We're writing this on Sunday, but the events (from three days ago, for cryin' out loud) have already started to blur a little. Which day did we eat at the Chinese restaurant? Did we take different routes on the day we stopped at Kloster-Neuberg or was it the day before? 

Anyway, casting our minds waaaay back to Friday, the best we can recall is that that is the day we got rained on in the morning, on our way to the city of Grein. There was no question about whether to ride in the rain, since it started drizzling while we were on a levee with the river on one side and a marsh on the over, with nary a tree for cover. We put on our rain gear and kept riding. It really wasn't bad; as someone who commutes by bike in all weather, Phil is always a bit perplexed when people make a big deal out of a little rain. 

Even so, when it started raining a little harder (um, Phil?  A lot harder...full-on wet gear involved...), we were happy to take cover at a place that was already occupied by a slew of Italian cyclists.

Juliet introduces herself to some Veronese.  (Juliet has to note here that these guys were hilarious, and every bit as Italian - in the nicest way possible - as the movie stereotypes make them out to be.  One of them asked me if I had heard of Verona, and I said, "Of course!  My name is Juliet...," which somehow really caught their fancy.  So every time they passed me over the next 20 miles, or I passed them, they'd all yell, "Ciao, Juliet!"  Kept thinking I was in the movie "Breaking Away"...)

But we were pretty much wussies compared to this group.  These guys rode all the way from Northern Italy - up THROUGH the Swiss Alps (including over one of the highest mountain passes) - and are continuing to northern Europe.  Small consolation: they're not carrying any gear.  They have a couple of support vehicles carrying it all. They set off just before us, riding along at a good clip, around 20 mph.  They pulled slowly away until they were lost from view. But...a few miles on, they were stopped to look at a map or something, and we passed them. Two minutes later, they passed us again...but a few miles on, they were stopped for some other reason and we passed them again.  And then, yes, the same thing happened a third time! In fact, we reached the town of Grein at the same time they did. Hare, meet tortoise.

Just before Grein, as they passed us a final time,  Phil couldn't resist the inexorable urge - apparently common to all committed cyclists, whether out on 60-mile bike tour, or on daily work commutes - to "Cat 6" the Italians (*).  In layperson's terms: race and pass them if possible.   He with full panniers; they with, well, their really nice bikes.  Phil had no problem matching their pace, and I'm proud to say I came in right behind them (to yet more cheers of "Ciao, Juliet!" I really really like Italians now).  

(*) In the U.S. there are five categories of amateur road racing, from Category 1 (best) to Cat 5 (novice). To "Cat 6" someone is to pass someone who doesn't know you're trying to beat them.

We had lunch in Grein and waited for the weather to clear, then took the small ferry (photo above) across the river to continue our ride on the other, less developed side.

Phil continued his collection of interesting road signs. Check out the details on this one: the scarf, the fenders (and even the supporting struts for the fenders!), the light, the exhaust pipe!...

...the hats, the heels on the shoes, the thumbs, the flare at the bottom of the man's jacket!  These things are works of art.

Lots of people are doing this trip. If we had any sense that we are doing something especially challenging, it would be eliminated by the fact that a zillion other people are doing it too, and most of them are visibly not in good shape. There are also entire families out with panniers (yep - kids from age 6 on up biking and carrying full gear...don't ever try and tell us children can't hack this kind of thing; you've got about 500 hundred German and Austrian families out here today saying different), and many cyclist groups consisting of 75-and-older cyclists.  A few with electric-assist bicycles, but plenty using all their own leg power.  Very very cool. 

You can pedal along for anywhere from a couple of hours to a full day, stopping along the way at a biergarten or two for sustenance. (It's a tough deal; you can see how shabby the biergartens are in the photo above.  Seriously.  Flowers, dedicated bike path along a gorgeous river, cute little picnic benches and fresh food handed to you on a plate...it's a real test of mettle doing this).  Every little town has at least a few interesting things to see, although we haven't been stopping at most of them (for instance, we did not stop at the little museum in Willendorf, site of the discovery of the "Willendorf Venus"). Honestly, just about anyone can do this, at your own pace...and we recommend it for everyone reading this blog. What a great trip.

We did stop at a tiny percentage of the interesting places along the way, including the impressive, dramatically sited Melk Abby, where we spent an hour wandering through the historical exhibits. Don't you think the guy on the left is showing an awful lot of leg? 

This is from the church in the abby; it shows St. Sebastian being killed a second time. Apparently the first time (by shooting him with arrows) didn't take (some woman nursed him back to health)...so here they're clubbing him to death.  Monks were a bloodthirsty lot, they loved gruesome stuff like this.  (FYI, we have a whole set of photos showing increasingly gory events in the historical religious record for this abbey and others. A lot of people criticize modern day horror films for displays of graphic violence; spend a few days in some of these churches and museums and you'll think "Chainsaw Massacre XVII" is a walk in the park...)

More posts to come about some specifics along the way, and getting to Vienna (where we are now)...but the big news is that Phil and I are splitting up.  Not maritally, but literally.  We took a good look at the bike route description from here to Budapest - and I recalled the raised eyebrows and exclamations of surprise from Passau onwards, every time I mentioned I'd be doing this - and realized that this stretch would be challenging and exciting for Phil (a trained, hard-core cyclist on a really good bike, who enjoys things like 100-plus-mile rides up and down mountains), and just one long, miserable slog for me (even if I didn't have panniers or a two-ton tank of a bicycle, which I do).  So, in the interests of everyone's long-term happiness, I'm going to enjoy a few cultural/music performances in Vienna, art exhibits in the museums, ride and run along the Danube here, and then head back west via train or ferry, while Phil continues on to Budapest.  We'll reconvene in Passau.  Internet will be sketchy in Slovakia and Hungary, so I (Juliet) will try and use the time to catch up on all of the other things we meant to get to in these posts, along with more photos.  Stay tuned!