Since yesterday’s evening lasted well into the early hours of today, we get up later than usual and have a slow breakfast with my family in Vienna.
Eventually, we had to get back on the road to Linz. Fortunately, apart from being overcast, today’s weather was fine.
We disconnect the TWIKE and start today’s 180km drive towards Linz.
The leftovers of yesterday’s freak weather event were still very visible today…
Winds were still high – shaking the snow off the trees and giving us a real winter wonderland feeling…in late April!
About 50km outside of Vienna we come across many smaller wind farms. Every single rotor creating at least 1.5MW of energy left us with a very good feeling regarding Austria’s so-called Energiewende (transition towards renewables) and gave us a very nice photo-opp for TW560.
Most of the remaining trip was along Danube river with many beautiful views and even some brief moments with some sun.
We then came across a sign we initially didn’t know what it meant, since we still had GPS reception there…and why only trucks?
Asking my uncle later that evening, he gave me the reason for this (Austrian) solution to a serious problem: Creative toll cost reduction leads to trucks trying to reduce driven kms. Combine this with an ever-growing percentage of low-wage drivers from eastern Europe blindly trusting GPS tracks, you get full-sized 40-ton trucks entering medieval villages through which they are unable to drive as their dimensions are larger than those available along the villages roads and get stuck, without any chance of backing out again.
We arrive in Linz later afternoon, are greeted by my uncle and cousin and start a very relaxing evening with good food and good conversations.
We’re looking forward to our first drive-free day tomorrow. We’ll be visiting the world-famous Ars Electronica, have some typical food from a restaurant I already had been to as a 5-year-old and generally rest a bit. Good night!
