This morning was another dewy day with the sun rising through a morning fog. Heard a few moans and groans but not much as a result of yesterday's tough hills and extra length. This crowd doesn't have any whiners. Congratulations to Jenny's dad Casey who did 90K yesterday on his second day ever, or in a long time, of serious riding. And Carrie did a half day, too. Today we found the bike path right out of town with incredible ease. It was already warm enough for me to be in one shirt. Wasn't long though before we found a police tape "barrier" across the path. Well, barriers are made to be crossed, right? – so we did. A little ways longer and we found the reason for it. First there was an inch or so of gooey slippery mud over the path, then water, more mud, river trash – grass and small branches, then 6 inches or more of water that we all road through. By then our bikes were pretty muddy anyway. More flooding from the day before. And our first Hungarian mud bath. Isn't it fun doing these things as a group? We made lunch at the van of Lady Genevieve at 11:00 on the bank of the Danube(now the Duna) at Szentendre. Had pate, cheese and cucumber sandwiches, peach, orange. Good lunch but too soon after breakfast to eat a lot. That's another town that probably deserves a look sometime. As soon as we got on the path the first thing of note we saw was a guy waterskiing on a small manmade lake. The thing was there was no boat pulling him - he was just zipping along, arms out in front and skiing. Turns out there was an overhead cable system pulling him in a big circle around the lake. Do they have these in N.America? If so, I've never seen them. The next noteworthy item almost ended Chuck's ride. A little boy (maybe 6) on a tiny bike popped out from a side path about 5 feet in front of him without looking or slowing. Bushes kept us from seeing him until he was THERE. Ol' Chuck's got pretty good reactions for an old guy, otherwise there would have been one seriously injured kid and old man. Another exciting day tomorrow. Two days in Budapest so first thing is laundry, then touristy stuff.

Today we awoke to rain. Down at breakfast at the Tennis Club Hotel we got more depressed as the rain plastered the tennis courts outside the window. Craig came in at 7:30 with plans for the day - good news for us. The campers would be riding in to the hotel at 9 (he said), we would have our meeting and then take off. I remembered out at Suters' farm where we worked after high school, Gene used to say the old wife’s tale " rain before 7 stops by 11". Well, it worked today. The campers showed up after 10, we had time to write down the instructions, and the rain stopped about 11. Unfortunately, as soon as we started to ride at 11:15 it started again. It rained steadily as we rolled out of town on the main street we entered on little traffic on a Sunday. Some of us were probably a little envious of Joy who took the ride with Craig option. The rain finally stopped just before lunch with only a tiny bit of sun visible. It was warm though. The Danube, now called the Donaj, sometimes looks like a big lake with small islands in it. As we moved east for the day it became more like a river again. After the city the scenery was national park land again for awhile. We saw herons in the waterways along the side of the levee away from the river, a large group of swans and a deer. Later it became farmland again with sunflower fields (not looking very sunny in this weather, corn fields and other crops. Immediately after we crossed the Donaj we crossed the border into Hungary. We finally got our passports stamped there for the first time this trip. Tonight, except for the voracious mosquitoes and the bar TV (the other end, the camp is pretty quiet. Most of our group went into Gyor to check out the health spa.

Right now we’re in Bratislava, country number four. But Austria was an amazing country. Everything there was so refined and immaculate; the food, the music, the architecture. We found ourselves riding through fruit orchards only to end up in small villages tasting the brandies and schnapps produced from the local fruits. We saw many historical sights, not just castles and churches but famous archaeological sites like the Venus of Willendorf. The river valley once again became mountainous with lush forests. The temps have been cool but the weather has been wet. In fact the Danube is swelling beyond its capacity and is suffering from overbank flooding in several areas. Two days ago we had a major detour due to water over 1m deep covering the trail. Our last stop was Vienna, the Austrian capital, and the center of an empire that existed for centuries. It is the culture hearth for many famous music composers. Unfortunately the Viennese Philharmonic does not perform during July and August. Some cyclists did manage to catch a classical performance where the musicians were dressed in period costumes and the music was accompanied by ballet dancers and opera singers. I turned to a different style of music. My “Lying Planet Guide” described a place called Jazzland as a musical institution of Vienna. I didn’t believe it until I walked into this dingy dungeon of blues. A dank subterranean catacomb of weathered brick walls littered with musical legends of Motown, jazz and blues. But the night we were there we saw an entirely different show. Shkippel, a bluegrass jug band complete with 12 string acoustics, a harmonica, mandolins, a gazoo and a washboard as the only percussion. But what a show, it was incredible. When we left Vienna we gained 8 new cyclists. We are now a dominating force as we cruise along the Donauradweg. When we crossed into Slovakia, country number five, it was quite obvious that we had entered Eastern Europe. This country is far less gothic and much more industrial. But we won’t get to see much of it. Tomorrow we enter country number six, Hungary. And in three days we will reach Budapest which is where the tour ends for me. It will be tough to come this far and not be there to cross the finish line in Istanbul. On the bright side I’ll be back in the homeland for the Labour Day weekend celebrations. See you then.

Today is the last day of the first half (4 weeks) of the Tour. Hard to believe. Bratislava is a big change from Vienna and the other cities and towns we have been in. As a former communist country Slovakia is poorer and it shows in the condition of the buildings and the general maintenance of the infrastructure. There are surface electric trams that seem to run pretty well, but many need maintenance, cleaning and a paint job. The city center itself has been fixed up well and is attractive. We shopped and walked around awhile. There were several carts on the square with ostensibly local handmade crafts for sale. Some items looked pretty nice - embroidery, painted and carved Easter eggs, wood carvings and wood toys, corn husk dolls. We walked up the hill to check out the castle and the view - great view - even higher up from the castle. The weather still held out. Joy and I went back to try some more local delicacies. Maybe Henry will give a rebate to the persons who try the most local food. We had some bryndzove' halusky, consisting of small potato dumplings served with traditional Slovak soft ewe's milk cheese called bryndza with pieces of bacon. Joy said this tastes just like "mac and cheese". I guess so - it was good. We also had two desserts - crepes stuffed with cottage cheese and topped with whipped cream and chocolate sauce and a repeat of the torn up crepe with stewed plums Chuck, Brian and I had in Vienna - good stuff. Tomorrow we start three days in a row of riding again. We've all been getting soft. Then two days in BudaPest. We'll have to ask Henry about Slovak National Uprising Anniversary holiday on August 29. Apparently they were celebrating it a bit early over at the soccer or hockey stadium nearby tonight. At 9PM it sounded as though the uprising had begun again. However, looking out the window in the lobby it was verified that it was indeed just fireworks. Just as in Kelheim these guys over here don't mess with going out in the boonies to set them off. They just do it right next door.

Home country of Henry, our leader. Today turned out to be an interesting day after all. After the usual breakfast in the hotel we headed out to the campground along with the new members starting from Wien - Joe and Edwina who did Tour d'Afrique with Brian last year, Sandy who did TdA with Chuck, Brian #2, Jim, and Victor - all Canadians and I think all are from Montreal except Sandy who lives on Prince Edward Island. Now we were on the real Donauradweg and cruising along again with the old crew ahead and the new crew a short ways back testing their legs. That didn't last long because we came across another rider who told us to go back because the path was covered with water. We had heard of the flooding along the Donau but thought it was either behind us or way ahead of us - guess not. So we all turned around to the last intersection. Most of today's route in Austria was to be in the Donauradweg National Park and there are other biking and cycling trails intersecting along the way. We chose the first available route that would take us north and farther from the river. A few hundred meters along the dirt and gravel road we found more water. Randy and Brian in the lead both could see the end of it. Randy, the intrepid mountain biker forged ahead on Lizzie (his bike) and managed to ride through it. Brian tried and did it too with water coming up almost to their hubs. All of us with the skinny tired bikes chose to take off our shoes and walk it which wasn't too bad except for the mosquitoes. As we walked Henry sloshed past us riding through it also - must be the Africa experience showing through in those guys. We finally had to show our passports to cross a border but didn't get any stamps on them and crossed without incident. We soon entered Bratislava and managed to find the hotel with only having to stop once at a Holiday Inn for instructions. The cycle ways are nothing like cycle-friendly Viennna - not smooth and set away from vehicles but they do have them which is more than I can say about most of the US. At Sheila's urging, she, Chuck and I took a taxi out to the campground to dinner. Another great dinner - chicken in gravy, stir fried veggies and brown rice. We returned by taxi in a light rain. The taxi cost 200 koruny each way - question for the day - How much is that in US dollars? Hint: try www.xe.com/ucc/ Jenny's parents, who we thought had left to tour other countries to the south now may be joining the tour instead and were with us again at dinner. They will be a welcome addition.

Randy was having a drink with a local guy a couple days ago. The guy said "I don't know why you want to ride your bikes in Austria - it always rains in Austria". And that has been the case for us though yesterday was the only day we had real riding problems because of it. [The day into Vienna] started about 8:30 - again with rain threatening - on the road to Wien. I'll just use Wien from now on - it's shorter. Chuck wanted to put the pedal to the metal again today and five of us went along to the lunch stop - Sheila, Joy, Brian, Randy and me. We cruised at 30 – 35 km/hr and did 40 km in about 1:30. After lunch Sheila and Randy opted to ride with Lincoln and Walter to the campground. Joy wanted to keep riding fast so we all rode to the campground too arriving about 12:30. Brian, Chuck and I then went in search of our hotel. We had already done our wrong turn for the day on entering Wien so we made it straight to the Mercure Nestroy without incident. [Our first rest day] Ah, laundry day, one of our favorite past-times. Chuck and Brian and I walked to the 24 hour WashaMat after breakfast for our first exercise of the day. On the way back we walked through a large park called the AuGarten. At each end of the park there was a huge tower looking like something out of Star Wars. They must have been 15 stories tall at least and 50 feet on a side with concrete shelves sticking out at the top. The one we walked close to had a fence around it and clear signs of deterioration at the top. We didn't get too close. I spent the day with Lincoln and Sheila. After lunch tried instead to catch one of three weekly tours of the Raut Haus (city hall). It is an enormous spired stone building with stained glass, lots of wood and marble and other local stone inside. It has a 3200kg chandelier in the session chambers. We made the tour but after a 25 minute German explanation and long Q and A there after we left the tour and walked around where we could go without the tour. Our brochure noted that soon a virtual tour will be on the web. Last on our agenda was a trek back into the center to look at the main church - St. Stephens. Another impressive building. Much sculpture in this one but no notable stained glass. An interesting touch is the sculptor's self portrait(sculpture) looking in through a "window" in the side of the building. It's an odd offset to all the usual saints, angels, etc, that cover the walls and ceiling. We had a pizza appetizer on way back to hotel. It's all over and good - at 2.50 for 1/4 of an 18 inch pizza - and filling. Back at the hotel I was going to go to dinner with a group but instead went in search of a concert with Joy. We had talked about it with others before and from an internet search there appeared to be a couple possibilities at the two main concert halls - Musikverein and Konzerthaus. Everyone else wanted to eat so we grabbed the subway over - both in the same area. Konzerthaus was closed but there was a Mozart concert at Musikverein. We had more pizza to hold us over. It's definitely a tourist show and I'd guess 90 percent were tourists. But the musicians were good and we enjoyed that for two hours. That was over at 10, and back to hotel at 10:30 - my latest night - and Joy continuing on to campground by subway and bus. The public transport here is excellent. Chuck asleep at this late hour so whatever transpired at dinner awaits tomorrow's discussions. I here rumors of flooding downriver from Jan and Dave. We do leave the Danube at Budapest in a few days and have seen no flooding yet. Lately the river has been controlled by dams and looks like a quarter mile wide lake. This morning [our second rest day] after breakfast I headed back to St. Stephens by subway. It was a beautiful morning finally - sunny and not a cloud visible. I had hoped to do some picture taking in the earlier light and without the usual crowds and was able to do that first around St. Stephens. After a little orientation I found the Jesuit church to explore near the big St. Stephens church. It is much newer and more colorful than other churches I have been on this tour. My guidebook says it is the most awesome "High Baroque" church in Wien. Apparently the Jesuits first appeared in Wien in 1551 in order to found a college, later university, with which the church is affiliated. The church was first consecrated in 1631. Anyway it has many large frescos and alternating re and green spiral marble columns. The pews are all carved wood. The sun was just coming in the east windows and really lighted it up. I was the only one there as it is off the beaten path a little ways and it had just opened for the day. The old center of Wien is circled the the Ring Road which is actually a series of differently named streets as they change direction. This city center is very compact with a diameter of only about one kilometer. It must be the greatest number of incredible buildings in the world in such a small space - more than Venice even. (Not to mention cafes, konditoreis, and ice cream/gelato shops.) Across the Ring Road from the south side of city center is Karlsplatz (park) which is dominated by the Karlskirche, again by the book "one of the city's finest Baroque churches” a huge Italianate dome with a Neoclassical portico, flanked by giant pillars. I didn't go in this place partly because it cost 6 euros, but mainly because I was getting tired of inside churches. Anyway the two old guys sitting in the park outside playing violin and accordian were more interesting. When a bunch of US kids (age 6 or so) came by they played Jingle Bells for them. Tomorrow we leave Austria for 2 days in Slovakia. That will be particularly disappointing for Chuck and Brian who have been going ga-ga over the Austrian women.

Well it's been a beautiful day on the road (ha) and here we sit in what we think is our campground but no Craig with our stuff and no way to reach him Henry. We (Chuck, Joy, Brian and I) got here about 12:30, finally went into town to see if there was another campground (no) and got something to eat. Those pickled fish, tomato, and onion sandwiches stay with you for awhile. Now at 2:30 the other 4 riders showed up - Randy, Sheila, Lincoln and Walter. We had rain last night at bedtime into the night. It quit for awhile and the moon was even out. We had a late breakfast this morning at 8 because Jenny had ordered fresh rolls. By the time we hit the road at 8:30 it was raining lightly and an hour later it was raining harder. We got really soaked today except for under our rain jackets. The temperature was warm enough but not so warm we sweated to death. It would have been another beautiful ride if the weather had been sunny. But we didn't look at much but the road until 11:30. Our lunch stop lasted maybe 10 minutes - open face avocado, tomato, kiwi sandwiches - good. Finally the rain stopped around 11:30 as we began riding through grape growing country. There were rows and rows of grape vines up the hillsides. Steep hillsides. Fortunately for us the trail stayed close to the river and we did not do any climbing. I finally got a few photos too. After hanging around until 4:30 we finally got it all together. It turns out we are not at the originally planned campground, however where we are in the only campground on the map. And, for that reason, we were given directions for this campground. Since it is close to the center of Krems we decided we'd stay here. The other campground is out in the boonies. Randy rode out to get Craig and our stuff, once Joy called the other campground and found out he was out there waiting for us. So when they returned there was a mad dash to set up, shower, etc. Jenny picked up her parents, Casey and Carrie at the train station. They have been touring southeastern Europe and plan to be with us tonight and for the two days in Vienna at least. Then she got busy on dinner and before long we had another good dinner of spaghetti and meat or veggie sauce, salad and brown bread.

I guess we had our good weather day in Austria. It rained most of the night and we awoke to a damp morning though the rain had stopped finally. The campers had some wet stuff including bike seats. After lunch we continued on the river a short while. Then we made sort of a joint indecision to try the Kultural radweg - an offshoot that we hoped would present more variety than the "same old river" path. We certainly got some variety. We followed the Mradweg (for museum) signs on the most part and only had to consult Randy's detailed maps a few times. We were only 15 km from Grein when we made the switch. Soon we were only 9K away. After some more curves and nice country roads and a busy road we were 11 km away - something wrong with this picture?? No, we were still on the M trail. Then we hit a very steep climb for about 10 minutes (maybe half that - its always twice as long as it seems.) That hill took us up to the Clam Castle, and we're not talking seafood here folks. Built in 1149 it has been owned by the Clam family since 1454 and 3 generations still live there - in summer anyway. It is one of the few fully intact fortresses in Austria. We had a very friendly guide who took her time, answered all our questions and gave us a great tour and her English was not that bad. It is an impressive building - I wouldn't want to live there though - too cold. After that tour the rest of the ride was mostly an easy downhill into Grein, a small town where we soon found the campground. We even saw some sun during the early afternoon. However soon after setting up camp it began to rain lightly and that continued until dinner time when it mostly quit again. Since we were immensely hungry after the ride we were able once again to find gelato and pastries even on Sunday in this small tourist town. Also some of the usual beverages outside a little restaurant. We had another great dinner - grilled pork tenderloin, rice and tomato/bean sauce. Jenny keeps doing a great job of whipping up three meals a day plus doing most of the shopping with some help from Craig. Craig has to find and establish the campsite before any of us get there. In return they occasionally get to party along with everyone else and they get to haul over the autobahn in their great vehicles. Craig would dispute that as he has the loaded down Peugeot Boxer van. But Jenny has a supercharged VW camper van that does 160 on the autobahn - that's even fast in mph. Sorry Jenny, maybe Henry wasn't supposed to know that. I'm afraid the after dinner conversations have started to deteriorate. Either we're running out of topics or we've become as familiar with each as old friends due to our 3 weeks close association. I don't think I'll bother with tonight's topics. After all my mother is reading these things. We're becoming acquainted with James from Birmingham who is doing a ride to Istanbul on his own and has crossed our path more than once. So far we haven't scared him off.

I'm writing to you from Linz. A rest day and our first stop in Austria, our third country of the tour. Things have been great lately. Navigationally the cyclepath has been a little difficult but only because there are a million intertwining trails. Somehow everyone seems to make it to camp everyday even though they all arrive from different directions. In many sections the Danube trail is poorly marked and where there are signs they tend to be quite confusing. We've been doing a lot more than just cycling these days. The trail alternates from bank to bank and we've found ourselves hitching rides on several boats. Most of them are just cable ferries that directly cross the river but a couple times we've found ourselves on these luxurious river boats sipping ales and enjoying the scenery in an even more relaxed atmosphere. It seems like every little German village we passed through was celebrating some sort of Oktoberfest style festival. Leiderhosen, giant steins of beer, pretzels, sausages, sour kraut and way too much polka music. The crew has been quite willing to indulge in the festivities whether it's in the middle of a ride or a late night at the local fair. We've taken the time out of our riding schedule to see some of the more historical sites as well. The churches and castles that we've seen along the Danube are beginning to depict more of a Baroque style architecture. As we continue down stream these historical buildings are becoming more plentiful and the river grows wider every day with all of the confluence of so many tributary streams. I'm hoping to get to see a classical concert and take a soak in a thermal bath when we reach Vienna in a few days.

This morning at some point as we crossed a river we moved on from Germany to Austria. Another cool clear morning with wet tents. We've all rediscovered the principle that dry tents mean bad weather. Unfortunately, or actually fortunately for us on most days, the corollary is true also - our tents are wet when we get up. Most of the group made the decision to go to church today and hear the daily organ concert from the biggest organ in the world. So we got up at the usual time and followed the usual schedule and got into old Passau about 9. That was just on time to make a thorough visit to the Friday market in the church plaza. You should see all the fresh fruits and veggies, not to mention the several meat and cheese and bread and pastry stalls. Even though it was only an hour and a half since breakfast we managed to polish off a few fruits and pastries before church. Just like the book said the door opened at 11:20 to sell tickets. It's another impressive church. No stained glass in this church but many large fresco paintings all over - ceiling and both walls. Lots of intricate statues and carvings. The organ concert was great though others thought it was just long enough at a half hour. Composers from periods from mid-1700 to 1990. The organ is actually five organs - 3 in back and 2 in front all controlled by one keyboard. Once the concert was over we had sandwiches and fruit that Jenny had brought up for us. Then we had to make travel decisions. Sheila, Walter, Lincoln, and Randy planned to take it relatively easy and first check out the cruise ships from Passau to Linz. Brian, who returned from Munich yesterday headed off early by himself before the concert. Joy twisted her ankle walking around Passau this morning so decided to hop the Jennyvan for the day. Chuck had had enough playing around for the day and wanted to RIDE. I guess I had too for I chose to ride with him and let him pull along for the 90 km remaining. It was about 115 km for the day including the ride into Passau. Except for the last 20 km we rode the south bank of the Donau. It was a great day for just riding. We had a little gravel at the start out of Passau then paved cyclepath (we're starting to call it the "psychopath") for the rest of the day. The first 30 km were hilly and often on roads. After that it was an 8 foot wide paved path about 6 feet from the river and made for good riding. We did that 90 km in about 3.5 hours of riding including a couple P stops and a stop for me to call Randy to find out if they took a boat and what their schedule would be. We'll find out about that trip tomorrow. Near the end we took one bad turn when we went over to the north side and ended up on a peninsula - had to retrace our ride for 15 minutes. After that Mr. Competition had to chase down a group of 8 locals who had passed us so I struggled to keep up with that for 10 minutes. We ended at the campsite, gave Jenny Randy's message and got Craig to haul us into town. Felt a lot better after a good cleanup and dinner at an Italian restaurant with Brian (Sheila still on the boat). Brian and I walked down to city center to check out ANOTHER festival but were glad to have non-festival food for a night.