As far as I’m aware, this must be my first ever time in Austria, and admittedly the weather has shown it in a late summer sunshine light, but it only brings forth emotion which I want to record. I do wish everyone had the privilege that I have had to be able to drink in ‘in real life’ such parts of planet Earth. The mountains are majestic, the Eidelweiss, Heidi upland meadows are gorgeous, and the villages and houses are chocolate-box stuff.
The motorways are amazing – tunnels, side barriers which blend in aesthetically with the landscape, and protect the alpine villages they pass from some of the noise; they also have signs requiring vehicles to drive at lower speeds at nightime for the same reasons.
And I was really fortunate to choose an overnight stop in a place which was just off the A10 motorway from Salzburg to Villach called Flachau, based on the distance I would have driven and the fact of overnight recommendations from my Park4Night app. I had expected the village to be in a deep valley, which would be in the shadows of the mountains, and I would have been glad enough of a safe place to stop. but in effect I came out of a tunnel into a wide valley, with this beautiful summer cycling and walking, and winter ski destination in front of me.
Parking behind a restaurant alongside the crystal-clear turquoise river worked, and even though the motorway was just nearby, the river and noise protection barriers did the job, which for fusspot me re road noise was an achievement.
It was so lovely, that despite the fact I was just stopping over, and needed to do my recovery zombie hibernation, I decided to get the bike out from under my bed and explore the village and surroundings in the friendly, warm(!) mountain breeze.
This post was typed mostly at a lunch break, having gone through the stress of being informed, when expecting the purchasing of a Slovenian motorway ‘vignette’ (toll) to be as straightforward as with Austria, that I needed to produce my car ownership docs. My rabbit-caught-in-the-headlight act as my brain was put on the spot was able to move sufficiently quickly to the conclusion that I did not have said document with me on these travels, but aha remembered that I had at the last minute decided I’d better take a photo of it. The officious men with the power behind the booths accepted the photo. I had managed the navigation of the Llubjlana ring road and was enjoying the countryside from the A2 and anticipating the last half day of my journeying to reach Croatia.
I was just looking at changing my route from sticking to the motorways and going past Zagreb, to risking the cross-country (didn’t want to end up doing a hare and tortoise thing or raise my anxiety levels again unnecessarily), when a young hitch-hiker guy asked if I was heading for Zagreb. Having ascertained that he didn’t have an axe in his backpack, and that he would be happy for his mother to be in my place giving someone like him a lift, I returned to my original plan, and he joined me for a 70km stretch of my journey. Maximillian was his name, from Tubingen in Germany, studying Sport Science and before going back to uni, hitchhiking + ‘couch surfing’ over to Romania and possibly as far as the Black Sea, to check out some distant heritage from over there. He spent last year in Western Canada, then got a van, semi-converted it and drove it down the west coast to Mexico. It was a lovely conversation, and reminded me of a lift I gave in similar circumstances to a young man several years ago in the UK. In actual fact, Maximillian was useful for paying a toll and handing my passport over with his, to a surly Croatian border guard. I know it’s not really a joking matter, but the guard failed in his duty to test whether I was possibly trafficking this young guy 🙂 He was distinctly uninterested, and in fact communicated all of a sudden and in no uncertain terms, in Croatian but we got the drift 😂 that we had spent enough time in front of his booth and should GET A MOVE ON as Max was saying he wanted a stamp in his passport, as I had been thankful to get in mine. I was surprised at the border being patrolled, as with the UK, then I remembered that Croatia is not part of the Schengen area, presenting travel duration extension possibilities for countries ‘third’ to the EU. Don’t get me started. Cutting slack, I would not want to be working in a booth processing thousands of passports/people all day every day.
Long story short, I have actually managed to arrive in Croatia at the campsite I targeted, which is near the tourist town of Duga Resa, on the beautiful Mreznica river. I’ve got a lovely spot, but it’s too far away from the campsite’s wifi and the mobile signal is only just good enough to do something like complete this post, which I’ve now had enough of. I want to get the train tomorrow into Zagreb which has been recommended as being worth a visit.
Photos to be added tomorrow, in the presence of proper wifi connection. This requirement needed to meet my digital nomad ambitions will have to be as high a priority as the most perfect seaside pitch I can find when I move to the coast. Goodnight.
