I awoke freezing in the back garden of a man who wouldn’t let us use his toilet. I waited patiently for the clock to hit 7.30am to wake Max and we quickly packed away and headed for our flixbus.

Arriving at Paris Bercy Seine, we’d been nervous if they’d let us put our many bike bags on the bus, so we wrapped them all up into one bin bag and explained it was a backpack? A few confused looks were exchanged as the ‘backpack’ lost all integrity once inside the hold. But on we went.

We sat in a pair of desired window seats on the ground floor (we’d paid extra for em) and sat opposite what must’ve been the happiest woman on earth. She smiled without tiring for 8 hours whilst looking at the window, no phone, no book, just taking it all in as the French motorway turned to German Autobahn. We found out she was on some kind of Christian comedown from completing the Santiago de Compostella, as she got off the bus she waved her shepherds crook at us with the biggest smile.

I fell asleep and woke up outside of Stuttgart where we changed for the dreaded overnight leg of the flixbus. It was a hard, broken night of upright sleeping, lot of stops, loud announcements, and the waft of the toilet.

8.5.24

The bus pulled into Vienna central station at 5am. The night before started to vanish as the sun rose. We moved into Vienna train station and sat hollow with coffee and pastries, trying to think what we could do until 5.30pm when we’d check in with Martin, our Warmshowers host (essentially couch-surfing). I suggested we slept in a cinema or found a local gym. We chose the latter after storing our bikes in the amazing Vienna bike garage (which we cannot recommend enough).

The gym/sauna was the best thing we did in Vienna. It was £££ but the endorphins of exercise, mixed with the peace of the sauna, then the brief nap in their calm room really hit the nail on the head.

Come midday a sudden hunger came over us, so we trammed to a sausage hut in town made famous by Anthony Bourdain (review here). I got the cheese sausage, Max the veggy option, and we both enjoyed it for the moment that it lasted.

After some cake, coffee, and views of the cathedral, we returned to our bikes and headed to Martins with a few minor glitches (getting lost, Max’s brake getting jammed).

Martins home was inspiring, a very orderly Tom Sachs style flat with the environment at heart – hanging bikes, a table on wheels that he’d pull into the middle of the room when needed, and a shower head that told you how many liters you’d used (with a polar bear graphic that showed them slowly fade, lol). Martin was a lovely guy, a music teacher who was devoted to not flying, he had in-fact cycled to Australia and back couple years ago. Legend.

After chatting with Martin for a short while, we ate at a local kebab house and retired shortly after.

9.5.24

Politeness almost killed me last night. For some reason I had assumed Martin liked his gaff being the temperature of Arrakis so didn’t open the window, instead letting myself bake in my sleeping bag.

Luckily, I lived another day and enjoyed the breakfast Martin provided. Max took an age fixing his bike so I called Ellie (my partner). It was lovely to hear from her, same old niceties as always – Ellie telling me about the Americans abroad (born performers as Michael Palin calls them), how she hated quadbiking, and the birds she’d seen. But a moment came on this call, I can’t put my finger on the exact point, where we realised we really were half a world away from each other.

For so long we’d been so used to experiencing new things together, sharing awe at birds in Peckham Morrisons carpark or watching absolute mind melting tv in our flat, but now our memories weren’t being made together. I heard Ellie sniffle down the phone, which broke my heart and left me sobbing in the sweltering stairwell of Martins flat.

As the call concluded, Max had fixed his bike and I was desperate to distract myself and where better to do that than the Hapsburg Crypt. It was a cold and gothic affair, with extravagant tombs they claim are not vanity projects (hmmmm).

Rising from the depths of the crypt starving (not correlated) we grabbed some scran nearby and set out to visit an art gallery.

We opted on the Heidi Horten collection which in truth was a little bit of a blunder. The art work was good, mainly modern artworks by John Michel Basquiat, Keith Harring and some bloke who does prints of Marilyn Monroe. But it was all tainted by the fact that the Horten’s (though, I think they suggest Heidi was not part of this) had taken advantage of Jewish people before WW2, as they had their possessions, rights and livelihoods stripped from them under Nazi rule. It was a shame this wasn’t really highlighted before we made our decision to visit.

Leaving the museum with some regrets, we grabbed an early dinner at a restaurant which served ‘Austrian’ cuisine. I ordered 2 huge schnitzels with potatoes and Max had deep fried spinach pockets. We felt full, but once Max uttered the word strudel, I was wading through vanilla custard with my spoon trying to rescue that sweet submerged apple pastry.

We walked home as the first glimmers of Austrian sun strobed against the square post war architecture of southern Vienna. We spoke with Martin briefly and drifted off.

10.5.24

After saying goodbye to Martin and heading to the supermarket, we were off. The sun was shining and our bodies rested.

The scenery changed from tarmac engraved with tramlines to dusty gravel paths with elder trees lining them. We looped south of Vienna Airprt and soon were in the plains of southern Austria. It was a solarpunk dream of expansive wind farms.

We stopped for lunch at an Italian Mafia themed restaurant in the middle of nowhere. Our mate Don Coleone loomed over Max as we waited for our pasta. We made light work of the chow and pedalled through more fields with poppies and scatterings of wild flowers.

After a dreamlike ride through fields of flowers and wind turbines, we reached an old Roman plinth which attracted cyclists like moths to a flame. It was great to see other bike tourers (tourists?), I loved eyeing up their bikes, one guy cycled with a map on his handlebars. Old school.

The landscape quickly turned Dayz (a super realistic zombie survival game), with long grass, small towns, and hunting stands scattered about. But in a flash found ourselves on on the mega highway of cycle lanes.

‘Build it and they’ll come’, and boy did the cyclist come to this cycle path. It must’ve been the most used path in the world. We crossed the border and in no time found ourselves in Bratislava, stopping just short of the bridge that crossed the Danube into the old town.

Music was playing, very, very loudly just next to us. It turned out to be Brian May tuning his guitar for a free concert hosted in Bratislava each year. My Mum would’ve said ‘put that on especially for you I did’, thanks Mum.

A short cycle more and we were at the Airbnb. We dropped the bikes off and Ubered into town to the aptly named ‘Slovak Pub’. Before entering, Max slapped a Slovak for ¢50 (stag do antics), then we ate some food covered in sheep’s cheese – it was delicious. We returned home and crashed quickly.

The best day of cycling so far. 91 km of sun kissed cycling.

11.5.23

A rest day.

After failing to get into the UFO Tower, we’d watched nuthatches climb upside down in trees and wound up at the church of St Elizabeth of Hungary – it was a beautiful duck egg blue church designed in the early 1900s in art Nouveau style.

We ate lunch and meandered through the quiet streets of Bratislava, ending up at Slovak Radio, an upside down pyramid built between 1967-1980 which borders on the cusp of brutalism/ modernism. I gathered the people of Slovakia do not like it, viewing it as a symbol of the suffering endured under communist rule. From a non political point of view, we loved it. The foyer had curved brown leather sofas with orange metal lampshades overhead. It was Blade Runner as anything with smooth concrete and freestanding ceramics dotted about.

After accidentally stumbling upon the old town and the population of Bratislava in our hunt for a souvenir shop, we settled with our kindles in the town square and read until tea time. We ate at another classic Slovak diner and bussed home to prepare for the ride to Győr tomorrow.

Tomorrow, another day, another border (Hungary).