Peter first Blog

The first thing that we do the Monday is go for a walk through the town and I head straight for a bike shop. Surprisingly, there are not many as this area is more famous for winter sports like cross country and downhill skiing and not biking. There is a few serious riders around, but not many. I talked with the shop owner about hiring a bike and she said she has a Carbon hardtail 29er coming back in the morning which would be perfect, which it was! 20 Euros to hire for the day! Jim speaks English OK, so this was not too much trouble. If I tried my German, I would probably end up with a kids bike!

After the day of walking around the area, (Everyone walks around and theres a free bus!) we went out for dinner to an Italian restaurant! In Austria! (Jim wanted Pizza). It was really tasty and traditional Italian with a really nice wood fired crust, ie, not much topping unlike Aussie pizza. More beers to finish off the meal. We had heaps left over, so we got a “Hund” bag. (German for dog)

 

On Tuesday I woke extremely excited as I was to pick up the bike, get it fitted (I bought my own shoes and pedals- turns out they supplied pedals as well) and head out into the mountains! I had selected a nice easy 32km picturesque mountains ride with a few hills, or so I thought. Finding the start of the trail was difficult as the map is in German and I had to stop several times and ask locals and practice my sprecken ze deutsch! One of the hills was over 600 meters up!, lucky I don’t mind hills! As it turned out, I was stopping to take photos here and there and read directions anyway, so it was ok. 

The ride was great (mostly firetrail) but some really fast downhill runs which were a bit hairy at times as they put their brake levers on different side to Australia here. This was really interesting when I had to grab the brakes hard for the first time! 

I managed the off road trails fine, but riding through Sharnitz on the road was a different story. You ride on the right here and I had ridden around Seefeld OK, but the streets were much narrower here. You have to look over your left shoulder here and not your right. I did that and veered slightly to the right.

On Thursday we took a walk in the mountains around Seefeld (around 3 hours). There were showers on and off, but we all had rain jackets and it wasn’t cold, so it was OK.

We walked through the town and were quickly in wildflower covered fields and surrounded by huge mountains covered in pine - the smell of the wet pine trees was really nice. I can’t stop taking photos of this place as everything is so amazing!

Maybe not magic?

The moss and mushrooms were amazing, Jim reckoned you could eat some of them, but I’m not so sure, I think they could have been magic????

We walked along a beautiful river which you could see small trout swimming in the fast moving water. Everything is so pristine here.

Bodenaim

We then came across a small guesthouse/ Restaurant. It is where they make their own butter and Jim said that the buttermilk is really good, but they had run out.  The kids had traditional Austrian pancakes with apple sauce and Toni and I had meatball soup (only because we saw someone else get it and it looked great and we were cold and wet) Jim and I had “Wies Beir” (Wheat beer) which was sooooo good.

       

I didn’t want to leave this place, so I had another beer. They even had a stuffed “Marmot” (like a beaver).

It was a real family place, mum in the kitchen, everything made fresh, the daughter serving and the family dog and kids running around. A really cool place ! We were ready to leave (I didn’t want to) but it had stopped raining. We made our way back a different way which had some steep hills, but the kids coped just fine.

Tomorrow, Jim and I will head to a local place for Octoberfest!