I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move. ~Robert Louis Stevenson
Waking up early in the morning in my camping spot near
the river was just fascinating. I totally enjoyed my morning walk, quick
breakfast and later set off for the journey. I woke up earlier because
I wanted to attend a mass on Sunday. Luckily I found
a church on my way in a small Austrian village, and smelly and dirty
as I was, I went inside to the utmost surprise of the locals. I even
managed to charge my cell phone battery. Later on, I continued to Passau,
made few quick phone calls with friends and family because I wanted to
make the most of my free Austrian minutes and in the later afternoon
I came to Passau, the first German city in Bavaria near the Austrian
borders. To my big surprise, I was to find out that my cell phone internet
roaming was not working as I had expected and I was to cope with this
problem until I arrived in France.
I do not know whether you have visited Passau,
but it is a very nice city with its own urban charm. Passau is not so huge
and spectacular as some major metropolies, but it is definitely very cute and
its promenades around Danube on a small island where the city centre is
located, turn it into a very
romantic place.
I have seen many interesting things there; however,
one experience outshines all the others and that was my visit of a praline
factory. It was really like entering a chocolate paradise. I was totally
overwhelmed by the plethora of various chocolate and praline sorts and even though
it was rather expensive, I succumbed to the temptation and purchased some pralines.
I do not consider myself a specialist, but I am definitely a gourmet who can
appreciate tasty food and drinks - it somehow comes from my nature to
enjoy deeply everything that I can perceive with full joy.
Those hand-made pralines, winners of countless competitions, carefully selected
by the chocolate master were gorgeous - I was just in the seventh heaven!
For the rest of the day, I motivated myself with one
praline per break - a well deserved reward, indeed. I think, I will practice
this with other sweets as well.
The whole day was awfully hot and I think that at some
point I got a small sun-stroke. I had to lie down for a while before I was able
to continue. Due to a bad road description, I got lost several times and
significantly lagged behind. This became even worse as the darkness fell and I
totally lost my sense of orientation. In the end, I gave up and built my tent
somewhere behind Deggensdorf, in German a dagger village, which was definitely not
as small as I had expected from its name. I did not choose an ideal place for
building my tent because there were still few people walking around, probably
on a drink night out, seeing my tent and saying “Bist du tepad?” I was pretty
scared that night and could not fall asleep easily. Fortunately, in the end, there
were no problems at all.
I was mildly disappointed by the quality of the bike
road as I went from Austria to Germany. In Austria, you had the vast
amount of roads well paved, but the first 50 km of Bavarian Donauradweg were mostly narrow country
roads through which you could not ride fast. Maybe it is deliberately so to give
Germans a sense of adventure as they spend their vacation fishing and
camping along the dusty road. I saw many people who obviously wanted to
get in shape on their active vacation. This kind of road offered definitely
plenty of opportunities for a wide variety of sport activities. The road
itself leads along the Danube as a form of a dam and there are many
small bars, restaurants and accommodation on the way. Presumably, this road
offers for the locals a good source of income from the tourism.
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