Handful Of Throttle: Austria

By Mark

Well, Austria was everything I was hoping it would be. We had only 3 days here but we are going to return later on in the trip. Our route took us through the south in some of the most amazing countryside I have seen. Everybody there seems to take so much pride in their homes and gardens as everything is so well manicured. The only downside was trying to find a place to camp the along the way. Our first few attempts saw us heading down people's driveways but shortly afterwards we did manage to find a place off the side of the road in amongst a pine forest that does not see any daylight and we got to share it with hundreds of ants, luckily they didn’t bite.

The following day we kept heading through a stunning valley with the Dolomite Mountain range in sight, Italy was not far off now. Along the way we stopped off at a supermarket for the usual supplies. Before entering however we were approached by an interesting older local guy who had just walked out of the shop with his bag of bananas which ended up being our bag of bananas. I think by the look of us he probably thought we needed them more than he did, the smell of us probably didn’t help as Sanne was now on her ninth day without a wash, I was now on my fifth after my wash in the river back in Romania. Really nice guy to chat to, well I think so, he mainly spoke German and Sanne soon had to quickly think back to German class from school then try to translate for me. It all came at the right time as we were unsure of where to head to next so this guy asked another local, well actually German born to help us with directions. They did a great job as we ended up on another spectacular valley road and in no time we came across a camp site, this one a paid site. We could finally get a much needed HOT shower! Not only did we indulge in a wash, our clothes got a wash for the first time in a while and in a washing machine. After all the cleaning was done it was time for a cold beer and boy was it good. We had a great time in Austria and look forward to returning on our way north later to the Czech Republic.

It was a shame we missed these guys, they look like they can rock!