June 10th: Sterzing to Bruneck

When I first planned this trip, I thought that it would have been easy to get a train trip from Munich to Innsbruck and then catch the local train to Fortezza and Toblach. However, the local train line between Bruneck and Fortezza was under renovation and so we’d have to ride! That forced me to put in for a night in Bruneck. Then I figured out that the FlixBus was cheaper for a connection than the train. However, Arturo couldn’t get a bike position on the bus, and Stephan pointed out to me that the FlixBus explicitly denied tandems! So I broke down, cancelled the FlixBus (which gave me a credit for future use), and scheduled a taxi to Innsbruck.

Once the taxi arrived, we had to struggle a bit to put 3 bikes + the tandem into it. I ended up decoupling the tandem to get everything to fit, which annoyed me since I’d explicitly told the company we had a tandem. To save time,I talked to the driver and got him to agree to drop us off at Sterzing instead of Innsbruck. The poor guy looked confused and reminded me that Sterzing was in Italy, not Austria and I told him that’s correct, that’s what we wanted, and fortunately he’d agreed!

Mark Brody had already ridden to Sterzing the night before and agreed to meet with us. The driver dropped us off near downtown. Xiaoqin had found a sandwich shop with great reviews, and I reassembled the tandem, just past Mark met us. We had lunch and ice cream together before riding down the bike path towards Bruneck.

From Sterzing to Bruneck is the Alto Aldige bike path which is mostly downhill until Fortezza, whereupon we would have to climb 2000’ to Bruneck. I was familiar with the bike path --- it’s scenic in this direction and much less strenuous than in the other direction, which had multiple double digit grades which were a bear to deal with on the tandem.

Unfortnately, with the downhill and jet-lag, Bowen had a momentary lapse and crashed on a gravel patch around a corner. A local saw us and took him into her house to clean and scrub the wound as well as bandage it. I’d packed some Tergaderm and anti-biotic  cream and would apply it later in the evening after we got to the hotel, but poor Bowen would start the tour limping around for a week or so until his knee got better.

After Fortezza we found the car rest stop where we’d had Weiss Wurst last year during our century, and had some ice cream before negotiating the tricky part of the bike path that had gotten me lost no less than twice in the other direction. From this direction the bike path was much easier to follow, and we made it to Bruneck around 5:00pm. Mark had found a deal for a hotel but it was high up on a ski resort so we parted ways.

Arriving at Bruneck, we found the apartment which had no restaurant attached but we were hungry enough that even though the pizzeria we went to was mediocre we still ate everything. Doing laundry and cleaning Bowen’s wounds took enough time that we were quickly asleep after that.