We said it before, Vienna ate us alive upon our arrival. We arrived to the Danube without accommodation. It took a few minutes of laziness by the river to discover the missed messages on our phone from Jowita’s sister-in-law, Beata, announcing our shelter for the next couple days with Herr Franz and Frau Hermina south of Vienna in Weiner Neudorf. Beata had met Franz on a train in Poland when he leaned over to tell her that she reminded him of a love he was separated from during the war.

Franz is 83 and Hermina, on Monday the 28th, 75.  We showed up at their door, one day late, catching them totally of guard. Navigating Vienna was a nightmare on a bicycle. It took us three hours and three scoops of melting ice cream a piece to find the tourist information center to get a bicycle map of the city and a better tourist map. It was clear that there was no chance we would be making it to Weiner Neudorf that day and we pretty much gavc up on the idea of going to meet Beata’s friend. We criss crossed the hostel scene trying to find a place to sleep while mulling over our plans for the next day. We had agreed, seeing Vienna with our loaded bicycles is not going to work and we would leave Vienna the next day to take our scheduled rest day in Krems, further west on our route along the Danube. We finally found a place to sleep, and after releasing the weight of our load literally, and figuratively, we thought over our plan with more clarity. Plain and simple, we had been feeling rushed. We had only planned for two nights in Vienna and did not want to have to spend both in a pension or a hostel. One night with authentic Austrians would not be sufficient especially if it took one day to get there.

Franz and Hermina’s home in Weiner Neudorf was quite far off our route to Krems, but Krems put us into a path that would take us dead on into the Alps. This was not going to work for us. Chad had worked the route and rough schedule to allow for 60-70 km days in the mountains and we have found our limit sits somewhere around that even on flat land. We needed to make some changes. This was the right decision to make. The planned route was too constricting and produced an anxiety that should not exist on a trip like this. We woke the next day, bought some more maps and rode the 40km to knock on Franz and Hermina’s door hoping they were home and hoping they would take us in for a couple nights.  What a wonderful decision it was. We had a really special experience with Franz and Hermina. Despite our inability to speak German and theirs to speak English, we managed to keep good conversation using Polish and some Russian to move us through our thoughts. We left Franz and Hermina and began heading south without knowing our exact destination, only knowing we are headed for Slovenia. We bought really excellent maps of the vast trail network in this region of Austria and are camping along the way. We are very happy with out descision.