Bringing it to life...

We nearly raced through the east German town of Torgau without stopping, oblivious to its rich history.
Luckily this lively, erudite retired farmer, Heinz - with a real flare for storytelling - adopted us for a whole day. I was so enthralled with his tales - such as how the allied & Russian troops met here at the river Elbe, thus effectively isolating Germany & ending the war - that I kept catching myself with my face almost pressed against his!

A wonderful day, thank you Heinz!

City of Romance

It´s a bit corny, I know, but what a wonderful place Prague is - well deserving of its UNESCO world heritage badge.
Kitty was grinning from ear to ear, on account of a newly opened museum with original Beethoven, Mozart & Handel manuscripts. I was grinning from ear to ear, on account of cheap beer.

Getting High...

In this little Austrian town of Retz, just south of the Czech border, there was an open-air high-wire act one evening. You can just make out the guy balancing on his head, on the wire running up to the rathaus (town hall - you have to love a nation that calls the place where its local politicians meet, a rat house!).
We sat outside a restaurant drinking local wine whilst the artists attempted to fall from great heights.
At the end of the show, there was a really dramatic electric storm and we cycled 3 miles back at high speed, lit up by lightning & laughing all the way - jumping into our tent just seconds before the torrent of rain!

trailer map

One of Kitty´s best ideas on this trip, was to draw a large map, in black, of Europe on the lid of our trailer - with our trail drawn in, in red.

It also gives our names, and has allowed us to explain visually what we´re up to in every country-without being able to speak a word of the lingo.


The downside is that we frequently have to spend 10 minutes going through it all and fighting our way through the gathered onlookers, before we can get on our way!
Considering the trailer was knocked together in a couple of evenings and has had an absolute hammering on this trip (oh, how I love these east European cobbled streets!), it has stayed intact, watertight and done sterling service.

bratislava

OK, OK I´m ashamed to admit it - but Kitty will tell everyone anyway - we only cycled to Bratislava so that I could add Slovakia to the list of countries we´d visited!
In the ´70s after the communists had marched into Slovakia, they demolished an incredible two-thirds of the old city in order to build this monstrosity of a bridge. Well, there was a bit of good heritage foresight! Note the des. res properties in the background - another communist legacy, that you see everywhere in the former eastern block.
In spite of this, Bratislava was a really cool place (well actually it hit 40 degrees celsius!).

border time gentlemen, please!

Kitty had worn the seat of her pants out pedalling too hard - or so she said; so we needed a cheaper country than Austria to buy some more - and decided on neighbouring Hungary (is that taking ´budgeting´ a bit seriously?!).

But having got up at 6 a.m. to race across the border, this young guard was most insistent that his post DID NOT open until 8 a.m.

No end of offers of cash, a night of passion (with Garry), or promises that we weren´t carrying drugs - or even offering him drugs (?!) would persuade him to let us through before time.

tanked up...

...but nothing to do with cheap Slavic beer!

This was outside the military museum in Ljubljiana.
Kitty says the power of being ´captain´ on the tandem has gone to my head - I can see she has a point!

In the depths

More by luck than judgement, this trip has included a large number of UNESCO world heritage sites. Some have been real stunners -like these, the Skopjan caves several hundred metres underground & with 15m stalactites, in Slovenia. Took hours to walk through!

One for Cello Mary

Sorry about the 90 degree problems on these pics!

We happened on this pretty hill village, Roc, in Istria - home to an international accordian festival. It had sculptures of assorted instruments, including this ´bas´(2-string cello) - guess who was in her element trying them all?