The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page. ~St. Augustine
The fourth day I had a little chill out in
Linz. I still needed to get there because I was about 10 km away from
Linz. In the morning it was extremely difficult to start biking as my butt hurt
a lot. That eventually became my major problem with biking as soon as pain
in the knee faded away. I visited Linz 2 years ago with a friend of mine during
another low-cost journey (visiting Austria on train and sleeping in a tent).
Therefore, this time I did not need to do much sightseeing and could just hang around, watch a knight tournament during Linz historical festive days
(great timing, indeed), and recharge my devices in McDonald where I had, by
the way, an interesting experience. One Afro-American guy, about 14-years old
and obviously tipsy, came to the “restaurant“ and started harassing customers
by begging for food with inarticulate mumbling. He was saw off by several
customers, but the funniest one, also an Afro-American was terrified by his
obnoxious behavior and kicked a fuss there. “What the fuck, do not take my
food, man“, he screamed at the guy when he “served himself“ with
some fries of his allegedly new friend. In the end, the manager had to spring
on defense of the customer and kick that guy out. It was quite funny to observe
that. I and one elderly woman were particularly amused by this scene and
ended up talking for about an hour. She was really garrulous and therefore it
was not a problem to engage in a conversation either with her, or with the
other guests. Almost everyone looked incredulously when she told the newcomers about
my plans to go by bike to Spain and it was quite funny to see their
reactions.
Before leaving Linz, I wanted to ritually have
shower in the same fountain as two years ago. What an irony that after I was
nicely washed, it suddenly started raining. This rain accompanied me for at
least 5 hours and I was completely soaked from the top to the bottom. In
some moments, I even experienced such heavy rain that I could not
move and see anything. Even my so called waterproof jacket got wet.
Despite my rest in Linz, I was quite tired, maybe
due to my rushed pace during the rain. Interestingly, you tend to ride faster
in the rain. This can be either due to the fact that the pavement is wet and
therefore you can move more smoothly, or simply because it is cold and you want
to warm up and ride faster. I did manage to get to the designated place,
but it was rather in the dark and quite late. I vividly remember my riding
along various meanders of Danube and I could not wait until I reach
my goal. I even ate my last Horalka to get more sugar for last kilometeres
(my favorite sweets, typical Slovak sweets). As usually, I built my base about
10 pm. This time, however, in an area full of fishermen and campers. Finally a
conventional alternative (last night beneath the railway road was not
particularly pleasing but it is funny now in the retrospective).
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