Honestly, before we left, I hadn’t given a lot of thought to what to expect from the trip. Typically when we travel, I spend hours and hours looking through guide books and at Internet sites, reading travel blogs, making hotel and transportation reservations. This time, however, we were going to be on a guided tour. So I didn’t have to do anything as far as planning except get us to Europe.
On one hand, it was great. On the other hand, I had no idea where we’d be riding, what we would be doing, where we would be staying, etc. I was clueless. So each day was a fun, new discovery.
Anyway, I guess I should start from the beginning. The company we used for this tour was Edelweiss Bike Travel. Their headquarters is in Mieming, Austria, which was not far at all from where we were staying. Doris Waldegger, Customer Relations Manager for Edelweiss, was a HUGE help to us. She went out of her way to offer suggestions for accommodations during our additional night in Innsbruck and she even went as far as to actually book our train tickets for me since I couldn’t make sense of the fare guides and schedules. During one of our MANY e-mail exchanges, she joked that if we were in the area, she’d get us some strudel.
As luck would have it, we DID end up stopping by the office so Andy, our fantabulous tour guide, could pick up a new helmet. I was sort of in the background as Doris was greeting everyone then, when the time was right, I said, “Where’s this struedel you promised?” She squealed, “You must be Kathy!” then actually ran over and gave me a big hug. How’s that for friendly service? AND, even though I was just teasing about the strudel, she actually drove to a nearby bakery and brought back some very tasty struedel. I didn’t get a picture of Doris, but if you follow this link you’ll see her in the picture, second from the right.
Speaking of great service, there are two other folks who made our week extra special. First there is Andreas “Andy” Bucher, our wonderful tour guide. All of the photos used in this post were taken by Andy or at least with his camera. He’s the one person who got the most group shots, so I decided to borrow his images for today’s discussion. Andy was everything we could have asked for in a guide for the trip. He was an excellent rider, of course. Having grown up in the area, he was very familiar with all of the roads, driving laws/courtesies, etc. He was also very friendly, personable and patient, helping those of us who didn’t speak German (the entire group!) understand the restaurant menus, road signs, etc. He never seemed to tire of our questions, either. And the smile on his face in this picture is the same smile he wore pretty much from the time he met us all on Sunday evening until the time we had to say our goodbyes on Friday.
Then there was our bartender. All of the staff at the Hotel Central were very nice, professional and warmly accommodating. It is, after all, a family owned and operated establishment.If you are ever in Seefeld in Tirol, I highly recommend the place. The food was fabulous, too. Our bartender (I wish I could remember her name) was very friendly, efficient and hugely entertaining.
I’ll never forget asking her on our first night, “What kind of beer do you have?” That’s a fairly common question here in the US where bars and restaurants typically have several different brands on tap and others available in bottles. Not in Austria, apparently, where restaurants tend to serve local brews only. She looked at me just a little funny and replied with, “Normal beer.” That night, normal beer is what I drank (Gösser). Then I discovered the famous weissbier, which is German for wheat beer or white beer. That was my beverage of choice for the rest of the week, not just because the brand name happened to be Edelweiss, but because I thought it tasted darn good. Especially after LONG days of adrenalin-pumping riding.
Speaking of riding, there were 13 people in our group plus Andy. There was one couple (third and fourth from the right in the above image), Ben and Lisa Hearn from Texas, that was riding together, but everyone else had their own bikes (provided as part of the tour package). Four of the 13 people were from Canada while everyone else was from the US. The two guys on the far right, Paul (wearing gray) and Doug Brooks, are even West Virginians.
Since I’m always the one with the camera, you don’t ever see many pictures of me, which is also why I used Andy’s pics here. You can’t see Jeannie very well in this picture, but she’s a very nice, fun biker chick from Massachusetts.
We ended up with a great group of people. From Sunday through Friday, we were all together constantly. While we weren’t riding, we were stopped on coffee breaks, eating meals, just chit-chatting. We bonded quickly, so when Friday rolled around we were all very sad to leave.
Have I said yet how much I liked my motorcycle? No? I LOVED my motorcycle. I have never felt so comfortable riding a motorcycle in my life. It was quick, nimble, agile and very well-balanced, which made tearing through the many, many crazy curves all the more fun. At times, it really felt like an extension of my own body.
Speaking of challenging passes, check out these pictures from Timmelsjoch. That’s the German name. The Italian name is Passo del Rombo. Why two different names? The Timmelsjoch connects Austria’s Tyrol state with and the province of Bolzano-Bozen in Italy. As we waited for everyone in the group to pay their tolls, Andy was walking beside us coaching us to “stay close.”
“Stay close to what?” I asked.
“To the bike in front of you,” he replied. “It is going to be foggy. If you can see the bike in front of you, you know there is still a road.”
He was right. Here’s what things looked like a short time later…
Andy even shot some pictures while we were riding. As you look at the next few pictures, keep in mind that we were moving at a decent clip and he was using a digital SLR camera, not a tiny little point and shoot. He was riding with one hand, which isn’t all that difficult if you are moving in a straight line, but check out the curvy road!
This is a two-way road. It’s actually sort of wide compared to some of the roads we were on. And these roads are shared by cars and trucks, so you really have to be careful going around those hairpin turns. The good news is that cars and trucks actually let you pass, unlike here in the US where most people would rather run you off the road than let you pass them.
Hubby and I actually experienced that the other day while riding west on US-50 through West Virginia. On more than one occasion, we got stuck behind slow-moving cars or trucks that easily could have just paused momentarily to let us pass. But no. People are just too ignorant to do something like that. So we had to struggle to get around the idiots.
Anyway… motorcycling in the Alps is highly recommended. It’s not something inexperienced motorcyclists or even drivers should attempt, however. On a motorcycle especially there’s an art to getting through those hairpins at a decent speed. If you go too slow, you fall over. Too fast and you careen off the side of the mountain. That, of course, would not be good.