from Graz

A long Viennese weekend, where to start? Forget the high street; just as grim as any other and twice the price. But the rest! Mozart's something or other live in a great candlelit church, festivals in the park, Klimt and Egon Schile, Pakistani food - eat all you can and pay as you like (or was it vice versa?), indulgent afternoons with horseraces, big wheels and apricots... At one point I found myself in such high spirits that I bought a bottle of gin to temper them. I had a lesson in Israeli cheesemaking (Labneh, strained yogurt really) and was introduced to an Indian tour guide, well connected and well familiar with overlanding the Silk Roads. Likely I'll one day stop somewhere with dubious hospitality and I won't know how to respond at all. Anna and Yuval more than met my inflated expectations, it was wonderful. When it finally came time to leave on Monday Anna gave me a mystery gift, an escort through the city and a scribble of paper which was in fact a perfection of onward directions to Wiener Neustadt. The rain became a downpour just as we parted.

Anna & Yuval, Viennese big wheel

 It poured all day and the text from Vienna saying the sheets would be left on my bed just in case did little to steel my resolve. After six hours of torrential and increasingly cold rain one starts to delight in waterproof socks and the knowledge that quite soon there'll be a few square metres of flat ground hidden behind trees or tall grass or somesuch upon which to make a hasty camp. Bicycle tourist is a bit of a misnomer for one as gratuitously equipped as I. Really the bicycle is just the chassis of an elaborate, ingeniously collapsible and waterproofly packable sort of mobile home replete with leather upholstery, silk-lined, down-filled and splendidly air-cushioned double bedroom with spacious vestibule, minimalist titanium kitchenette and a tardis wardrobe of Goretex, merino and polyester-mix ... Now I even have espresso in the morning. I can feel my puritanic father frowning a little but for me it's a constant joy. So much for being bashfully well-equipped; lies, daily I am in reveries at the function and aesthetic of it all. Anyway, I camped, ate my gnocchi, opened Anna's thoughtful gift, had an exhausted little cry and slept fitfully, the rain still disturbing me through my ear plugs. I hadn't reckoned on the emotional toll of goodbyes on the road. I love good solitude almost as much as good company, but the latter is always welcome after a few days. And then it's not long before hospitality becomes home and leaving again, however much I anticipate it, becomes a little fraught and draining.

 But the following days to Graz were glorious. The best kind of solitary in gentle Alpine valleys; wind shimmering wheat fields, postcard villages and only one fairly shallow pass at Semmering. I guess the real hills will start in Slovenia.

the pass at Semmering