Adventure on the Danube

There is an almost inexhaustible list of items which it is impractical to take abroad with you, especially if you're going there for a year. Top of my list would have to be my printer, the cumbersome burden which my parents insisted would serve me well (my mother had visions of me becoming entangled in the mechanism of German bureaucracy, unable to ink my way out of a nightmare of blank paper and immigration officials). After 10 months collecting dust I had, of course, come to thoroughly resent its presence.

I thought my bike would be somewhere high on the same list – and anyway, as no parent, however insistent, could make that fit in my ridiculously large suitcase, it was out of the question.

But when I stumbled upon an old, rusting, and most importantly ownerless bike in the cellar of my house in Marburg, my inner Cantab was quietly overjoyed. I took it to the Communist bike shop for oil, air and a once-over, before claiming it as my own. It may well have been a shade of purple verging on the wrong side of unisex and last been ridden by a teenage girl, but that didn't matter; it was a mass of potential, opening up a rapidly unfolding map of paths and cycleways to places I could always have walked to, but would realistically never have reached on foot.

For the next few months I used every fine Erasmus day to clock a casual 25k along the Lahntalradweg, a beautifully-paved 245 kilometre path along the River Lahn and yet only a tiny portion of the sprawling web of well-maintained paths throughout Germany. When my friend, who had cycled from Bristol to Bath and had likewise decided she was a pro, suggested we ride the Danube Cycle Path to raise money for Oxfam, I naturally jumped at the opportunity.

We would fly to Munich in September, take the train as far as the German town of Passau, and then cover the 700 kilometres through Austria, Slovakia and Hungary to Budapest on bike. We could promote eco-tourism and practically save the world.

The only problem, of course, would be the bikes themselves. We toyed with the idea of renting, and there are Vienna-based companies which offer a fantastic drop-off and collection service, but as we were doing this on the slightest of student shoestrings, flying with our bikes (this time my own noble, silver steed) seemed the only option, and could surely not be that hard...

Caution: do not, whatever you do, take your bike apart four hours before the flight and expect it to fit in a bike box. It will resist in ways you never thought possible. It will ignore your stress and the times you repeatedly curse your arts degree for not teaching you how to do real-life things. You will get covered in oil, and race to the airport to catch the flight; it will feel very un-James Bond; you will still smell of Swarfega as you look down on an ever diminishing image of Blighty from above.

In theory, we thought, it would be flat or downhill, and even if gravity weren't that much of a help, the warm, eastwards-moving weather fronts would ensure that we were practically blown along and gently toasted, possibly making this one of the cushiest-ever charity fundraisers. Of course, what we had not envisaged in our dreams of wall-to-wall Factor 50 sunshine was the possibility of cycling our first 50 kilometres from Passau to Schlögen at precisely the same speed as an exceedingly wet weather front, arriving late, hungry, and soaked. We were seriously considering our options until the following morning, when the mist parted to reveal the clear blue skies which were to stay with us for the rest of our journey.

We were still to get much wetter

The first leg of our itinerary, from Passau to Vienna, had some fantastic things to offer. Following the course of the river, the ride takes you through stunning, sheer-sided valleys which broaden into the vineyards of the Wachau region and open out onto sun-drenched plains of Vienna. But it is not just the ride which is inspiring; travelling through such a variety of different landscapes brings you into contact with just as many different cultures – from the medieval town of Melk, where life seems to centre around the monastery-cum-school-cum-museum, to the Heuriger (wine-taverns where they also serve local cheeses) in Traismauer – not to forget the chic old-empire metropolis of Vienna, with its exquisite Kaffee und Kuchen and even more exquisite architecture.

A Heuriger near Traismauer

Couchsurfing also provided a great opportunity to meet an entirely different type of person to the usual hostel crowd on the Gap Yah circuit. All of our Couchsurf hosts were local to their particular region, so could give an insider's perspective, but they were also globally-minded individuals interested in travel, and all genuinely nice people.

As we entered the second leg of our journey, from Vienna to Budapest, one of my greatest concerns was language. Apart from a Brötchen being a Semmel and me getting consistently scowled at for saying Moin, Austrian German had been fairly intelligible. Slovak, on the other hand, was another matter, and a matter which did indeed lead to me pouring buttermilk in my tea – and my tea down the sink.

What I was not expecting, though, was for so many people in Hungary to turn to German rather than English as a second language, right through from Mosonmagyaróvár to Esztergom. Perhaps this was a linguistic reminder of their old links with Austria, I said speculatively to our Couchsurf host in Esztergom, a teacher who had a veritable zoo of stray cats, dogs and birds. She, however, reckoned it was telling of the trend in tourism from German-speaking countries, and trade with their neighbour to the West. Either way, it confirmed that German is a useful language to learn, even if it can't boast being spoken in Quebec or by Céline Dion.

The journey eastwards from Vienna also has a number of surprises in store. The eclectic mixture of medieval, baroque, Stalinist and post-communist architecture in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, is testament to the city's many layers of history and makes it a fascinating place to visit. Cycling from Mosonmagyaróvár to Győr along the Mosoni-Duna (a small and probably cleaner tributary of the Danube) also allowed for a relaxing swimming break in the river – we had decided our adventure along the Danube would not be complete if we didn't actually get in the river at some point. Another very welcome surprise was that we were in Győr at the same time as the city's annual palinka brandy festival (coincidence?), where we treated our Couchsurf host Szabina to a few, and she treated us to a Hungarian chimney cake. Reciprocal win.

The Mosoni-Duna near Dunaszeg

Perhaps we'd had too much of a good thing: our arrival in Budapest was less than smooth. When we chose to cycle the longer, but better-paved route which necessitated us taking two short ferries across the Danube, what we had not anticipated was that said ferries would be in various states of disrepair. We became increasingly frantic as we waited for fairly crucial parts to be soldered back together, still having 50 kilometres to go at 5pm. We dragged ourselves onwards with high-energy music and the prospect of buying Coke and chocolate when we neared civilisation, but it was already nightfall when we were trying to navigate our way into the city. We may or may not have ended up on a dual-carriageway with failing bike lights, forced to scramble over walls and over train tracks, finding ourselves on an island of deserted parks and pavilions (like a post-apocalypse Harrogate) where we stumbled upon our hostel tucked away amongst the plane trees. We naturally then had to spend the next day recovering at the Széchenyi Baths, and had to go to Budapest's annual chocolate festival via a 24-hour pancake bar.

Thankfully, the breathtakingly-large basilica, perched high above the Danube at Esztergom and affording a stunning panorama from Komárom in the West to the final narrows before Budapest in the East, had given us the necessary chance to reflect on our Odyssey. I guess the most satisfying thing, like everything in life, is not just being able to look back and see how far you've come, driven by adventure in the most self-seeking, medieval sense – but also to know that you've come so far using nothing but your own forces (and the occasional help from gravity), that it has exercised you both physically and mentally, and that it doesn't cost the world (economically or environmentally). We just can't say the same about driving down the M1 in rush hour traffic with the petrol light on, tired from inactivity not exercise, and kidding ourselves that green issues are someone else's problem. For me, at least, the Danube Cycle Path proved that cycling holidays are a viable form of eco-tourism, unique in bringing the sense of adventure back to travel, and taught me that the true joy isn't just in being somewhere, but in the very quest to get there.