Day 11

We arise at 7am and go for breakfast in the fancy hotel restaurant. I have granola with extra raisins and flax, fresh fruit with yogurt, ? boiled egg, juice, and coffee. Aaron pumps his tires up and he buys 2 maps next to the place where we had delicious pizza outdoors the night before.

It is cold and rainy as we leave, but we warm up pretty well as be begin some serious bicycling. We stop in a bakery and have rolls and cookies and coffee. We are so dirty that we even hate to sit on their chairs. But even though everyone stares at us we enjoy just being out of the elements. We take extra long to enjoy our break, hoping the weather will clear--But no such luck.

It is so cold to have to get back on our bicycles, but we must move on. We are almost dry about 3pm at Emmerting. Aaron said we have a choice to either travel a boring path or cut through a forest. I tell him that I would prefer to go through the forest since it has been a while that we have been in a forest. So we travel into the forest only to find no signs to follow. We take many different paths only to find them to dead end or deteriorate to single track, then to gmake your own track!h The bushes are slapping us in the face and it is almost impossible to ride through the terrain. We run across a couple guys that are cutting down trees. Aaron says that they are probably doing it illegally and probably arenft too happy that we have happened upon them. He is a little worried that they might come looking for us. What next?

We are panicky and hungry. Aaron suggests that we stop and eat what we have and try to relax. We devour every morsel of food that we can find-granola bar, Power Bar and ? candy bar! At least we did have some food. Now I know why I have always carried that Power Bar, gjust in case!h I guess this was the case! It is beginning to rain a little and Aaron said that we will have to backtrack to get out of here. If at any time Aaron would have shown me that he was worried, I would have hyper-ventilated and fainted. So 1? hours later we are back to where we started. That was one of the scariest moments of my life. What a helpless feeling, to be in the middle of a thick forest and not know which direction is which. We found out why we got lost in that forest when we went back to the sign that lead us in there. Someone had turned the sign! We should have entered the forest at another spot. However, I chose not to go back into the forest but to take the gboringh choice.

We finally cross the border into Germany at Marktl around 5:30pm. The rain has stopped so we decide to bike on to Braunau, which is only 15 or so miles away. But the rain begins again a short way down the road. Then it begins to thunder and lightning and the sky opens up. We cannot ride in the downpour and luckily we happen upon a small shelter with a bench that overlooks the Inn River across to Austria. We know that we will not be able to sit there too long,as our bodies will get too cold. Fortunately the rain lets up some so we take off.

We arrive at Braunau, Austria quite cool and dirty. Aaron gets us a room at a hotel that caters to bicyclists. We park our bikes in a hallway just inside the door. We apologize for the dirt and mud on them. The owner of the hotel says, gTheyfll clean it up tomorrow.h She speaks English and tells us her relatives live in Cleveland. We are so glad to be out of the rain and get in a warm shower. The place is quite different and not quite as elegant as most of the places we have been staying in. It actually reminds me of the Tower of Terror at Disney World.

I soak our clothes to get some of the mud out of them and we head out for supper--it has been a long time since we ate in the woods. We have a tasty meal at the local micro-brewery. We stop in at the local cafe for dessert-and what a dessert it was-chocolate, coffee rum torte!! To die for-which pretty much speaks for the kind of fine European bicycling day we had. And to think that we have to go back to the gTower of Terrorh to sleep. We choose to take the stairs NOT the elevator!