October 2, 2022
Waldkirchen, Germany to Passau and then Wesenufer, Germany (Oct. 2, 2022)
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I am writing this 3 days later and so much crap has happened in the last 2 days that I am struggling to get my brain wrapped around how to start.
Neither the cycling gods nor the sun shone down on us today. In general it was either the rain thing, or the train thing, both wound up being pretty consequential for us.
The original plan, which- spoiler alert- did NOT transpire, was for us, to ride a modest 30 k to Passau, spend the night in a nice place with a tub - and then take the train the following morning to Munich (about a 3 hour train ride) where we had two nights to reorganize our gear, do laundry, and send our bikes for service. We then had a plan to take the train to Italy for a short visit with friends.
Back story: Several weeks ago we had tried to purchase train tickets for us and our bikes on a train from Passau to Munich which the website had identified as allowing bikes. When the website wouldn’t let us do so, David called Deutschbahn and talked to a very nice, live human who explained that because it was a local train, we couldn’t purchase tickets online but assured him there would be no problem. We simply needed to arrive at the station and purchase our tickets there. And since the train was a local, there should be no problem getting on. Notwithstanding this reassuring information, and because the train/bike thing scares us, we decided to leave Cesky Krumlov a day earlier than planned so that we could arrive in Passau the night before and then buy the tickets for our train journey the following day. We scoped out the train schedule and this local train ran about every two hours.
It was foggy and raining when we woke up in Waldkirchen and the forecast indicated that it would pour all day. We left about 11 am after a pretty lame breakfast at our hotel - one of two crummy breakfasts in 2 months - and the server bit David’s head off when he asked for butter! Clearly exasperated with this clueless American, she practically led him by the hand to where the butter was, only to discover and to add to her consternation that the tray was empty. Dave again politely asked for butter 😎
The ride would have been very cool had it not been raining the whole time. We had some gravel at the beginning, and then in the second half of the ride we dropped back down to the Danube valley, which we had climbed out of a week earlier. Because it was raining pretty hard it was slow going. A descent which would have been fun in dry weather was not so in the rain and I picked my way down slowly. I didn’t want to fall on the last day of our ride. Right before we reached the Danube we had serious muddy gravel on a descent and we stopped and considered reconfiguring our route, a change that would have added several more miserable miles to our journey. By this time we are soaked, cold and anxious. Our rain gear is very good but my hands and feet were wet through and I had worked up a sweat. Fortunately, it turned out okay. The gravel path soon turned to pavement and we were back on the Danube EV 6 for the final 6k. It’s quite pretty coming into Passau. It looks like a lovely city, pretty touristy, but it was pouring and cold as we located and approached the train station.
A cautionary aside: We and our stuff have felt very safe this whole trip except when we are at the train stations. The vibe is just different: we parked our bikes by a window and I stayed put to watch things, while Dave went in to stand in line to buy the tickets. OK, bad news: The ticket office was closed; it was Sunday. I then came inside and we decided to try the machines. First the Deutschbahn machine: nope, it would not accept Munich Central as a final destination, notwithstanding I had looked at this 20 times online when I was planning. So, we went over to the OEBB machine. Nope: It showed the route but when we went to buy bike tickets it would not accept that. After 20 minutes of screwing around we decided we needed a coffee and bun and a regrouping. We met 4 Americans waiting for their train and had a nice visit and they watched our bikes while we drank coffee and warmed up. They were quite impressed with us and our trip - they had been on a cushier bike/barge excursion. I have to say, at that particular moment I wasn’t feeling too impressed with us!
Dave then got on the phone with OEBB and after a fairly laborious conversation was told that there are NO trains out of Passau that allow bikes. Dave, who can really sweat the small stuff but is great when things are dire, quickly pivoted and asked WHERE the closest town to us was in which we could pick up a train that would allow bikes to Munich. The answer: Linz. I quickly googled Linz, it was 86k away, back down the Danube river, which, of course, we had just spent the past week coming up. There was a train the following day from Linz that left at 3:46 pm that had space for bikes. Dave hung up, and we looked at each other. FYI, I was still shivering with cold. Dave says, "There is no way we can ride 86k to Linz tomorrow and make a train at 3 pm. So if we do this, we will have to get back on our bikes NOW and cover at least 30 k in the pouring rain, find somewhere to stay on the road, blow off our nice flat in Passau with a tub…..blah blah blah.” So reader, that’s what we did.
This is where the internet is such a life saver. I quickly researched what was available for accommodations midway between Passau and Linz. There wasn’t much. There were no larger sized towns on the Danube on this stretch and many of the small pensions don’t list on booking.com which makes it hard to book if you're in a hurry, as we were. And since it was the end of the season, our options were further limited. I did find Gasthaus Schutz in Westenufer, 35 k down the Danube. Dave got on the OEBB site and found the train and was able to book us and bike tickets for the train at 3:46 pm the next day. So, now we just had to get to Linz, with a stopover for the night in Westenhufer. I dug around in my pannier, and found the last dry wool shirt I owned, took off all my wet layers and was at least able to put on a dry under layer (with all my wet layers on top!). We paused to eat our sandwich and rehydrate and got on the road again around 3 p.m. It was still raining pretty hard.
(At this point, the riding became a heads-down, no stopping for photos, or much of anything else kind of ride. So, no more shots to share.)
While we were riding out of Passau (we had to back track about 6k from our earlier ride) I was trying to think all good thoughts: We had train tickets, we had a place to stay, it was a straight shot ride with a tailwind, downriver, and we knew the Danube trail. All we had to do is get there. We rode hard with one 5 minute stop, arriving at our inn like a pair of drowned mice.
Things then started to look up. Gasthaus Schutz was lovely. Birgitta, the owner, had a drying room for all our wet gear. They would feed us dinner on a Sunday night. There was a covered garage with electrical outlets. Dave could get a beer and I could get a cup of tea. Warming showers were in our future. All was right with the world - or so we thought. We congratulated ourselves on dealing with adversity and working the problem. As it turned out - we were a bit premature in celebrating our accomplishments.
After we cleaned and warmed up, Dave mentioned that he had reviewed our tickets and it looked like the tickets were for any train on Oct. 3. He suggested that if we could get an early start we might be able to get an earlier train into Munich. This caused us to open the OEBB site - thank goodness— and start looking at the train schedule. I noticed in the very fine print footnotes that the train at 3:46 pm stated it was peak demand and that they recommended everyone have a seat reservation and that you were not guaranteed a seat even with a ticket. We madly started cruising through the five pages of ticketing information we had received with our ticket to determine if we had a seat reservation. Nope. Honestly, the train business is definitely an area where we feel like clueless Americans.
Instead of going to dinner, Dave gets on the phone with OEBB. We got a super nice woman. Her English wasn’t the best but was workable. She pulls up our ticket and advises that no, we don’t have a seat reservation and there is not one to be had on the 3:46 train. Monday was a holiday in Germany, Unity Day, and the trains were packed at the end of the long holiday weekend. She then goes into this long explanation of a strategy we could employ which involved boarding the train quickly and making a run for the dining car to get a seat there. (Apparently if you have a seat in the dining car, you can sit there for the entire journey without a reservation.) While she was explaining this strategy on speaker phone Dave and I are looking at each other and rolling our eyes incredulously. The chances we can load 2 heavy ebikes, 4 panniers and then make a dash for the dining car is just laughable. We then asked if there were any trains from Linz to Munich that do have seat reservations available AND space for bikes? Yes, she says, we could get on the train that leaves at 5:46 pm and arrive in Munich at 8:32. "Great", we said, "Can you book this?" She then proceeds to do so, but when the tickets arrived over email, we can’t see where either our seat assignments or bike spaces are listed on the tickets. So we get her to repeat them and I jot them down. After the call is terminated we cruise through the 5 pages of ticket data and it looks to us that we are still on the 3:46 train with seat reservations now on the 5:46. (We had forgotten that our original ticket was good for any train that day, it just didn't include seat/bike reservations.) At this point we are back in the zone of being brain dead and discouraged. We decide we will go to the station in Linz as early as we can and ask them to print out our tickets. If there is a problem, we will just have to work it out there. Already I was thinking about what we would do if we had to spend the night in Linz.
We had a simple, competent but much appreciated dinner that night and Birgitta agreed to prepare an early breakfast for us. While at dinner we planned our Komoot route. A quickie google route showed the ride to be 50 k to Linz. Unfortunately, when Komoot did it’s thing, it became a 65 k trek because it follows the Danube River which happens to have a whole lot of bends in this area. The shorter route had a big sucker climb about 3 k into the ride. We decided to take the longer, more scenic route and accept the extra miles. It was just a Murphy’s law kind of day.
Today's ride: 70 km (43 miles)
Total: 1,722 km (1,069 miles)
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