Donau

We were originally planning on cycling the Via Claudia Augusta from Bavaria to Italy, crossing some steep Alps passes, but Julia had to be in Budapest early August so we decided to cycle there instead. The Danube cycle path (according to the internet) is the most popular cycle path in Europe – which we also noticed by the amount of people we passed, especially on the first days. 

We met midday two Wednesdays ago on the train to Passau, it was so good to see Julia again after 1.5 years. We met on my gap year in Germany in 2010 and have done a few cycling trips since like Berlin to Copenhagen 2 years ago.

After brief confusion cycling the wrong direction along the Danube for some 10km (it was so well signed, this was literally the only thing you could screw up if you really tried, which we did) we were on our way east. The first day was it was sprinkling a little which didn’t bother us much, and low-lying clouds made cycling along the Danube valley very magical. We decided to camp on this trip which meant carrying a lot more stuff on our bikes, but apart from one day of climbs in Hungary this was fine as it was mostly quite flat. I love camping and the routine of finding a good camping spot, setting up the tent, cooking dinner (every basic meal we declared “best food ever” we were so hungry), falling into bed at 9pm, waking up with the sun, making tea in the morning and setting down the tent to repeat it all the next evening. The next few days were wonderful. I’ve only ever really visited the cities in Austria or the mountain regions, but have never seen what’s between the cities east of Vorarlberg. Had memorable Linzer Torte in Linz and cycled through the beautiful Wachau region with all it’s winelands and famous apricot tree fields. 

On the 4th day we arrived in Vienna and weaved our way through the city via a stop at an ice cream shop (min. 1 x ice cream/ day) to Maike’s place, a friend I studied in Austria with last time. It was really nice to catch up with her, have a nice vegan meal and sleep in a bed again.

The next morning was quite rainy so we didn’t spend much time in Vienna and got straight on the road to Bratislava. In the afternoon, my gym bro/ hiking buddy Jan met us there and gave us a nice, scenic (= getting lost) tour of the city. I think “Eurotrip” and some Slovaks’ opinions made me set my expectations of Bratislava quite low, but it ended up impressing me so much! It’s a lovely city, don’t listen to Slovakians if they try tell you otherwise. We had a very funny evening at a pub and tried delicious potato dumplings with smoked cheese and pasta (?) with poppy seeds and icing sugar. So good. The next morning we had breakfast with Jan’s lovely parents and they drove us back to rainy Bratislava city centre to pick up our bikes and continue onto Hungary. 

Hungary felt a lot “wilder” than the first half of the trip. We didn’t see many cyclists after Vienna and had to keep an eye out more so we didn’t get lost. I’ve been to Budapest a few times but like Austria, it was so interesting to see the places inbetween the cities that I would never have otherwise. Thank goodness that Julia is Hungarian and could ask for directions. The days of cycling in Hungary can be summed up by fields and fields of sunflowers and corn and really high  (35+ degrees celsius) temperatures. Hungarians were super friendly, offering that we could camp in their garden when we were looking for a campsite, helping us (ok me) find coffee in the morning and always being very helpful with directions. I can only criticise their very sporadic driving and parts of the path which gave us our first (unexpected) taste of mountain biking. On our last evening, exhausted from a big day of climbing and covering125km, I went for a dip in the Danube and we had a picnic watching the sun set in Slovakia on the other side of the river.

It was a thrill to finally cycle into Budapest on the 8th day. There we relaxed at Julia’s family’s great apartment, ate a lot of Hungarian food, met some Aussie friends for drinks, met up with Anna who’s now living there (come back!), went hiking in Buda in 40 degrees, ate soft serves and walked around Margaret Island. It was such a good trip.

I’m putting the words before photos because they’re nothing special – didn’t have room or weight left to carry a camera so they’re just mobile photos, but still help illustrate the story. 

Peak III

I've been up even more mountains lately.

Hoher Freschen, take 3. This time, in contrast to last time, it was a lovely, sunny day (less snow than expected for once) and we showed Maddie, Isabella, Thibaut & Isa the impressive ridge line and could enjoy the view that we didn't get to see last time. Both Maddie and Isabella wrote lovely accounts of this hike too, see them here and here.

My brother visited a few weeks ago and one morning we walked up Bocksberg. It was overcast in town but we had blue skies above the low-hanging clouds. It was really nice to spend time with my brother and show him my life here.

About a month ago I went on the craziest hike I've ever done, Zitterklapfen. Even though it isn't particularly high for this part of the world (around 2400m), it's know as the hardest mountain to hike up in the Bregenzerwald (fitting for such a scary-sounding name). The hike started quite tame but after a few hours (and steep sections) we came across a 65+, very experienced-looking Austrian who told us (in thick dialect) to turn back before anything happens. We told him we'd turn back if it gets too bad, he shrugged, mumbled something along the lines of "your funeral" and kept going down. True, we didn't have ropes or poles or spikes and Stefan was in running shoes and jeans, but how bad could it be if some old Austrian man had already been up there that day?

...more snow than expected. Once we scrambled up a long stretch of steep, loose stones we had to cross a very long and steep snow field. Once finally on the other side, there was a lot of (unsecured) climbing, the kind of thing I thought you might need climbing equipment for, but in the end we made it to the top. The tricky bit was descending the way we came, and we (half) jokingly considered calling a rescue helicopter. The rock climbing down was okay, but once we made it back to the snowfield the snow had become considerably slipperier in the sun. Not knowing much about avalanches, we decided to go one at a time to be safe. As I was walking across, last in line, I suddenly slipped and slid few metres down on my stomach. Luckily I could dig my boot in the snow enough to eventually stop falling and, very shaken, made my way back to the stones.

My dear housemate, (the German) Anna, left 2 weeks ago. On her last week here she had the day off so we drove with Maddie and Thibaut into Brandertal to conquer Schesaplana. First we hiked up to the amazingly blue Lünersee, then further up to Totalphütte for a drink, and onwards through the snow to the 2965m high peak sitting on the border of Switzerland and Austria. Apart from a risky climb through vertical snow just before the peak, it was a really lovely, stress-free hike with even lovelier people. I'm already missing Anna a lot, it was so nice to live with someone who I had so much in common with.

Sometimes I think I’ve gotten better at saying goodbye and then there are weeks like the past few where I get knots in my stomach before even meeting with the person to be farewelled. People whose smell you’ve gotten used to, who you know when to talk to and when to have silence, whose mood you can sense before they say a word. All my exchange friends have now left town and it'll be pretty quiet until the next group come mid-August. This time I’m the one who’s staying and I've gotten a taste of what it feels like for the people back home when I leave. 

Good agony

"Never waste good agony". Taking advice from a Yiddish proverb that appropriately popped up on my feed and feeling a little bit sorry for myself, looking through photos of my happy place.

Sorry for the silence on here of late. My life isn't filled with spectacular weekend hikes in the Alps or weekend trips to different countries any more and I feel like I haven't really done anything lately worth sharing, ya know? It's been very busy with Honours slowly but surely living up to it's reputation and over the past two weeks I've poured my heart and all my attention into a particularly big assignment. Now I feel a sense of loss having handed it in but I'm sure that that wasn't the end of that journey for me. I've been looking into the topic of displacement in the context of offshore detainment of asylum seekers and wow, I chose a pretty complex topic! Even after a substantial amount of research and writing I think I still haven't gotten my head quite around it. Possible major work topic for next semester? Hmmm…
I've started teaching once a week and I love it. I'm considering doing a Masters or even a PHD and entertaining the idea of becoming an academic/ tutor/ part time freelancer, what a nice lifestyle that would be... What I know for sure is that I need to get out of the life-sucking suburbs asap and I need to go on several gap years and get back to the mountains. I feel quite (understatement, more like overwhelmingly) frustrated at the moment because something must have happened to my heel/ achilles when I got back to Sydney and started running again. I ran through the pain for the first 1.5 months till one day I literally couldn't walk any more so took a week, then two weeks off. It kept hurting, even when walking, so this past week I finally got to the physio but despite treatments and not doing any exercise at all (not even cycling to commute or swimming), it feels like it's getting worse. I can't actually put into words how devastating the thought of never being able to run again is to me, so I'm just hoping and praying that that isn't the case. Seeing people out jogging makes me want to cry and I'm feeling very, very restless and have been heavily eating my feelings.
On a lighter note, I'm going to Tasmania next week to go on a week-long cycling trip! I'm flying to Launceston and starting from there, so if you have any tips for that area, gimmie! I think that this break will be very good.
Also trying to plan my fast-approaching US/ Canada trip (eek, 2 months!) which at the moment is looking like: NYC - New England area - Montreal - Toronto/ Niagara Falls - Chicago - Vancouver/ British Columbia - Seattle - San Francisco - LA. Again, tips for any of those places would be amazing. I'll be trying to couchsurf as much as possible while I'm over there, so if you have friends/ friends of friends who wouldn't mind having two friendly girls crash at their place, email me! madeleine.mtn[at]gmail.com

PS. Sorry for the rambling-ness of this post, I think this one is the most over-the-place one yet, kind of resembling my current mindset.

Island

While in Istanbul, we also visited Büyükada, one of the islands just over an hours' ferry ride from the Kadikoy port in the city. It was a good albeit very weird day - in winter the island is somewhat of a ghost town, with a lot of empty, grand yet run-down houses. We came across a huge, abandoned & haunted-looking building while hiking that we later found out used to be an orphanage (Prinkipo Greek Orthodox Orphanage), confirming its creepiness all the more. 

I can definitely recommend a day trip (or two) to the islands, despite (or maybe because) of the abandoned houses and eerie streets. The nature on the island is very beautiful, so pack your walking shoes.

The orphanage:

Istanbul

(I always feel I need to apologise for phone photos, two weeks with only hand luggage meant no DSLR on this trip)

I was so happy that I had the chance of visiting Istanbul in my last month overseas. We were there for a week over Christmas, not that you had any hint that it was Christmas Day, apart from the few shops around the Spice Market selling flashing Christmas hats and plastic trees. I organised couchsurfing for myself and the two friends I was travelling with, and it was one of the best couchsurfing experiences I've had to date. A friendly, super interesting couple who lived in Kadikoy on the Asian side of the city. They were so hospitable and such interesting thinkers, and I loved having a drink with them in the evenings and discussing the situation in Turkey and their views on it. It's such an interesting country, and definitely one of my favourite cities that I visited last year. I feel like I say that with every city, but I really mean it with Istanbul! Living on the Asian side was great; hardly any tourists (that time of year anyway), authentic markets with the most beautiful Turkish food. The food! I must've had at least 2 baklavas a day (the sweetness set off by strong Turkish coffee), several turkish delights and spoonfuls of super sweet, addictive halva. Istanbul is so good at street food! Mussels on street corners, stuffed with rice and as many as you want served in your hand with a squeeze of lemon, fish caught in the Bosphorus and put straight on the grill, served with spices and salad in fresh bread, sesame covered simits, freshly squeezed pomegranate juice. And if you can, grab a table (crates with wood on top) and have a pile of charcoal barbecued chicken with bulgur and salad, or some pilaf, or a mixed kebab plate with pide and garlicky yoghurt sauce. Recommened by our couchsurfing hosts, we went to Namli Gurme at Karakoy for brunch (walk around the Galata area afterwards, my favourite part of the city). There, you choose what you'd like from a huge delicatessen-like window and choose what barbecued meats or eggs you'd like prepared, and then they bring a huge platter to your table of what you selected, served with crusty bread. Stuffed vine leaves, marinated olives, filled peppers, amazing goats cheese, tapenade and spreads, spicy chicked skewers and pastrami omelettes.
It was nice to live on the Asian side and have a Turkish tea (always served in a real glass) in the mornings on the ferry, and a hot salep (a delicious milky, sweet & cinamonny drink) in the late afternoons, watching the sun set on the way back.
I have photos from an island we visited saved for another post, otherwise, you'll find most of the noteworthy things we did in a travel guide. I can recommend simply packing good walking shoes and exploring the city's streets by foot. I always felt safe (apart from getting caught up in a demonstration near Taksim - avoid those. Or maybe don't, it's really great to see the people make a stand for what they believe in, but better with a mask for the tear/ coughing gas).

Visit Turkey if you have the chance!