Eibiswald to Villach

Tuesday November 9, 2010

My campsite for the night, in a little clearing just off the main road (Radlpass Straße) in Eibiswald, Austria.

I had some very intense, crazy dreams overnight, and when I woke up at 6:30 am the next morning, I felt really drained, the dreaming had really taken it out of me. I think it's something to do with my fever, or whatever I've come down with.
I decided to eat breakfast in the tent for a change, but I think for the first time on the whole trip, I had no appetite. Also my neck was even more sore than it had been yesterday, and my headache persisted, it was even worse than yesterday so I wasn't feeling well at all. This worried me because I knew I had a big day ahead of me, riding through the most difficult part of the Alps that I'd be going through.
I could at least take some consolation in the fact that it wasn't raining. Yet.
The first part of the day was riding over a mountain pass, It wasn't that high, peaking at less than 650 m according to my iPhone, but man it was steep! It would have been the longest steep sustained climb that I'd done, it was actually really tough. Reminded me of being on the road bike climbing Mt Buller or similar. Actually more like a short section of Mt Baw Baw. It was only 280 metres of ascending, but I reckon it would have been a 15 % gradient in places.

Looking back down the road I was climbing, Radlpass Straße/Bachholz, Austria.

A switchback on the climb, Radlpass Straße/Bachholz, Austria.

The view from the top of the climb, Radlpass Straße/Bachholz, at which point I crossed from Austria into Slovenia.

I could hear a truck engine straining somewhere behind me, it must have really been struggling up the hill because it never caught up to me.

The descent was alright; I was just taking it easy, rolling down and not taking unnecessary risks.

A vineyard in Dobrava, Slovenia.

I stopped in Dobrava for some Wi-Fi, Google Maps said it was 130 odd kilometres to Villach. I thought "yeah, that's do-able, I should get there at around nightfall". I tried to download some more map detail on MotionX-GPS, but the connection was so slow that I gave up, and kept going. I was really not feeling it today, not enjoying it at all  and feeling so unmotivated. The endorphin's that are normally released during exercise seemed either to be MIA, or not working. Then, to make matters worse, I got a puncture in my front tyre! I think I was feeling so apathetic though that I didn't get angry. I reluctantly repaired it, really taking my time though.

Repairing a puncture in the front tyre in Dravče, Slovenia.

The sky had been threatening to rain all day, and around mid-day it did start raining.

Riding along the road on the south side of the Drava river, between Trbonje and Dravograd, Slovenia. 

I stopped in a town called Dravograd and bought some supplies from the supermarket. During a break in the rain, I put on Mastodon's album Leviathan to try and fire me up. It helped, but I still wasn't feeling it. Then the rain came back and I had to put the iPod away.

From the side of the road (Vič)  past Dravograd, Slovenia.

Back on the Austrian side of the border, by the Drava river in a town called Pfarrdorf.

I stopped for lunch on a table beside the main road, ate sandwiches in the rain and got really cold again. Like yesterday, I was having real trouble regulating my body temperature.
I was following the R1 bicycle route, which went all the way to Villach and beyond. At around 3 pm, I got my first indication that the bike route wasn't intended for use in the winter - a cycle bridge across a gorge was closed, not sure why since I couldn't read the sign in German/Slovenian, but the entrance and exit were boarded up (unfortunately I didn't take a photo because it was raining). So I had to take a detour, what a drag!

Crossing the Drava river near Lippitzbach, Austria.

I got back onto the bike route at about 3:30 pm, and I was thinking I was making reasonable progress to Villach, conservatively estimated I had 60 km, or 80 km at the most to get to Villach. Moments later, there was a sign stating distances to the major towns on the R1 route: Villach: 100.0 km.
I was like "aw, come on, you're joking?!" That meant at least another six hours of cycling, at the rate I was going.
Somehow I felt a strong determination well up, and I resolved I'd make it to Villach that day, no matter what! I thought "I'll be damned if I'm going to hang around in the Alps in this lousy miserable cold wet weather any longer than I have to, especially when I'm not feeling well". I knew that if I could make it to Villach that night, then I could finish riding through the Alps the next day and make it to Udine in Italy. Also I was sick of not achieving my destination goal, as has been the case for the past few days.

On Ratschitschach near Watzelsdorf.

The kilometres seemed to drag by so slowly. Gradually the rain eased up and night fell. Then it just started getting really cold. I didn't want to stop riding because I knew if I did I'd get cold really quickly, but as long as I kept pedaling, I could keep warm. I couldn't warm my hands and feet though, since my shoes and gloves were drenched with water. Those "waterproof" booties I had didn't seem to be very waterproof.
I could hear from the sound of my rear brake pads on the rim that they'd worn right down, but I didn't want to stop and change them. So I just tried to use only use my front brakes.
7 o'clock, and my energy supplies were really dwindling. I stopped and got some feeling back in my fingers, then ate some glucose lollies, cake and a banana.
At around 8:30 pm, I stopped beside a large building at a table just off the bike trail, which turned out to be a gym. I made a few sandwiches for tea and tried to be quick lest I get cold again. The table had a strange bumpy texture. I inspected it and realised it was covered in ice. I thought "woah, I didn't realise it was that cold, no wonder I'm feeling the cold!"
I found a water tap around the other side of the gym and refilled my empty bottles, then hopped back on the bike. My hands were so cold though, it was painful. I had the choice between dryish summer gloves or soaking wet winter gloves (the ones I found lying on the bike path in the Netherlands). The wet winter gloves turned out to be the warmer option.
The cycling was boring and repetitive; I was on a gravel roads alongside the river, on the river banks for tens of kilometres. And I'd say 50 % of the gravel road was covered in puddles. Initially I tried riding around each one, but it was cumbersome so I gave up avoiding them and just rode straight through each one, keeping my feet nice and wet.
Something funny happened with my left foot, it had been numb with cold for some time, but I think that my body was worried for its safety, thought it was going to get frostbite or something, so it must have put its foot down, so to speak, pumped heaps of blood into it, and overcompensated because my foot warmed up fairly quickly and then it got itchy, insanely itchy! I was sure I'd rather it be painfully numb with cold, than for it to be that itchy. It took all my mental strength not to jump off the bike, rip my shoe off and scratch the hell out of my foot! Minutes later the same thing happened to my right foot. It was excruciating!
The bike route came to a river crossing, which in itself wasn't unusual, except this one didn't have a bridge! The water was just running over a concrete wall, along the top of which the bike route ran.

A river crossing, Otrouza/Unterferlach, Austria.

In the summer I guess since it was only a small river, it wouldn't have been running, but after the rain all day it was currently flowing quite strongly (get it? Currently?). I had two options: try and traverse it, and certainly get my feet wet, or take a long detour. I judged the risk of me falling in and drowning to be quite low. I was fed up with the day, and I didn't care anymore, besides, my feet were already soaked, so I decided to just go straight through it. Initially I tried riding, but had to put one foot down to get over a branch in the water. I was thinking about all the stories you hear about people drowning in floods because they try and escape them and drive through floodwaters, and get washed away, when if they'd stayed put, they would have been fine. This water didn't seem to be very deep though, it was just over my ankle. I came to another branch which I couldn't ride over, so I thought "stuff it", and hopped off the bike, with both feet in the water. Man it was cold! What were these branches doing in the way anyway? Had someone put them there to try and stop people using the crossing? An unsophisticated way of blocking the route off? Or had they just been washed up like that, at each side of the crossing. Hmm. Anyway, I wasn't mucking around in that freezing water, I lifted my bike over the branch, and got across safely to the other side, and was on my not so merry way again.
How many obstacles could I come across in one day?
I soon discovered it wasn't the last. The next bridge I came to seemed fine, just a standard bridge surfaced with wooden boards across another river. While on it though, I felt the back wheel slip sideways slightly, as though I was riding on a really flat tyre. Then it happened again, I didn't know what was happening. Then bam! The front tyre slipped out from underneath me. I got my left foot down in time to save myself and the bike from falling, and slid for five or ten metres to the other end of the bridge - the whole thing was covered in black ice! That scared me a bit.
The next bridge I got to was completely flooded, there was a strong current flowing over the top of it. There was no way I was going to risk my life crossing that one, so I had no choice but to take a detour, and had to loop back onto the bike route via a few of the main roads.
Next I found myself in thick fog, really thick fog, I could only see about ten metres ahead of me. I don't mind fog though, much better than rain. And I was only going slowly so it didn't matter so much.
I was finally getting close to Villach when I realised the grass was covered in snow! It was all white. This surprised me because I didn't expect to see any snow in Villach, I didn't think it was at a high enough altitude for snow at that time of year, it was only about 550 m. I guess it was because it was in the heart of the Alps though. But how was I going to camp in snow like this? I'd freeze to death! I didn't expect there to be any hostels in such a town as Villach, so I figured I'd have to stay in a hotel, as much as I don't like spending money.
I finally got into Villach at about 11 o'clock, and tried to find some Wi-Fi to look up hotels in the city. I couldn't find any Wi-Fi though.
A drunk man dressed in track-suit pants and wind-cheater stumbled across the footpath in front of me. As I passed him, he said something to me in German. I stopped and said "ah...do you speak English?"
"Small English", he replied and studied me with a raised eyebrow. He was a short man of about 50, with a red face and glasses; I didn't really like the look of him. "What is your question?"
I thought to myself "well, I wasn't planning on asking you a question, but now that you mention it..."
"Do you know where there is a hotel?" I asked him.
"A what?" he replied.
"A hotel", I repeated, in a clear voice.
"No, I don't know" he answered.
"Hmm, okay, I'll...ah...keep looking then, thanks."
I got to the corner 30 metres up the road, and there were several hotels in view. I thought I might just pick one, ask for their cheapest room and be done with it. Well, provided their reception was still open at that hour.
As I was contemplating this, the drunk man caught up to me, and asked "what is your problem?" I thought to myself "well, no need to be rude mate, I'm just minding my own business here".
"Ah, I'm looking for a hotel" I replied.
"A what?" he asked.
"A hotel," I repeated again.
"I don't know what you mean," he said.
"Ah...a HOTEL, you know, to sleep in...?"
"Oh, I see," he said. "No, I can't pay for your hotel"
"No I wasn't asking you to pay for it," I replied, "I just want to find where one is, so that I can sleep, you know?"
"Oh, you want to sleep?" he asked.
"Yeah", I replied, relieved that he was finally clueing on to what I was trying to get across.
"Follow me" he said, "you can stay in my flat. Correcta?"
I paused for a moment. I didn't know whether to follow him or not, didn't know whether to trust him. He was clearly inebriated, wasted, trollied, sloshed, plastered, pissed as a parrot, or whatever other synonym you want to use for 'drunk'. He seemed a little crazy to me too, a few loose screws kicking around in his head you know? Maybe a little off his rocker.
The voice inside my head said "come on follow him, take a risk, you can get a good night's sleep for free." I figured if I followed him I wasn't committed to anything and I could back out if I needed to, so I played along.
"Ah, how far away do you live?" I asked
"One hundred metres", he replied.
"Hmm, okay", I said, and we set off.
He asked me "where are you from?" He was really hard to understand though, a combination of his poor English and his drunkenness, and I had to keep asking him to repeat, and listen really hard.
"I'm from Australia" I told him.
"Ahhhh, Australia" he exclaimed. "So you're Australian man, come to seek sanctuary, correcta?"
"Ah...yeah" I replied.
"Correcta!" he said again with a downwards inflection. I came to learn this was one of the things he kept saying. "Correcta? Correcta!"
Then he was like "what is your problem?" Hmm. I was becoming more convinced he was crazy.
"Um...I don't really have one", I replied. We kept walking.
"Are you married?" he asked (again, he had to repeat a few times for me to understand). And when I kept asking him to repeat, he got a bit angry, and said "you speak English? Or no?"
"Yeah, I just...couldn't hear you properly..."
"Are you married", he repeated.
I finally understood. "No, no, I'm not married", I replied.
We took a left hand turn.
"How old are you?" he asked.
"Twenty-four" I replied. He told me he had a daughter who was twenty-one. Neither of us spoke for a moment, and we stopped at the door for a block of flats. He fumbled with his keys, and unlocked the glass door and walked in. I followed him in with my bike, unsure of what to do with it. I rested it against the wall for the moment.
"You leave it here", he told me. "In here is security. See?" and he pushed against the door to show it was locked."
"Yes, but I'd like to lock up my bike just in case," I said. I didn't feel comfortable leaving it there unlocked, I didn't want to take any chances. He seemed not to accept that I wanted to lock it up, or maybe he didn't think I understood what he was telling me about the "security" and he kept going on about how "in here, it is security."
Eventually I gave in and said "okay".
The lights on my bike hadn't switched off, since they are dynamo powered lights and store a bit of charge in a capacitor for when you're stopped at traffic lights or whatever. This seemed to concern him and it was difficult to explain to him that they would switch off automatically, but eventually I got the point across.
I grabbed my handlebar bag since it had a few valuables in it, we hopped in the lift and rose up to the fifth floor. He led me to his flat, unlocked a door which opened into a short hallway. We walked through that and he unlocked the door to his flat on the left.
After I saw the place, I was really having second thoughts. It was an absolute pig-sty, and smelt horrible. There was rubbish strewn over every surface, the floors, the living room tables, the kitchen table which was also covered in dirty glasses and other dishes. There were empty milk cartons, empty beer cans, empty wrappers and packaging, rubbish everywhere. He had a double bed, but it might as well have been single because half of it was piled in rubbish, a big mound of it covering one side. I didn't want to photograph this place because it wasn't pleasant. Not only was it disgusting, but it was sad that a man would live in this mess. I felt a little sorry for him.
He led me into the lounge room and said I could sleep in there. I could see quite a few pornography DVD's strewn carelessly around the room, as well as some videotapes. He had an old CRT monitor and computer sitting on a desk, and a few hard drives randomly sitting on the table, I didn't want to know what was on them, hopefully not child porn! I suspected he wasn't that sick a man though.
The couch was covered in junk, which he began to clear. He would casually grab each item and simply throw it over the other side of the room and say "All this? Shit. And this? Shit. All shit. All shit" he kept repeating as he picked up the items and threw them across the room. "All shit". I just nodded where appropriate. He finished clearing the couch and said "you can sleep here."
"Great thanks," I replied.
I timidly sat down on the couch and he sat down in the armchair beside it.

The crazy drunk man, George, who I stayed with.

He started rambling a bit, but I had to listen because he'd keep asking me "you understand?" And he would look at me with his raised eyebrow. I'd either say "ah...can you say that again sorry?" if I had no idea what he'd said, which was most of the time, or "yeah, I think so," if I caught the gist of what he was saying, or thought I could pretend I understood what he was saying. Every now and again, he'd say something then let out a crazy kind of cackle.
When I got the chance, I said to him that I wanted to go down and get a sleeping bag. He didn't seem to know what a sleeping bag was, so I had to describe it. So we took the lift back down to the ground floor and I went back to my bike. We had another discussion on security, but I was determined to try and lock my bike up. I think he was getting a little frustrated. At this point I was strongly considering doing a runner, I was very close to leaving and finding an alternative arrangement for the night. But I thought "what if I can't find anywhere else? What if I can't get into a hotel?" I figured I'd be safe enough with this guy anyway, he seemed harmless enough, even if he was a crazy drunk". I found a spot to lock my bike beside a window in there. "Ah, you're very smart man" he told me, as he watched me lock it up.
I grabbed all my bags and panniers and the drunk gave me a hand with them moving them into the lift, and then carrying them into his flat once we got there too.
I unrolled the sleeping mat on his couch because I wasn't sure his couch was all that clean. He seemed offended by this though, offended that his couch wasn't good enough for me, and he questioned me. "It's just to make it more comfortable," I explained.
He said something like "ahhhh...see me, I would just sleep on it, but you, you like something more soft."
"Yeah," I agreed.
We each sat down there in the living room again, and again, he was doing all the talking, I was just being completely passive, partly because I was so knackered, and partly because I didn't see much point having a discussion with a man that was so drunk. He kept rambling, and I would just say "yeah, yeah," and nod my head where appropriate, or answer his questions if I could understand them. At one point we introduced ourselves, his name was George.
At another point, he told me he had a daughter who was twenty-two. Before he'd said she was 21. I let that detail slide.
He told me he was a drunk man. Well I could certainly see that!
He also said, at one point, "I am a lonely man. Very lonely man."
"Yeah", I replied. I didn't know what else to say.
His packet of cigarettes was empty, and he didn't seem to have any beer left in the house either (I assumed he'd be drinking it if he did) so he made a phone call, which I soon learned was to order some more beer and cigarettes.
Meanwhile he kept talking, rambling about topics such as money, and how money means power, but how that's all irrelevant because humans are only on the Earth for 100 years or less, and what's really important is God. God is the only thing that matters.
The delivery seemed to be taking a while, so he got up and went back down to the ground floor to wait for them. He returned about ten minutes later with a four pack of beer cans and a packet of cigarettes. I was thinking, "great, how long's he going to sit here and ramble for?"
And indeed he kept rambling, and smoking cigarettes. Few things annoy me more than people smoking near me when I can't avoid it. I really hate smoking!
He kept talking about things like economics and world powers. He reckoned Europe is the "shit-hole of the world... They used to be an economic power, but now they're a shit-hole. At the moment, the US is an economic power, but not for long. Next it will be Japan, and Kinna. They will be the economic powers. Yes I think Kinna will be an economic world power." This isn't exactly what he said, his words were less decipherable and sentence structure all out of whack. But I got his drift. "You mean China?" I asked.
"Yes, China", he replied.
"Mmm, I agree" I said.
At one point he asked me what my parents did for a living.
"Dad is a farmer. Mum..."
"Is a housewife" he stated, completing my sentence. I just went along with it.
"Yeah, I guess so," I confirmed.
"And that's the way it should be", he said. Then he started rambling about father and son, and how it's been the same for generations, for thousands of years, and how it will continue to be the same for generations. A lot of what he said didn't make much sense, some of it did though. Sometimes he would switch to German/Austrian without noticing, ramble for another minute or two, seemingly forgetting that I couldn't understand German, then he'd switch back to English again.
When there was a break in his seemingly constant talking, I told him I was going to go to sleep. I hopped in my sleeping bag and laid down on the couch.
I figured this would be enough to stop him talking, as if he's going to talk to himself right? Wrong.
He kept rambling, but I didn't think it would be a problem. I thought I was so tired that I'd get to sleep anyway, and he'd soon be heading to bed.
Try as I might to get to sleep, I couldn't, and he just kept rambling, on and on, all in German. The next time I looked at my watch it was 3 o'clock in the morning, he'd been rambling to himself for almost three hours! This was turning out to be the worst night's sleep ever!
I got up to get a drink of water, because I was dehydrated from his overheated flat, and I still had a headache, it hadn't gotten any better since the morning.
I hung in the kitchen a while where the air was fresher, and had the idea that I could sleep in the bath, and I'd probably get a better sleep than I would on the couch beside George when he was rambling. I thought of the Beatles song Norwegian Wood: "Crawled off to sleep in the bath". If John Lennon can sleep in the bath, then so can I!
After ten minutes or so of lying in the bath, fairly comfortable too, George noticed I was still missing, and called out "Hey, where'd you go? Come back!"
I sighed.
He got up to investigate, switched the bathroom light on and found me lying in the bath.
"What are you doing in there?" he asked.
I thought I'd just be honest, I had nothing to lose. "I can't sleep when you are talking". It took a few tries for him to understand what I was saying.
When he understood, he said defensively "But that is not my problem."
"Yes I know, it's my problem so I'll just sleep here in the bath..."
"But I made a perfectly good bed for you out there" he argued.
"Yes, but I can't sleep when you are talking all the time" I explained. I felt we were going around in circles a bit here.
"But I always talk" he replied defensively.
"Yes I know, but I can't sleep when you are talking right next to me..." This went on for a while longer. Eventually he said "ah, I understand now. You can't sleep when I am talking. Come back to the living room."
I didn't know if he was going to keep rambling or not, but I did what he told me and went back to my bed on the couch. Much to my relief, he stopped his rambling. He just sat in his chair with a few quite mutterings every now and again, drinking his beer and chain smoking cigarettes.
I still couldn't get to sleep though. He finally went to bed at about 4:30 am, and it wasn't until then that I could get a bit of shut-eye.
I would honestly say it was the toughest day I've had on the bike, fighting physical tiredness, illness/fever/headache, lack of motivation, wet and cold weather, climbs, punctures, snow, detours, creek crossings, long stretches on puddled gravel roads, fog, darkness, black ice and various obstacles, 175 long lonely kilometres, ten and a half hours on the bike, all to finish up on an uncomfortable couch in a crazy drunk man's flat who wouldn't stop drinking, smoking and rambling! What an exhausting day!

My route for the day, Eibiswald to Villach.

An overview of my route so far, from France to Austria.

Ride stats:
Distance: 175 km
Average: 16.7 km/h
Maximum: 55.5 km/h
Time: 10:30
Total ascent: 1483 m
Total descent: 1339 m