TWIKE 560 Adventures

it’s difficult to leave a place like this. after our well-deserved R&R we start early again – today, we go back to our usual very small roads, driving from village to village, from farm to farm, taking in the sights as they come.

we say goodbye to my family and with this TDB2015‘s last leg back to switzerland has begun.

but first we have to get back to a road with tarmac!

our route then takes us direction rohrbach and eventually ried im innkreis.

the setting remains very rural and we are happy to report that in austria, even the smallest single lane roads are impeccable.

we eventually leave the mühlviertel plateau behind us and drive downhill towards the danube river.

we eventually get to the point where we have to find a place to charge. things are completely different to the baltics, russia and poland. here in austria, there are many charging stations and every larger village has some kind of offering. we generally avoid charging stations with RFID cards which need to be obtained before charging at some office and mostly are pre-paid. there are some colleagues in germany who have about 40 such cards – WHY?

just imaging if ‘normal’ car drivers would have to get a local petrol card for each region they would want to travel to…and pre-pay the petrol they might need, with no way to get the money back if not all petrol was used! a petrol car driver needs exactly ONE card: a credit card. let’s hope this local RFID-nonsense stops soon!

anyway: we pull up to the type2 charging station advertised for this village just to find a i3 just starting his charge. i might want to change my positivity towards e-mobility just because it would help me to avoid occupied charging stations 🙂 for my first 6 years driving an ev this never, ever was a problem. during the last 3 years, increasingly i’m confronted with teslas and i3’s using *my* charging stations!

we drive to the next garage and ask if we could get some electricity since the official charging station is occupied. no need, tells us this guy – go to a company called team7, they seem to have had one installed recently (!).

we head down to this company, just 300 metres away and find the charging station … with a RFID reader.

we automatically attract interest and without asking around too much are allowed to charge as the first non-team7 ev for this charging station!

after just 55 minutes, we’re back to 100% and continue our trip toward salzburg.

we enter another nature-reserve type region and drive through miles after miles of forest and open nature.

arriving in mattighofen, we enter the petrol-infused world of KTM, an austrian motorbike manufacturer. an outside display shows all models produced by KTM,

and YES, they have an electric bike, too! check out the model specific website, it’s definitely worth a look. (use cursor down key for best results)

just a short drive later we arrive in salzburg. we have a charging station in the old part of city and the exit of the park garage is in the pedestrian zone itself – it doesn’t get any better than this.

check the explicit signaling of this charging station. no ICE-car could get the idea to park here 🙂

i take jc on a tour of the city, since i’ve been to salzburg many times (another part of my austrian family lives nearby). a slight drizzle drives most tourists back into their hotels and coffee shops, giving us some space and air to breathe 🙂

granted, salzburg in just a few hours is just scratching the surface. i could stay for 3-4 days and still know things to see – but this was a teaser for jc to come again, since this was his first time in salzburg.

if you’ve not yet been to salzburg, plan to do so now. it’s a seriously beautiful place.

as in many european cities, salzburg, too, has it’s bridge where lovers attach their locks to seal their love.

many people think about what they should get their loved ones from salzburg – tacky fridge magnets? a t-shirt (austria, not australia) or the infamous mozartkugel?

allow me to add one very typical item: salt! salzburg owes its name to salt and makes it a worthy souvenir from salzburg. there are many shops around town selling salt, but i think you should go to this one: salzburg salz.

on our way back to TW560, we see an interesting political statement – austrians wanting to leave the european union – are we going to see an AUXIT?

we head out of salzburg towards bavaria, where we’ve booked our rooms at a quaint little guesthouse.

just 40 minutes later, we arrive in ruhpolding, check into our rooms and head out to a local restaurant for some food. as desert, i get another one of my austrian favourites: kaiserschmarrn.

truly fed and full, we return to the guest house, where jc uploads his photos to emissionless.ch and retires to his room, leaving me with some entries to write.

tomorrow, we’re going to see how far we get and which route we take – an important factor is weather. there is no sense in climbing to 1400m in rain and then driving through fog and clouds – let’s hope the forecasts are wrong 🙂