Bicycle tour through Switzerland, Austria and Germany - LOTS of pictures

[sturzi]

Hello everyone,
As you may have heard, I did a bicycle tour through Switzerland, Austria and Germany. I took a lot of pictures and would like to share them with you, I hope you enjoy them.
Mods, if there is not enough knife content just move it to the lounge.

I had three weeks of vacation and my plan was to follow the bicycle route along the Inn (that's the name of a river), which starts in the Engadin in the Swiss alps and flows through the Austrian Tyrol and Bavaria until it merges with the Donau (Danube) in Passau. From there I planned to take the train back to Switzerland, but since I arrived in Passau earlier than expected I then drove up the Donau to its source near Switzerland and from there back home. All in all I drove more than 1500 kilometers in 19 days.

First of all, these are the chosen companions for the trip.

The first stage is driving to Maloja in the Engadin, where the Inn starts. Here we are entering the more mountainous regions of Switzerland, but the bike route is still very flat for the first day.

Along the way there was quite an interesting church, the stone church, consisting of three egg shaped halls. Actually the amount of churches on this trip is unbelievable, but I'll only show a very small fraction of them .

Now the valley gets narrower and the elevation changes on the winding roads are getting quite big.

Eating some lunch, I have no problem living off of bread, dried meat/sausages, cheese and fruits. But the amount of chocolate and granola bars you eat on the go to keep the legs going is quite remarkable .

DO NOT drop your sharp tools on your air filled mattress . Luckily it didn't go through both sides and I had patches with me... (you can barely see them)

On the third day it really started going up and it got just a little bit colder .

Now it's midday at almost 2300 meters (about 7500 feet) on top of the mountain pass which leads into the Engadin. Up here it's snowing and very windy, but after driving up more than 1000 meters with my heavy bicycle I'm not exactly cold .

Fun, fun, fun, and the sky suddenly cleared up. The brake pads started to smell a bit .

There are a lot of old castles, fortresses and churches around these parts of the world.

The upper Engadin is a broad valley surrounded by high mountains. It is still cold and windy, but at least the weather is nice.

Here's the Inn, still a small and rapid mountain river, winding its way through the valley.

Now that's a cold night, time to get on the bike to get warm...

Here we are in the lower Engadin, where the valley gets very narrow and the villages are high up above the river, meaning there are again several hundred meters of elevation changes...

These villages up here are very old and have the very typical local architecture with their large rounded doors, extremely thick walls and very small windows.

There seems to be a church on every elevetad position...

Here's a beautiful old wooden bridge, with a statue of Prometheus who is tied to the rock, with the eagle which eats his liver every day.

A bit further down starts a stretch with over one hundred sculptures left and right of the trail, made by various artists.

The valley here is just beautiful, and the snow is finally left behind.

While driving over all these gravel roads my bottle holder is clattering and starts to be annoying, so a knife and a ziptie come to the rescue . Never go anywhere without zipties, they are bound to come in handy...

More to come...

 

[jnich67]

Very cool. Thank you.

Jordan

 

[dogstar]

Sturzi,

- Thanks for posting such nice knives. They look well used and well loved.

- I love bicycling, so it is great to see a bike on BF.

- That unusual egg shaped church. I've seen it before... in a video game. I am pretty sure it is featured in Hitman: Blood Money in the final scenario.

Overall, great post. I hope you had a great time.

 

[knarfeng]

Nice fixed blade:

Tell me about it.

 

[sturzi]

Thanks guys.
Frank, the fixed blade is forged by Murray Carter. He sells them as neck knives with a kydex sheath to wear around your neck, but I always carry it in my pocket.
Out of the box it's the sharpest knife I ever had, with a very thin edge. By now it's not so thin anymore due to normal sharpening and because I dropped it once edge first onto cobblestones (ouch)
It is forged from laminated steel, a hitachi blue super steel core between soft stainless steel and the handle is lignum vitae. I've had it for a couple of years now and it's my most carried knife

 

[johnwobble]

Great pics thanks for sharing , loved the egg shaped church !!

 

[Old & In The Way]

Great knives, I'm especially fond of the Western Outlaw. Thanks for posting the pictures and details of your trip. I'm sure it was an amazing experience as the scenery is just incredible. :thumbup:

 

[knarfeng]

Thanks guys.
Frank, the fixed blade is forged by Murray Carter. I've had it for a couple of years now and it's my most carried knife

Very nice. I know that knives with locking blades are verboten in a lot of the EU. How easy is it to carry a fixed blade?

 

[sturzi]

Very nice. I know that knives with locking blades are verboten in a lot of the EU. How easy is it to carry a fixed blade?

I'm not very familiar with the laws in the other countries, but in general the laws about fixed blades are more relaxed. I think in Germany small fixed blades are no problem, bigger knives you can carry when there's a legitimate use for it (e.g. hunting).
In Switzerland you can carry pretty much any fixed blades as long as it's not double edged (daggers) or has a saw or something on the back, and Austria is even more relaxed.

And when you're camping and use it accordingly nobody cares anyway...

 

[jkulysses]

Great knives, I'm especially fond of the Western Outlaw. Thanks for posting the pictures and details of your trip. I'm sure it was an amazing experience as the scenery is just incredible. :thumbup:

That's an Outlaw Jack with the pen blade modified into a coping blade. Love that mod!! I need that on my Outlaw Jack for sure. Great pictures! Look forward to the rest.

 

[Gevonovich]

Living the dream, sturzi!!! Thanks for letting me live vicariously through you. Breathtaking beauty!!

 

[Peregrin]

Nice thread, sturzi. That sure is a beautiful part of the world.
I like Murray Carter's knives a lot. One day I'll have to get one.

 

[Will Power]

Fantastic all round. On a bike it's tough but you really get to appreciate the landscape properly. Your pictures show a lot of atmosphere, those remote snowy hamlets and sunny valleys. I agree with you, decent cheeses, fruits, dried meat and quality bread is a feast, I'd add wine too but remounting the bike might be harder...:thumbup:

It's also wonderful to be able to take a range of knives for practical and aesthetic reasons. I was pondering this the other day and I'd take three: A simple Marttiini puukko in carbon, a locking Laguiole from Fontenille-Pataud in Sandvik and a Queen Cutlery Whittler in D2. They cover three bases, fixed,locking and slipjoint multi-blade. Three different handles, wood, Ram's horn and jigged bone and three different steel- carbon, stainless and D2. Three countries, Finland, France, USA ! But I'm sure any three decent knives would do on an extended journey.

I was also very glad to hear you were able to meet Andi for a meal drinks and knife talk, that's excellent.

If I were still healthy enough, I'd really fancy a bicycle or walking tour in the Carpathian mountains.

Regards, Will

 

[knarfeng]

I'm not very familiar with the laws in the other countries, but in general the laws about fixed blades are more relaxed. I think in Germany small fixed blades are no problem, bigger knives you can carry when there's a legitimate use for it (e.g. hunting).
In Switzerland you can carry pretty much any fixed blades as long as it's not double edged (daggers) or has a saw or something on the back, and Austria is even more relaxed.

And when you're camping and use it accordingly nobody cares anyway...

Thanks! Good to know.

 

[sturzi]

OK, here's the next set of pictures:

The next stop is in Imst in the Austrian Tyrol, where there's a famous canyon, the Rosengartenschlucht. At the end of the canyon there's not a lot of room to build houses, so what to do? Let's just build the houses into the cliff

There is a footpath through the whole canyon, which is quite impressive. I know the times on the signposts are usually conservative, but when you need less than an hour for the advertised three hour route it's a bit ridiculous .

This is not a castle, but a monastery. I guess the monks in the earlier days had a bit more money...

Yeah, definitily not poor monks

Throughout the Tyrol the weather was miserable, cold, always overcast with intermittent rain and a constant headwind, so I wrapped myself up...

On all this rough gravel I wanted to make the suspension a bit lighter. At home I checked if I had bits with me for all the screws on my bike, but missed that one. Ever tried to whittle a perfect hexagon? It's not that easy . When wedging it in there hard enough it just about worked.

Arriving in Innsbruck, one of the sights is "das goldene Dachl" (the golden roof), with over 2000 gold-plated copper plates.

I guess most of you are used to seeing the other side of the losses of WW2, but the war took its toll on everyone...

During a rainy evening I went into the restaurant at my campsite, and ordered a nice steak. Guess what knife the waiter brought?
It wasn't actually a folding Laguiole, just a steak knife looking like one. And it was actually pretty sharp

Pretty soon I realised one grave mistake I made: No long spey blade for spreading my cream cheese and jam!
Well, that's an easy enough fix, just carve yourself a butterknife

Just where the Inn leaves the high mountains of the alps there is a narrow with a hill in the middle, the perfect location for a heavy fortification to protect the Inn valley, which was a rather important economical location.

Later on, when the fortress was inactive, the main tower, designed to keep invaders out, was used as a prison. Kind of ironic...

Now that we're leaving the Tyrol and high mountains behing us the weather is finally clearing up as well.

Here the Inn isn't flowing freely anymore, there are a lot of power stations and dams everywhere.
But it's still a beautiful region, and you're riding through a few hundred kilometers of nature reserve.

The next old town is Wasserburg, located on a peninsula formed by the meandering Inn.

And now the churches are getting big
Bavaria is very catholic, as can be seen by the extravagant decoration of the churches.

Enjoying the nice weather on a quiet lake in Bavaria.

There's plenty of wildlife in the nature reserves near the river, and this young fellow wasn't very shy.

By now the Inn isn't a small mountain river anymore.

Churches, cathedrals, chapels, monasteries, an obscene amount I tell you
For some reason this one is a very famous pilgrimage church

I've never seen them clustered up like that before.

The beavers are very active around here, sometimes almost every tree is gnawed on.

This evening I met up with Andi for a nice meal, a chat and quite a bit of good bavarian beer. Unfortunately there are no pictures since we had other things to talk about.
We had a fabulous time, and as Andi already said, there was some knife swapping going on as well.
And guess what he gave me: The missing piece in my equipment, a Case trapper with a long spey blade, perfect

And another gift of the Bavarian gentleman, some good Bavarian snuff. I've always loved the smell of tobacco, and even as a kid would open my father's pouch of pipe tobacco and smell it.
But until now I only knew the English snuff with menthol, where you can't even smell the tobacco anymore and with the sole purpose to bring tears to your eyes. But this snuff has no menthol and you have that lovely tobacco smell in your nose for hours.
Andi, if I'm getting addicted to nicotine it's your fault
So I'm enjoying an easy day with a good book and a pinch of Pöschl Tabak...

I made a day-trip away from the Inn to Burghausen, where the longest fortress of Europe is located.

The whole fortress has five courtyards, with a moat and drawbride between every one of them, and stronger fortifications the nearer they are to the main keep. It is huge and stretches over one kilometer.

Now we're in the beautiful old town of Passau, where the Inn (in the back) merges with the Donau (in the front).

The cathedral in Passau houses the largest church organ in the world, with 17974 pipes and 233 registers. The sound of that thing is amazing

The rest will come tomorrow...

 

[SAK Guy]

Absolutely beautiful...all of it!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you!!!!!

 

[Halfneck]

Beautiful looking country to bike through.

 

[waynorth]

[Blink, blink]

Oh . . . . . . .this is Canada . . . . . . .where have I been???

I was dreaming of Castles and mountains . . . . .I think I'll go back to my dreams!!



Thanks for the trip!:thumbup:

 

[rinos]

great fitness and adaptability during this wonderful trip Sturzi :thumbup:

 

[22-rimfire]

Really nice pictures and interesting and entertaining descriptions. Liked that butter knife.