one chocolate banana. I’m nothing if not a loyal customer.
I walked around Vienna’s neighborhoods as I made my way back to the hostel. On the way, I heard an irresistible sound: a basketball being dribbled. Like a dog on his favorite scent, I walked toward the noise. Things were hopping and bopping. Food vendors, a live Q&A session, and, most importantly, people were playing pickup basketball.
gametime
I stopped and played for a few games. 3-on-3 with one Austrian and three recent American college grads from the UCs and UW. It felt good and terrible to play. Good because I was playing basketball again. Bad because Ireland’s complete lack of basketball has me way out of practice. Anyways, a few wins and many missed layups later and it was time to call it a night.
Tomorrow it’s on to Bratislava, Slovakia where Abby and I will reunite for the weekend.
I’ve been excited about this day for a while so after delicious baked goods from Omas Backstube, I walked to the museum and waited with anticipation for it to open. The Leopold is ground zero for the legal dispute over the Schiele painting Portrait of Wally, which is housed there. It also has the largest collection of Schiele paintings anywhere in the world.
A carrot cake and two horseshoe-shaped treats that tasted nothing like a horseshoe
What a fantastic museum. I saw art by artists I’ve never seen or paid attention to before such as Max Oppenheimer, Albert Birkle, Rudolf Wacker, Oskar Kokoschka, Olga Wisinger-Florian, Edmund Kalb, Peter Altenberg, Richard Englander, Hans Kelsen, Rosa Mayreder, Martin Buber, Käthe Leichter, and Koloman Moser.
I wrote observations in my journal on what I saw but I’ll spare you most them.
Edmund Kalb never sold a single painting and spent much of his life tilling an independent farm
By the time I finished the Edmund Kalb exhibition it was 12:36 pm and time for lunch so I walked up to the museum restaurant on Floor 2. First order of business: espresso. Second? A tofu Japanese curry, what else?
After lunch, it was back to the art. I’d saved the best for last. I felt trepidatious walking to the Schiele rooms, as though I needed the art’s approval instead of the other way around. I savored every second in these rooms and looked through each at least twice.
As the meandering looks from the museum staff turned from bored to hostile I sensed that The Leopold was closing. ‘I don’t want this to be over,’ I thought. I felt at once satisfied and melancholic. Until yesterday, I had only seen one-off pieces of Schiele’s work. A couple of paintings at the Neue Galerie in New York and that was about it. Then in just two afternoons, I’d seen almost all of his publicly exhibited work, from years of anticipation to completion in under 48 hours. It was an experience I won’t soon forget. Schiele was 28 years old when he died—my age now—and he painted enough high-quality art to reverberate across generations and bring joy to people like me.
I’ll treasure my day at The Leopold for as long as I remember it.
A street sign in Tulln signifying the beginning of two days full of the artist
When I stopped to throw away an empty bag yesterday I noticed a map. On it, I saw that the Egon Schiele Museum was nearby. This was great news! If I had to pick a favorite artist, Schiele’d be the one so I headed for the museum this morning.
It didn’t open until 10 am, so once I reached Tulln (Schiele’s birthplace) I stopped for some coffee and too many baked goods: one nut bread, one apple pastry, and one poppy seed roll to ensure that I’d feel sick.
I spent about two hours at the Schiele Museum. It’s a gem, a small space with one room full of 13 paintings by Schiele from between 1905 to 1907 when he was about 15 to 18 years old.
Please open this awesome gate so that I can run like an excited kid at Disney Land through this museum
The Schiele Museum is unique because its paintings aren’t in the style one imagines when one thinks of Schiele (assuming one thinks of him and his art at all)—no spindly limbs or tortured poses. All but one of the paintings look as though they could have been painted by someone else. A forest landscape in the gallery is the only piece in which there are any hints as to what his art would become.
After going upstairs through the secondary exhibition on Schiele’s life, which I highly recommend—they’ve filmed a bunch of interviews with experts on his life and art—I stopped at a riverside food shack outside of Vienna for a veg platter full of halloumi and grilled veggies plus some good beer. Today’s ride was easy going without hills, heat, and just a little rain.
The ride into Vienna is an urban cyclist’s dream. There are fully protected bike bridges and lanes that plopped me right into the city zentrum. From the center, I cycled onto the medieval ring road that’s been turned into a protected bike lane. I zipped around to the parks, monuments, and past the museums. It is the best way to see Vienna. While riding the ring road I tried to imagine how medieval Austrian’s would react to learning that the wall separating them from oblivion had been turned into a bike lane. I settled on, “Bike lane? Vut is a bike?”
I snagged a nice hostel in the Leopoldstadt neighborhood for 24eur. After unpacking my stuff I rode back out into the city for dinner at the Beaver Brewing Co. where I ordered a beer sampler and the seitan burger with seaweed salad and guac. An unexpectedly good combo.
After dinner, I crossed the street to Veganista. My favorite ice cream shop in Vienna. One scoop of cookies and cream in a waffle cone, please.
Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better I found 15eur on the ground.
If you’re visiting Vienna and find yourself in the Leopoldstadt neighborhood then you simply have to take a walk around the Augarten park. Augarten is adjacent to an old porcelain factory. The grounds have what appear to be decaying water towers juxtaposed with meticulously manicured gardens. The lighting in Augarten during a summer evening is straight off of the Lion King VHS sleeve.
Dusk at Augarten
Tomorrow is a rest day in Vienna. I’m going to the Leopold Museum and I could not be more excited. A course I took spent a good deal of time discussing the Leopold collection and its implications on the recovery of Nazi loot. The Leopold houses the world’s largest collection of Schiele’s work too; so, there is lot’s to see and think about there. I can’t wait.
Portrait of Wally tells the engrossing story of Schiele’s painting by the same name, which was stolen by the Nazi’s, purchased by Professor Leopold, and the subject of a decades-long dispute
Today was by far the longest ride of the trip at around 115 miles.
I expected to stop in Melk but kept on until Zwentendorf. The campsite just outside of Linz sucked, avoid it if you can. A guy played loud hardcore German music until 11 pm. I’m tempted to say Rammstein then again that’s the only German hardcore rock ban that I know.
Le Shite Campsite
It stayed hot until 7 pm when the sky cracked wide open and let fall a storm from hell. I got lucky again and found a cyclist pub at just the right moment. I took refuge there for an hour and ordered a beer. I made friends with a very drunk and gregarious Austrian guy. We talked about Arnold Schwarzenegger, the guy’s distaste for Austria’s military police (three of whom were drinking a few feet from us), and he tried to help find me a place to stay, to no avail. No problem though, a sopping wet campsite was just a few km from the pub in Zwentendorf.
I should mention that today’s scorcher of a ride included a jaunt through the Wachau wine region. I stopped for a delicious glass of local Grüner. The towns in this region were at peak capacity with tourists fresh off their Danube river cruises clamoring to get in and out of tchotchke shops.
The views of the Wachau region were unique. Whereas in France the vineyards are atop sloping hills above the Loire, in Wachau the vines grow on the steep cliffs that drop straight down into the Danube.
Today is the day Abby arrives in Munich. I couldn’t sleep past 6:45 am. I took a nice and slow start to the day with coffee at the campsite. And today was one of the first days in which I awoke to a completely dry tent, yippee!
Paulaner Beer Garden Pitstop
The next few days will bring welcomed rest and time with Abby in Munich. We’re in the middle of a historic heatwave for continental Europe so this break could not have come at a better time.
Gluten tag
June 28-30 In Munich
Dinner at Bodhi is a great call
What a fun weekend. Abby and I met at the Flushing Meadows Hotel. Great spot in a fun neighborhood.
I can’t recommend Bodhi Vegan enough, especially if you want Bavarian specialties made vegan. I had spaetzle, schnitzel, and knödel. I think Abby went with a seitan burger.
Answer to the riddle: Describe a bike with three wheels that isn’t a tricycle
We spent the weekend eating at awesome restaurants, drinking German beer along the Isar, exploring the city, going to the Deutsche Museum, watching city-center surfing, taking a walking tour, and eating pretzels.
This leg between Passau, Germany, and Linz, Austria must be one of the best bicycle rides in the known universe. Its cool breezes, gentle downward slope, the s-curved turns of the Danube, bike lanes on either side of the river, and the Lord of the Rings-like views combine for a delightful — with an emphasis on delight — ride.
5 am morning mist on the Danube
I awoke at 5 am and excitedly packed up my gear. I get to see Abby soon! The forecast is 40ºC, which also motivated my early start. I was out of the campsite at 6:06 am.
I ran into the Green Riders again a few times today. They’re a group of cyclists I’ve mentioned in previous posts who stop to volunteer on organic farms along their route. I had to be terse because I really did not want to miss my train in Linz.
Mission accomplished! I made it onto the high-speed train, but the train overheated so we sat stalled in Salzburg in 40ºC weather without AC for over an hour. So much for high speed!
At least this delay won’t reduce my time with Abby. She arrives tomorrow.
Heading into an S-curve
As we sat in the train waiting for it to do its thing, a conductor came over the loudspeaker to say a few words in German. I looked around to gauge the locals’ responses. All I saw were heads shaking left and right. So I sarcastically asked the guy across from me, “Were they telling us that we’re delayed?”
“No,” he said with resolute Austrian sincerity, “they’re taking us to East Station instead of Central Station.”
‘No problem,’ I thought. That was until I looked up where my campsite was. It was a 45-minute bike ride from Ost Station. Shit.
The hills were alive, as they say, heading out of Austria toward Munich
Luckily, an Australian named Patrick stepped up and found a connecting train from Ost to Central. On our way to the transfer, we attempted to load our bikes into the elevator. No dice. The elevator was broken. At this point, I was having flashbacks to when I loaded my bike on my back and climbed that small mountain back in Germany. A nice Austrian guy saw my struggle and helped me lug The Green Machine up the stairs.
After the connecting train and a 15-minute bike ride, I arrived at an urban hostel campsite combo in Munich where I ate dinner, had a beer, and set up camp in anticipation of the fun weekend ahead.
