The original plan was to visit a few colleagues in the Swiss Engadin district, and I originally departed in that general direction, but I finally decided to take a more direct route and headed towards Bregenz and the Arlberg pass instead.

After several hours of riding I arrived in Bludenz. Although my knees weren’t really hurting, they did complain in a way that I knew it wouldn’t be such a great idea to ride all the way to Vienna (about 750km). I tried to figure out a train connection instead that would allow me to bring my bike, but the next train would only depart in the early morning… there was no way I was going to sit on my hands for 12 hours, so I decided that I’d at least ride the Arlberg pass (another ~1200m of climbing) and get on the train on one of the next stops, in Sankt Anton am Arlberg.

Coming from Bludenz, the pass was surprisingly easy to ride – the most tedious part was the long approach, where I made the mistake of sticking to the ‘official’ bike route instead of just staying on public roads and ended up riding several kilometers on gravel roads. Damn. But then it was just a few switchbacks and a longish ‘false flat’ kind of climb to the actual pass.

The descent to St. Anton was also very short, but rewarding – fine weather and very little traffic amounted to a lot of high-speed fun on the way down…

Back at the train station, I ended up having tons of luck. There was a good connection to Innsbruck, and I figured I’d have to spend the night there to wait for a connecting train to Vienna.. but the train attendant was extremely friendly and worked some miracles that ultimately allowed me to take the last EuroNight train to Vienna, despite the fact that bicycles generally aren’t permitted on those trains.. so I arrived in Vienna at 7:45 today.

Of course the fact that I’m back in Austria doesn’t mean that my moving is all done, not by a long shot! I’ll still have to move into my apartment in Klosterneuburg, arrange for an Austrian license for my car, and about a million other things that I’m probably forgetting right now.

But it feels good to be back.

Basically, long distance drives aren’t really too interesting to write about, especially at night… get into a reasonably comfortable vehicle, stop at petrol stations occasionally, stay alert and pay attention to the few other drivers out there.

And especially the swiss highways were practically empty… but then I though for a short moment that I must be so tired that my eyes were playing tricks on me: the headlights of that oncoming vehicle were in plain sight, but clearly they should have been obscured by the rails dividing the oncoming lanes…

FUCK! HE’S DRIVING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION!

I veered onto the hard shoulder to give that maniac as much room as possible, and he shot by in the next moment… I immediately reached for my mobile phone to call the police, but they were already in pursuit (driving on the proper lane, luckily), so there was no need for any additional phone calls. Hopefully they did get that freak.

Anyway, that was a very, very close encounter. No warnings on the radio, and realizing in a bend at night that the vehicle is actually driving in the wrong direction (and not simply on the proper, oncoming lane) took long enough that if I had been passing a truck at the time, I wouldn’t have had much time to react at all, except maybe for slamming the brakes and thinking of the people I love…

Wenn es zu laut, zu schnell, zu hektisch zugeht auf der Straße, sorgen Behörden mit Schildern für Ordnung. Ein niederländischer Verkehrsplaner erreicht mit dem Gegenteil bessere Ergebnisse: Ohne Regeln wird der Verkehr sicherer.

Ist zwar schon etwas älter, aber definitiv lesenswert!

…der kann nicht einmal beim Laufen einfach in den Wald scheissen ohne gesehen zu werden…

(O-Ton Ivonne)

Ja, wo sie Recht hat, hat sie Recht

‘‘I find motivation everywhere,’’ Robic says. ‘‘If right now you look at me and wonder if I cannot go up the mountain, even if you are joking, I will do it. Then I will do it again, and maybe again.’’ He gestures to Mount Stol, a snowy Goliath crouched 7,300 feet above him, as remote as the moon. ‘‘Three years ago, I got angry at the mountain. I climbed it 38 times in two months.’’