Danube cycle from Ulm to Bratislava - Days One and Two

Day One: Ulm to Lauingen, Germany

We begin our twelve day, 800 kilometre cycle from Ulm, Germany to Bratislava, Slovakia on a cold May morning. It's two weeks until the European summer begins, but no-one has told the weather gods. It's the first time Cathie, my wife has been on a long cycle and I'd hoped for Spring, not five degrees and occasional showers.

No matter.

The Danube flows gently, the birds are singing and we're both already contemplating what cake to choose for our morning tea stop.

Cathie favours the traditional apple strudel. I choose a round nutty danish whose name I can't pronounce but it has lots of the letters N and S. Both are delicious.

So begins twelve days of excessive eating. 

Leipheim is an attractive town on the right side of the Danube, with a white-washed church, a  museum that looks as if it could have been designed by a child, houses with abundant gardens and a van dispensing grilled chicken at a reasonable price. We restrain ourselves, despite the lingering aroma. 

I smile at the apparent wealth and comfort of the village, remembering a story I�d read about the town. In the early 19th Century, following the Napoleonic Wars, the folk of Leipheim endured many years of hardship and famine. The people prayed for a good harvest and when one arrived, held a huge celebration. The tradition continues every June when the happy citizens of Leipheim hold a festival of the children, which includes songs and dance and the obligatory beer festival. I liked that very much. On the bridge across the Danube, there�s a statue of a man holding a child aloft, perhaps to show the gods that the people of this town have kept their promise.

The next town of Gunzburg has a far more sinister recent past, being the birthplace Josef Mengele, the Nazi medical officer at Auschwitz concentration camp. Mengele fled to South America at the end of the Second World War. In 1970, his father died and there were widespread rumours that the evil doctor had returned from his exile to attend the funeral. Despite official denials, the citizens of Gunzburg were accused of harbouring one of the most wanted men in the Nazi regime. Later research proved the suspicions to be ill-founded. But a stigma hung over the town for years afterwards.

Gunzburg is a lovely town, set on a hill, with enticing archways as entry points to the old town. I inadvertently choose the steepest cobblestone road to ride up and we both enter the main square sweating and puffing heavily. Time for lunch!

We cycle into the outer suburbs of Lauringen in the early afternoon and to celebrate our arrival Cathie gets her first puncture of the trip. The sun comes out. I take off my jacket and get to work. Thirty minutes of swearing later, we�re both back in the saddle and riding slowly into town looking for a cycle shop to buy a spare tube. There are three bike shops within five hundred metres. The sun keeps shining.

It�s cappuccinos in the village square for afternoon tea and I heroically resist the tiramisu. Actually, that�s not true. I asked for one, but they were all out of desserts. I issued a proud vow of abstinence... until dinner. 

Opposite our cafe is the tower called the Schimmelturm, which dates back to the 15th Century, originally used as a watch tower. Nowadays, it�s the centre piece of an annual event called the Hexentanz, or witches dance. You guessed it, lots of locals dress up and dance and play elaborate games. My favourite is where the winter witch has a tug-of-war with the Spring fools. The witch loses, of course. Afterwards, the locals go back to dancing and drinking beer. I�d like to be here for that festival, but we�re a little too early.

Day Two: Lauingen to Neuburg an der Donau

I open the hotel window at six-thirty in the morning and poke my head out. It�s not raining. Me and the tabby cat on a window ledge opposite approve. He licks his paw while I retreat to the sanctuary of the breakfast room, which is an elegant expanse of high ceilings and stonework. Pity none of the sturdy tables are prepared for diners at this early hour. The owner shrugs when we apologise for making him work so early and sets about offering us a spread of ham and cheese with knotty dark bread rolls and scrambled eggs and boiled eggs and bacon and muesli and yoghurt and orange juice and an espresso and, yes, that should be sufficient, dear man.

We walk out ready to tackle a planned sixty-five kilometre cruise to Neuberg en der Donau. We roll downhill two hundred metres and immediately join a bike path beside the Danube which is looking spendidly quiet and peaceful this morning.

The ride into Donauworth is fraught. We lose the bike path and instead join a posse of cars and trucks chasing us all the way past strip shopping, McDonald�s restaurants, Euro 1 Discount stores and if you want to get your car serviced for Euro 50 in Donauworth, I know just the place. 

Amusingly, we ride through an narrow tunnel with an elaborately decorated entrance, which includes a lovely painting of a couple dressed in old-time farming clothes - he�s wearing a jacket and neck-tie, she�s carrying a basket which I suspect is full of freshly-picked strawberries. The town itself is just as sweet with pastel-coloured buildings and cobblestones and well-dressed citizens buying sturdy loaves of bread.

We enter a cafe and see the cycling couple from yesterday who helped us get lost so efficiently. They smile and hurriedly and pay the bill. Perhaps they�re worried we�re bad luck? 
Cathie and I agree on ordering the Gulaschsuppe. On this cold bleak day, hot soup is just the treat. The waitress shakes her head when we ask for two servings and says something in German which I imagine means, �My husband, who was supposed to cook the soup this morning instead got so drunk last night that all we can offer you is wieners.� Flustered, we both nod.

Wieners it is.

I�m not quite sure what goes into a wiener, but I imagine it�s ground pork offcuts, mustard, paprika and... other ingredients. For Euro 3, Cathie and I had two each, with brown bread and lots of mustard. It certainly wasn�t a hearty soup.

The waitress picked up our empty plates and asked, �Gut?�

I didn�t want to be rude, but for a moment I didn�t know how to answer. They were neither good, nor bad, they were... wieners. Cathie saved the day by using her best high school German to exclaim �sehr gut!� as if she�d just eaten a delicious five-course degustation meal. It�s one reason I love her.

I�m sure she never lies to me though.

Full of wiener and hot air, we promptly ride the wrong way out of the old town and end up in the parking lot of the Euro Helicopter Company. We back-track through the old town and head east, soon enough finding the ever-reliable green bike signs, pointing us towards Neuberg an der Donau, along the historic and famous Romantik Strasse, or the Romantic Road. 

After three steep uphill climbs, each followed by a rollicking downhill, Cathie observes, �I didn�t realise romance had so many ups and downs.�

�That�s because you�re married to me,� I say.

Another hill appears, on cue, and we both set ourselves to the task. And so begins an hour of joyous cycling. Yes, it�s up and down, but the combination of a perfect tarmac for riding, expansive views back over wheat fields and the Danube, and lovely villages, each resplendent with a white-painted church, a maypole still festooned with decorations and stout houses with neat gardens, makes each climb worthwhile. 

Graibach. Lechsend. Marxheim. None of these villages are on the tourist map, but each offers  a slice of authentic rural Germany. A farmer drives his tractor full of hay into a barn. Another man cuts firewood with a mechanical woodsplitter. A woman calls for her dog to come back when he looks too interested in chasing swallows. And two contented Australians smile romantically at one another.

Finally, after one long sweeping downhill, we find ourselves back on a dirt track atop a levee beside the Danube. The river has widened considerably while we�ve been romancing the road and it flows sluggishly in the mid-afternoon. Cathie rides ahead and I slow to enjoy the quiet. 

Miraculously, we�re joined by hundreds of swallows swooping low along the surface of the river and then banking sharply before heading straight for us on the levee. It�s like a scene from a Hitchcock movie, only played for laughs, not fear. Swallows have always been Cathie�s favourite birds and here they are putting on a show for us. I�m amazed at how close they come. We cycle even slower to prolong the game. We finally stop and they swoop away, no doubt to impress other cyclists with their superb aeronautical skills.

Not to be outdone, a ballet of swans begins in the shallow water near the bank. Each bird ducks its head into water for ten seconds at a time, provocatively lifting its bottom towards us. It�s a syncronised swimming demonstration. 

Eventually, we reluctantly cycle away from the Bird Circus on the Danube and into Neuburg en der Donau.