Wednesday, July 31, 2019
June 28th: Prien Am Chiemsee to Salzburg
Despite the fact that catching the ferry could save us an hour and a half of riding, nobody seemed very excited about trying to catch it, so of course we missed it by about 8 minutes. Unfortunately, in the rush to try to catch it, I left the electric toothbrushes back at the hotel.
The day was significantly cooler than the prior, and since we were just going to ride all the way to Salzburg that day, we opted simply to use Google Maps. I stuck my bluetooth headset in my ear and used Google Maps on the phone to give me verbal directions while cycling. This turned out to be a mistake, because right after we crossed over the autobahn into Bernau am Chiemsee, Google Maps routed us onto a private road, which we'd only gotten in because there were a couple of people leaving the fenced off areas and they let us in for whatever reason without telling us that it was private!
Thus it was that we rode for a good 20 minutes before private security caught up with us and gave us a questioning! We told them that we were following Google maps, at which point they nodded as though this happened all the time, and gave us directions off the plantation, but didn't bother following us, which was weird because at the exit gate, we were given a hard time as well trying to exit!
In Traunstein, we had lunch at a local asian restaurant. It was passable food, made palatable only because they had exotic drinks like Lychee. What was notable was that after lunch, Google Maps tried to route us onto a walking path that took us over bars that was impossible to traverse with the triplet! We turned around and rode back to find an alternate, which cost us time. With temperatures similar to the previous day, we would have been cooked, but fortunately the day remained relatively cool, and the climbing was somewhat moderate. Demonstrating how far we'd come since the start of the tour, we could take turns standing up on the bike without feeling like the bike was going to topple over and kill us. We'd arrived as a team, even if the two brothers on the back of the bike were still acting as though they were a teenage suicide cult.
In Lauter, Boen fell asleep, and we pulled into the driveway of a house to rest under shade. He slept for about 15 minutes and then was ok to go, but while he was napping the owner of the house came out and filled up our water bottles! The road then went down to Teisendorf where we stopped for some ice cream, and then gave us a bunch of rolling descents to the Austrian border, very similar to our descent into Fussen oh so many days ago. It was a delight, fun, and very fast.
The Austrian border, when we crossed over it over a tiny pedestrian and bike bridge was anti-climatic. There was no sign that we'd crossed a border other than that the prevailing brand of beer had changed.
Riding into Salzburg on bike paths was very nice, but we had one more snag: Boen once again fell asleep 1km from the hotel. Well, it was a nerve-wracking 1km, but I kept riding figuring that he was clipped in and still holding on to the handlebars. When we arrived, I stopped the bike and saw what he was doing: he had his eyes closed and was nodding off, but every time his helmet hit the handlebars he would "microwake" and lift his head up again, all the while holding on to the bars, and staying clipped in!
I didn't know it then, but that was the end of our tour. We parked the bikes outside the apartment, where there wasn't a place to lock the triplet to anything except itself. Then got in and settled into a very well equipped apartment that had fans to keep everything cool. The supermarket was right across the street, so we bought a frozen pizza and cooked it and ate.
After dinner we went for a walk, visiting Mozart's birth-house (which was also a museum), and exploring the old town which had several bridges across the Salzach. Ice cream was bought, and I finally got to see the city up close which I had never done, given that I'd only ever passed through Salzburg in a hurry and never stayed there.
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