Vienna to Kottingbrunn

Saturday November 6, 2010
So today is the two month anniversary of me being overseas.
Woke up at 8:30 am and paid €2.5 for breakfast again, and ate seven bowls of cereal again. Upon my return for my seventh bowl, the staff member asked what was up, she'd apparently been counting how many bowls I'd had, and maybe she suspected I was giving half of them to my mate who hadn't paid for breakfast. I told her I was going to be heading off on the bike today and needed a big breakfast, and that they should have bigger bowls.
Hostel Ruthensteiner really was a great hostel, right up there with the best hostels I've stayed in. I'd checked out, but they allowed me to leave all my bags behind while I went out into the city. My goal was to find a new tyre to replace my front one, can't be too hard right? After my experience in Amsterdam and everywhere in between though, I wasn't so sure.
First I dropped into the city west hostel where the French tourer, Mathias, was staying. He'd mentioned the night before that he would be going to a bike shop in the morning to find some new tyres for his bike too, but tyres with more tread because he would be going through some off-road areas. I asked the receptionist, he said he'd just given directions to a bike shop to a French bloke half an hour before, so I must have just missed him.
I headed off. Here's a photo of some scaffolding:

Some impressive scaffolding for a building in Vienna, Austria.

I rode around on my own, visiting bike shops in Vienna in search of the elusive 26x1.5 Schwable Marathon tyre. Each shop had the same response: "...yeah this is the only one we've got, it's 26x1.75". I spent about four hours visiting bike shops, I must have visited every bike shop in Vienna, and not a single one had the tyre I needed. It was a repeat of Amsterdam but worse, because not even the last one I went to had the tyre :( In the last shop, I told the bloke what I was after, and he brought out the Schwable Marathon 26x1.75. He didn't understand English very well, but I repeated that I wanted a 26x1.5 tyre. He told me that 1.75 was the smallest one that Scwable make, and that you can't get 26x1.5. I was like "ah, yeah you can, I have one right here". I showed him my tyre to prove it, and he had to eat his words.
Frustrated with the whole morning/afternoon, I rode back to the hostel.
I was starving so went to the supermarket and bought pasta for lunch, which I cooked back in the hostel. I talked to Rosanna on Skype to update her on my progress and give her an estimate of when I'd arrive in Siena. Then I started downloading some maps for the route to Siena.
Kalle and two of his hostel friends Sophia a French girl and a Brazilian guy who was also a ski bum like Kalle, were just starting to cook tea.

From left to right: a Brazilian guy, Kalle from Brisbone and Sophia from France.

I chatted with them and discussed with Kalle and Brazilian guy about potential routes over the Alps to Italy, since I had no idea. He wasn't too much help though, and I tentatively picked a route through, based on where the bike routes were. I decided against the route through Ljubljana, since Kelle had heard from someone that it was really hilly. The Brazilian guy suggested this would be the easiest route, although he wasn't sure. I sat down and chatted with the three of them while they ate tea. Sophia said she was going to Graz the following night, and staying in a hostel there. I was planning on going to Graz the following night as well. I hadn't realised there was a hostel, so I tentatively planned to stay in that hostel that night too.
This is a photo of the dining room, you can also see a girl on the piano, she was playing a few classical pieces and she was amazingly good!

A girl playing a classical piece on the piano, in Hostel Ruthensteiner in Vienna, Austria.

She received applause from the other hostel residents when she finished.
Next we got chatting to a few American guys and another Australian girl. It seemed like half the hostel was Australian, there seems to be so many Australians around, in just about all the city hostels I've been in there have been lots of Australians. This girl was from Tasmania though, originally from Launceston, but Hobart for the past five years where she'd completed her degree in Law/Finance. I think this is the first Tasmanian I've met overseas, and reminded me so much of Louisa Gardner, a friend who is also from Tasmania. All the Tasmanians I know are such friendly people, they all seem to have this characteristic in common. I could have picked that this girl was Tasmanian before she told me. I think her name was Amanda, but I can't quite remember. She said her friend Gemma is an avid cyclist. Once Gemma was mountain biking in Tasmania, rolling along pretty fast along a steep narrow single-track path, when she was distracted by an interesting limestone formation. Unfortunately because of this, she accidentally rode off the edge of the path, and sustained some nasty injuries apparently. Amanda said if she hadn't been wearing a helmet, she would have seriously damaged her head. Gemma was also allegedly into bicycle touring. I'd love to meet this girl!
The two American's had just come from Venice, and they were like "if you go to Venice, make sure you don't spend more than 24 hours there, because you'll just get so bored of the place...everyone there is a couple, people on their honeymoons...and it's really hard to navigate around there too, you get so lost". Kalle had just booked into a hostel in Venice for five days, and he'd be catching the train there the next day. I was also thinking of going to Venice, and I figured it would take me about five days to get there, so I hoped to catch Kalle in Venice before he left for the ski slopes of St Anton.
By the way, Kalle reminded me a lot of Tarrant Meehan, a friend from Melbourne.
Kalle had a good claim to fame: Kalle's neighbours daughter knew the members of Savage Garden from school so they used to invite them round for BBQ's at their place, which I think Kalle said was in Logan, near Brisbane. I remember hearing on Triple J that Savage Garden have the highest selling Australian single of all time. And I just looked this up; apparently their self-titled album is the third highest selling Australian album of all time. So there you go eh.
Amanda also had a claim to fame, not as good as Kalle's though: Kylie Minogues brother, who is a TV cameraman, once had morning tea at their place.
I have heaps of claims to fame, but I don't want to bore you all more than I already have, so I won't mention them ;)
I finally headed off from the hostel; I couldn't believe how late I was leaving, when I'd wanted to leave in the morning. I was a bit sad to leave actually, I would have been happy to stay at that hostel for longer. All good things have to come to an end though, and I was keen to get going and get to Rosanna's place in Siena.
It was well dark, about 7 o'clock, when I left. I got onto a bike route and followed that out of Vienna. I thought I'd ride about 50 or 60 km, then I'd only have 150 km to ride the next day to get to Graz. At about the 30 km mark though, I was getting pretty tired, and I spotted a perfect camping spot, right next to a table. I just couldn't pass it by, so I stopped and set up there for the night.

Ride stats:
Distance: 69.36 km
Average: 15.6 km/h
Maximum: 40.0 km/h
Time: 4:26:43
Total ascent: 211 m
Total descent: 182 m