Day 22: Rorshach to Puch im Hallein via train transfer

 

 

We got up at 6:00am, had our bags packed by 7:00am, had breakfast, and were on the road by 7:50am. Riding along the Bodensee Radweg with nobody to compete with us for space was fun, but soon we had no choice but to get onto the main road. While traffic was light, what traffic there was seemed be a hurry, which was more than a little annoying.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

Fortunately, we soon had a bike path signed for the Austrian border, and we choose to follow it first around the airport, then along the Alter Rhein, and finally across a bridge which dumped us across the border.

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You know you're no longer in Switzerland when the bike path signs are no longer regular, correct, and unambiguous. We soon were faced with bike paths all pointing to Lindau, and had to ask a woman. She pointed in one direction, and then said, well, the other direction is more scenic. Since we had plenty of time (or so I thought), we chose the scenic route, which took us along the lake, but not before putting us onto a massive detour.

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The day was still cool, but it was rapidly warming up under the sun, and the path backed tracked us again to cross the Rhein before turning at Hardt to hit the shoreline again. By the time we got into Bregrenz, we were running short on time, and I opted to follow the main road rather than lose any more time trying to hug the lake.

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While this made the ride go faster, it was also a lot less scenic and there was quite a bit of traffic. We soon made it across into the German border, and found the bike path leading to Lindau again, crossing the bridge onto the island with a bunch of school children and arriving at the train station at 8:55am.

I bought train tickets and studied the itinerary. There was a direct train to Munich at 9:55am, so we tried that first. Unfortunately, it was run by a private train company, the the conductors did not like the look of our tandem, so we had to take an indirect train at 10:10, and change trains at Buchloe for Munich. Fortunately, that turned out to be an easy transfer, and we made it to Munich at 1:10pm. Our train for Salzburg would leave at 1:42, but first, I wanted to drop off materials at our Munich hotel (for instance, all the Switzerland maps), as well as filled up SD cards so that I didn't have a chance to lose them.

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When I got back, who did I find chatting with Lisa but Chris Brown, who had gone on one of my tours back when I lived in Munich. Chris was in between jobs, so after a bit of cajoling, we got him to take the train with us. Despite knowing to meet us at the train station, Chris had not brought along his bike, so could not join us in our attempt on Grossglockner. His excuse was that he was due to start a job soon in Sicily, and had to make travel arrangements and what not.

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We had fun chatting during the train ride, and got to Salzburg around 3:30pm. That gave us a bit of time to ride out of town and search for lodging. We immediately headed for the Salzach, the river that bisects Salzburg, and started heading south along the banks. It was a gorgeous day, and we didn't make very quick progress because there was much to see and take pictures of. Fortunately, European cities are not very big, and within half an hour we were out of concrete bike path into the forested dirt path.

By the time 5pm rolled around, we were in Puchs. The first hotel we found was closed, but the second one had a room remaining. When I expressed surprise at the price, the owner gave me a discount and we agreed to stay. Lisa wanted to buy a SIM card for her phone, but the post office was closed, so we walked over to the nearest grocery store to buy fruits for desert. Fortunately, the day cooled down quite a bit, and we were able to get a good night's sleep.

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Puch, Austria

We took the train with everyone else on Tuesday to luzern and then rode two days through Switzerland to the bodensee. It was as flat a route as I could find given I wanted speed, but flat in Switzerland still means 900m days.

We arrived in roarshach yesterday, found a hotel that served an early breakfast and set off this morning for lindau, Germany where we could access the cheap train system: 32.5 euros got us all the way to Salzburg, where I had wanted to start.

Chris Brown an ex-googler met us at the Munich station where we had a short layover and I got to drop more stuff off. Since we had the bayern ticket he joined us for the train ride to Salzburg as well.

We rode for an hour and found lodging outside the city, at an exceedingly fancy place but needed after a long day and 3 countries.

Day 21: Rapperswil to Rorshach

 

The Rapperswil hostel served a late breakfast, so it wasn't until almost 9pm before we left Rapperswil and headed towards Watwil. The Edge 705 did a great job navigating us on minor roads to Eschenbach, where the climb to Ricken on the main highway was busy. At Ricken I spotted a bike path towards Watwil, and immediately hopped onto it. It turned out to be a gorgeous dirt road that descended gently down towards Watwil. In Watwil, I somehow got turned around and followed the bike path towards Ebnat-Kappel instead of heading towards Lictensteig. After about 5 kilometers and a bit of climbing I realize the road looked familiar and pulled out the map. It turned out that we were on the bike path towards Schwagalp, rather than the shortest route to the Bodensee, which Lisa wanted to see.

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I turned the bike around and abandoned the bike path, crossing a covered bike bridge and headed on the main road to Ebnat-Kappel, where we had a grocery store lunch just before the SPAR closed at 12:15pm.

We rode to Lichtensteig, where we finally picked up a bike path for Flawil. This bike path wound around beautiful in the country side before crossing a stream and taking us to Unterrindal. Following the signs to St. Gallen, we rode along until I started seeing bike path signs for Waldkirch and Bischofszell. The dirt path took us into Waldkirch, but then petered out. Lisa was tired of meandering about at this point (it was also well above 85 degrees out and warm), so she asked me to take the most direct route to the Bodensee. This meant ignoring the bike path and following the road, so we rode to Wittenbach and then started a descent into Arbon.

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Arbon was a beautiful sea side town, but whoever placed the tourist information center did not do a good job providing signs to it. Since it was a Wednesday night, I decided we would do fine just by rolling down to the water and riding towards Austria. The first hotel we tried was fine, but didn't have anything to offer it. I also wanted an early breakfast the next day so we could get to the German train station by 9:00am, which was when the Bayern ticket hours started. The next hotel was pricey, and they gave away the room while I was making a decision about it. We finally found one in Rorshach that offered a 7:00am breakfast and had decent rooms. It also hosted other cyclists, and had a very friendly manager. It was pricey, but the combination was pretty rare, so I sprang for it.

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That evening after dinner, we walked along the Bodensee and admired the quiet scenery. Then the world cup game ended and all night it became honking of horns and cars driving through the streets at high speed making it tough to sleep. Fortunately, I thought, tomorrow would be an easy day.

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Day 20: Meiringen to Rapperswil

 

We got up at 5:30am and were packed by 6:00. By 7:00am, we had the bikes out of storage and mounted and ready to go. When Andreas saw me he said, "When's your train?" "8:45am" "It'll take you all of 20 minutes to get there.." "But I need to buy train tickets too." "Oh, in that case, we'll have breakfast early for you." By 7:15, breakfast was ready and we were chomping away at it, appreciating the extra time Andreas had made for us.

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When it came time to settle up accounts, we paid with a combination of our Swiss Francs and Euros, since everyone other than I wanted to get rid of their Swiss Francs. I saved just enough for the train ticket to Luzern.

We descended to the intersection with the Lammi restaurant quickly, stopping only once to let the post bus by. At the intersection, a cyclist who was waiting at the intersection looked up at us, saw me, and said, "I read your blog on the internet." "What's your name?" "Sean" "Send me e-mail." "I will!" The funny thing is that I met Jobst Brandt at the very same intersection in 2005 as well, so I guess this really is the corner where cyclists meet.

At the Meiringen station, the ticket machines were busy, but I finally bought my train ticket, and we loaded up on to the train when it arrived under cloudy skies. Upon arrival in Luzern, we said good-bye to everyone else, and then proceeded onto the remaining part of the trip. My plan was still to make it to Austria to ride the Grossglockner highway, something that had eluded me for years due to bad weather. Now, the easiest way to do this was to take the train from Switzerland, but that would be extremely expensive. The cheap way to do this was to ride our bike to the German border, board the train there using the Bayern ticket, which for 32.50 EUR would take us all the way to Salzburg, where we could head south along my original intended route. This had the additional advantage that we'd see parts of Switzerland I had never seen before.

We arrived in Luzern under cloudy skies with a few rain drops. After exploring the town for a bit and finding nothing we wanted, we headed out towards Adligenswil after eating a supermarket lunch. The climb away from the lake didn't take very long, and soon we were descending towards Arth and Immensee. This was a lake I had never seen before, and the bike path along it was very pretty.

Past Arth, we followed signs to Sattel, which granted us nice views of the Lauerzersee from up high. As we climbed up to Sattel we saw another tandem couple come down the hill with panniers, the only other tandem cycle tourists we would see for the entire trip.
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At Sattel, we had a choice, to visit Agerisee, which I had seen in 2005, or take the most direct route towards Zurichsee along the national route. Lisa wanted the direct route along highway 8, which had a bike lane. The road was busy, and not too interesting until we approached Pfaiffikon, where the road suddenly dove towards the Zurichsee in a series of sweeping turns down to the lake shore.

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Pfaiffikon didn't look interesting, but there was a long bridge across to Rapperswil that I wanted to ride across to, and ride across we did, arriving at the scenic town of Jona on the other side. A visit to the tourist information office revealed that all the hotels were booked up, but the youth hostel was available. It was the most expensive youth hostel I had ever stayed at, and was a little out of the way, but the town looked interesting so we took it.

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We had dinner by the lake, did some grocery shopping, and walked around town after a quick stop at the hostel to drop off our stuff. Sunset was glorious, and it felt good to be riding again after 4 days of hiking.

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Day 19: Hiking to Grosse Scheidegg via the Romantic Road

 

Phil and I proposed doing Hornseeli backwards from the last time we did it. Kekoa and Cynthia were skeptical, because Hornseeli can be muddy and Kekoa's Five Fingers and Cynthia's sandals were not up for a soaking. We decided to just hike up and then turn around if it didn't turn out to be good, so after breakfast I got a bus pass for 5 people from Andreas and we set off on the hiking trail up towards Grosse Scheidegg. It was still cloudy, and the roads were wet, but we soon ran into cyclists riding up the mountain.

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Daniel Gries and his wife were on a month long trip, and planned to do some backpacking as well, so not only did they have panniers on their bikes, but they also had backpacks with gear on their back. That did not look too comfortable to me, but they were willing to get off the bike and walk, which is something I'm not willing to do.

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As we approached Schwarzwaldalp, we found the weather clearing up slightly. At Schwarzwaldalp, we found two signs pointing to Hornseeli, one coming from the way we came, and one pointing up the hill. Of course I chose the one pointing up the hill, thereby missing out on the Romantic Road once again. As Lisa likes to say, I'm not very romantic. The route we ended up on was some sort of cross-country ski path that rose steeply through the woods towards Oberlager. I had a tough time believing that cross country skiiers could tackle anything this steep, but since I'm not an avid cross-country skiier myself I must be under-estimating the amount of grip those skis provide.

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Upon emerging from the woods, we walked across a cow field full of cows, and the path kept rising to 2000m from there to the junction with the romantic road, while the scenery once again got better and better. The clouds lifted and we started getting sunshine, which together with the snow covered peaks made for some pretty nice pictures.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

At the junction with Oberlager, we had to decide whether or not to tackle Hornseeli, walk down the romantic road, or walk up to Grosse Scheidegg on the same. Phil and I wanted to do Hornseeli and the romantic road, but we were out-voted by Lisa and Cynthia, who wanted an easier day. I knew if I were to do the romantic road with Phil I would never hear the end of it from Lisa, so I reluctantly agreed to make it a short and easy day.

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Easy day it might be, but it was no less scenic. It was a good way for Phil, Cynthia, and Kekoa to finish their trip, with memories of what is still the prettiest place on the planet I've ever had the fortune to explore.

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We had lunch at the top, took the bus back to Rosenlaui, and the others lounged and started packing while Lisa and I went to the Rosenlaui Gletscherschultz to spend an hour or two staring at the cascades that dug a gorge through the granite.

Dinner was once again another fabulous concoction. We repacked our bags. I wanted to get rid of everything so we only had 2 panniers and nothing hanging out or in between racks. I got rid of the useless Dinotte light, we gave the hiking stick for Phil to bring home, and I borrowed some of Phil's unused SD cards. We filled up our portable shampoo/soap containers with soap from the big bottles and left the big containers in the hotel. Cynthia wanted to catch the 8:45am train, and since Roberto had a ticket with them, we could use that ticket all the way to Luzern with them, thereby only having to pay for one train ticket to Meiringen.

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Day 18: Grindelwald to Rosenlaui

 

 

The hotel's breakfast buffet was packed this morning, since a ton of folks had checked in the night before. Since we had climbed Grosse Scheidegg before, and had too much stuff to bring up the mountain, Lisa elected to ride the bus to the top of Grosse Scheidegg with the panniers, while I would get to ride up Grosse Scheidegg with the unloaded tandem. It was raining lightly as we left Lisa at the bus stop, but by the time we got to where the road became a single lane, the rain had mostly died down and I had warmed up to the point where I had to shed my jacket. We had mistakenly made the division wrong and calculated the grade from Grindelwald to the top of Grosse Scheidegg to be about an 18-20% grade. In reality, the grade varied between 10% and 15%, which was in line with what the other side of the pass would generate. Phil and I rode up steadily, and enjoyed the quiet and beauty of the pass where most of the tourists were scared off by the rain.

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Lisa met us at the top of Grosse Scheidegg, having waited for an hour and a half for us to show up. We mounted the panniers onto the tandem and descended to Rosenlaui just ahead of the post bus, which could not possibly keep up with a tandem on these grades. Upon arriving at Rosenlaui, we left our bags in the lobby and our bikes in the wine cellar (though I would learn later that the new wing had a special bike lobby!), and set off for Engelhornhutte. Phil and I had done this hike before the hard way, by going to Kalterbrunnen first, and I wanted to try it the easy way. I also noticed that there was a side trip from the hutte that would take you up to what I thought mistakenly was the glacier.

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Well, going up the route the easy way was pretty steep, but granted us great views of the Rosenlaui Glacier. As we wound up our way on the over-cast and cool day, we got grand views of the valley, including Hotel Rosenlaui far below us. Lisa decided to turn around just before we got to the hutte, and I made my way up the alternate track, which turned out to be just an ice field.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

Upon returning to the hotel, we found that our rooms were ready, and Christine had given us first choice of rooms in the hotel, which was very nice of her. Lisa and I ate an ice cream while waiting for Phil to catch up to us and Cynthia and Kekoa to come back from their visit to the Gletscherschultz.

The four course meal that Andreas served was as nice as ever, and it was good to see Cynthia and Kekoa now, right at the end of the trip. They had done several passes I had never done before, including Splurgen, Mallorja, and Julier, and Albula, which I had done before on a previous trip. They didn't have as good a time in Meiringen as we did in Grindelwald, and we exchanged pictures and trip stories. It sounded like they had a good time.

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After dinner we took a walk outside in the cool misty evening. Gentle light from the setting sun filtered through the clouds and lit up the granite mountains around us. It didn't matter how many times I had returned here: it was different every time, and I was every bit as entranced.

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Day 17: Hiking Bachalpsee

 

We woke up to another clear and beautiful day, and quickly started heading up the First side of Grindelwald. Lisa wasn't sure how far she wanted to go today, but the hiking stick helped her a lot, and soon the beauty of the surroundings inspired her to forget her aches and move up the mountain. Unlike the Kleine Scheidegg side, the First side is completely exposed even at the bottom, and it wasn't long before we started sweating in the morning sun.

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Since this side of the valley got a lot more sun, there were flowers, even at the lower elevation where the other side would have trees preventing low grasses from growing. At Bort, Lisa proposed to take the more shaded flower trail up rather than the direct route to First along the Gondola line, which was more exposed. The flower trail definitely had a lot of flowers, but rarely in a good place for good pictures. We shot lots of flower pictures but nothing I would be happy to show others. Halfway between Bort and Waldspitz, we ran into a bunch of locals on their morning walk. When Lisa asked them if they were locals, they said, "Yes, we are village people." I expected them to break out into a rendition of "YMCA", but I guess they didn't realize what they were saying.

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At Waldspitz, which looked like an almost newly built hotel, we stopped for ice tea and to watch paragliders float up amongst the alps, juxtaposing their brightly colored parachutes against the backdrop of the Wetterhorn, the Eiger, and other surrounding mountains. Past Waldspitz, the trail becomes exposed again, and after a short flat section, suddenly veered off along a stream and took up steeply up the mountain.

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This was where the hike started to get really pretty. The stream wound along a valley while behind us the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau loomed behind us while the green hills around Bachalpsee beckoned ahead of us. At a short rise I ran into a Japanese looking person coming down the mountain. She smiled at me so I asked her, "Nihongjin desu ka?" "Eei, chugokujin desu!" Boy, I was wrong 2 for 2 twice in a row. We chatted for a bit and discovered that not only were we both Chinese, Linlin went to the same high school I went to in Singapore. We exchanged e-mail addresses and then went on, since she was heading down the mountain and we were heading up.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

Bachalpsee turned out to be a beautiful tarn, but was over-run by tourists. Most tourists took the First Gondola up the mountain and then walked the short hike over to Bachalpsee, resulting in the place being over-run with people, many of them needing hiking poles to even walk the short gentle stretch between the ski station and here. Nevertheless, the walk between Bachalpsee and First was beautiful, and well worth the time.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

At First, we took a quick lunch, and then proceeded down the steep trail towards Waldspitz that came off the side of the First gondola. While the alternate, more exposed route back to Bort would avoid having to retrace our steps through the flower trail, I was far more intrigued by the steep descent back through the other side of the river valley which had led us up to Bachalpsee. This traverse is not for the faint of heart, as the trail falls steeply on one side, but Lisa had her hiking stick, and I didn't mind at all. The scenery was spectacular as a result, making the effort worth while.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

By this time, however, dark clouds were starting to form up over the mountains, and as we got off the single-track onto the dirt road towards Waldspitz, we started to feel rain drops. Fortunately, the flower trail was mostly under tree cover, so we made the descent towards Bort in a hurry. The rain picked up again, however, within half a kilometer of Bort, and we saw at the gondola station that every car coming up the mountain was empty, while every car leaving the station was full. We ran that least 200m and made it to the gondola station before the thunderstorm really started hammering down. Looking at my Garmin 500, I saw that it was only 3:30pm. "The regularly scheduled thunderstorm was early today!"

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We were quite pleased with ourselves for having done the hike before the rain, and were happy to take the gondola down. When the rain died down, I did laundry again, and we had nice big dinners in town. I reflected that my avoidance of Grindelwald in the past was really unnecessary. While the town was touristy and packed with Japanese tourists, most of the hiking was done in really nice country where we did not see that many people. And because the town was relatively big, we found lodging at a reasonable price.

That night, a couple of mountain bikers checked in, and one of them, Nina, showed me all the maps she had for her mountain biking trip. It was impressive and inspiring, and led to me wanting to do a more rough-stuff oriented tour next year.

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