Eastern Europe - Day 74 & 75 - Villach, Austria

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Well it was time to finally leave Munderfing and my good friends Rod and Jess....hic......sob.... I was especially going to miss all the lovely road signs of the area. However I was blessed with one last look at 'Pfaffing' as we drove to the train station. Jessie was a sweetheart and drove me to the train station in Salzburg where I caught the 12:12 train to Villach, where I had decided to spend the next couple of nights. There really was no rhyme nor reason to my decision to visit Villach, except for the fact that it happens to be on the main train route to LJubljana which was going to be my next stop on my travels. So this is the reason that I found myself hopping off a train at Villach Hauptbahnhof. And what a glorious day it was as well.

When I got to the hotel that I had booked for the night I found a most pleasant surprise in that they had had a cancellation and could give me a cheaper room for the night. I gratefully took this room as at this stage of the trip the euros are starting to get a little tight. The room was just glorious though so goodness only knows what the more expensive room would have been like. It had an enormous double bed and a BATH TUB. Yes that is right I had a bath, and it was just fabulous. It was especially after the 2 hour walk that I took myself off on that afternoon up and down the river.

The following day I spent the day walking the entire countryside of Villach. And I do mean the entire countryside of Villach. I think I walked for 7 hours in total. I set off at 9am and walked down towards the little settlement of St Ulrich along the Drau river. On the way to St Urlich I passed a gorgeous little lake ('see' in german) here loads of people were swimming. It looked lovely and I did have my togs on however it was also very early in the day and I didn't really fancy getting all my clothes wet so early on into my walk. So I decided to keep walking and find another lake to swim in a little later on. It turned out that this was a collosal mistake as the next lake that I came across for swimming in (approx 1.5 hours later) had houses built all the way around the lake's edge and there was no way that you could get down to the water for a swim. There was not a single millimeter of lake that you could access unless you owned a house there or belonged to a lake club. I was devasted! So to console myself I treated myself to a lunch of frankfurters and pommes frites at a little gaushaus that overlooked the lake of no swim (St Magdalener See).

After my refreshing and reviving lunch I got a wonderful second wind and decided to see if I could walk all the was to the next BIG lake Ossiacher See for a swim. The only hitch in this wonderful plan was that this lake was about 10kms from where I currently was and it would therefore probably at least 2 hours to get there. However I manly set off on this task and almost got there before I totally wilted in the heat of the day, and when realising that I still had a good 2 hours walk to go before I would be back at the hotel, I decided to call it a day and to turn around and give in to the fact that I obviously was not going to get a swim this day. However on the way to my almost swim I did walk through some of the most lovely countryside. It reminded me awful lot of day 2 of the Central Otago Rail Trail bike ride that I did a few years ago, when my eyes were totally blown away by the gorgeous beauty of the fields. This countryside was just so similar. And I have never seen so many cyclists in my entire life. Boy do the Austrian people like to ride. I must have been passed by hundreds of cyclists on my walk yesterday. And it wasn't all the same age group either, there were old people and young people and families and couples and kids and teenagers, all outdoors enjoying the wonderful weather and countryside. And they are all so friendly as well. Almost all the teenagers that I past gave me a friendly greeting of "Grüß Gott" which always sounds to me like they are saying "biscuit". At first I though that this was a most weird way to great people, but then Jessie explained it to me and all was good.

Anyway after my most exhausting walk I literally collapsed back into the hotel at 5pm and then didn't move from my room for the rest of the evening. Tomorrow sees the travelling road show head off to Slovenia.

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