Passau to Vienna, Europes most popular bike route, backwards.

By now we’ve realized we are officially doing this route backwards. Our first hint should have been that all the guidebooks we could find discussed the route from west to east... but we thought this was simply a peculiarity and didn’t mean that you couldn’t ride the opposite way. In Serbia and Croatia, there were so few riders that it didn’t faze us that it’s easier to ride downstream… and after a few weeks of a constant head wind we began to realize why everyone passed us the opposite direction—it is much easier to ride DOWN stream rather than UP stream. In fact, we have been steadily climbing since Belgrade, and have been chasing into a prevailing west to east head wind.

This slightly funny observation only became more obvious when we came to the Vienna to Passau route. This trip through Austria is considered the most loved and most traveled bike route in all of Europe, and for good reason; it is downright gorgeous, in every sense of the word. For those taking the route in the “correct” direction (from Passau to Vienna, downstream, west to east) you will find the route blessed with an almost guaranteed gentle tailwind, slight downhill gradient, well marked signage and loads of places to rest, eat, sleep or otherwise preoccupy yourself with quaint riverside towns and vineyards. Although most of this is also true for Todd and my adventure through the route, we also found, more often than not, the trails we better marked going the opposite direction. Nevertheless, this 300 km? route was truly magnificent.


We left the great city of Vienna August 5th, still full from a night of beer and hearty Austrian cuisine, and wound our way along well paved bike paths through beautiful countryside. Along the route we kept finding these cute little snails and slugs crossing the road and we even stopped to take a photo of a couple— they were so unusual! That is, until we found out they run rampant through the Austrian countryside, and have a strange affinity for all things camping related (shoes, tents, bags, food… you name it). Waking up in our first campsite we found all our things to be just swarming the slimy, wet, gooey creatures… they left a thick film wherever the roamed and simply covered our things. Quite disgusting.




Besides the slugs, we somehow managed to find ourselves in a never-ending rain. Packing up a wet tent is always a lovely experience. Although the ride made up for it… orchards of apricots and apples, intertwined with the famous Wachau wine region alongside the meandering Danube river.

We decided to take a 2 km side trip to see a famous old castle the Runie Aggstein. We were feeling fit and didn’t think much of the fact that the old 11th century castle was on top of a mountain. About 1 km into the 20% grade climb, we decided to lock our bikes up and walk the rest of the way (okay, we’re still champs, walking up 20% grade is still wicked hard).




The sun was setting and we found a lovely little campsite outside of the town of Melk. We had just set up tent when it started to pour. The kinda rain that doesn’t stop for two straight days. We woke up the next morning and decided to hibernate in the tent all day instead of fighting through a bitter cold and wet headwind. The campsite was truly lovely, right on the river with a great four-star restaurant (which smelled great, but one meal was about the cost of living in Hungary for a month). The owner of the site had given us a campsite on high ground so we didn’t get flooded out (a real worry; a lot of the bike paths and towns were seeping with water from the rising river after several days of straight rain).

The rain finally stopped sometime through our second night there, and we fell into a deep undisturbed sleep, ready to tackle the next several days of riding.

Things never go as planned.

That night, we were robbed.

Side note: This isn’t a particularly lovely part of our trip, and I considered not including it our blog (mostly because I didn’t want to worry my Mom) but I believe it is necessary to be aware of these sort of dangers, that way you can be more prepared in case you too find yourself in a similar situation.

Around five in the morning I woke up, for no apparent reason, rolled over, and fell back asleep. The next thing to wake me up was rays of sunshine and the sound of birds, a chilly breeze was drifting through the tent, but we were warm and cozy in our sleeping bags. My watch read 7:30. I sat up, and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. Why was the tent rainfly unzipped? Had I forgot to close it up last night? Wait a moment, why was the screen open? Oh my God! Where was the backpack? Where was our front pack?

My panicking woke Todd up and it didn’t take us long to realize that we had been robbed in the night. Both rainflys were open and the screen next to me had been unzipped. We scrambled out of the tent to see our things littered across the wet ground. Next to me we had kept the backpack (which contained mostly our food) and between our feet we kept the front pack, which contained all our most important documents— passports, wallets, maps and such. Both bags were thrown across the ground and stuff was everywhere (and covered in slugs).
My mom told me once that she wonders sometimes if I have a lucky horseshoe shoved up my butt…and I must say, I think she’s right.

Always prepared, we also kept a fake wallet in the front pack, which contained a number of outdated credit cards and such (an idea we were given by Todds cousin Joanne… thanks Joanne!). I had also used the wallet to store foreign currency until we found an exchange bank. The robber had found this, taken out the money and left the wallet. He/she/they also found a small change purse that I had jammed packed with euro coins, and Todd’s fancy Cateye bike light. Luckily I had our wallet with credit cards and cash in the breast pocket of my rain jacket, which was untouched, and the robber apparently had no interest in our passports, which were delicately thrown on the ground.

Overall, the robbery costs us about $100USD and some shaky nerves. We were just happy that we were safe, and our most important items were as well. Funny thing is, the paper currency that was stolen was mainly extremely devalued Hungarian Forints and Serbian Diners, which came in notes of $5,000 $10,000, or $20,000 and looked similar in size and color to Euro paper currency. The bastard had probably though they had just made out with a jackpot of money… until they realized it was devalued, basically worthless, foreign currency.

We picked up as best we could and went to the campsite reception. I pulled out my pocket German/English translation book and pointed to the word “burglary”. The desk worker flew into action and before we knew it, the Austrian police were there in a matter of moments. With sign gestures and broken English, we managed to explain what happened and they took a few photos and ushered us into the cruiser (which was some fancy Volkswagen) and tore off towards the station. Going 180kmph through windy wet roads into the hills, (especially after biking at 18kmph for days on end) was a surreal experience and although slightly unnecessary, due to the fact that we were not in any sort of emergency event, we didn’t mind. In fact, I may venture to call it a highlight of the day.

The police were very thorough and sympathetic to our situation, and assured us that although it isn’t all that common, it does happen from time to time and the best thing to do is keep the most important items next to your head, simply because a burglar is less likely to attempt to reach over your head to steal your valuables.

Truly, we had thought we were quite smart about our camping situation. We always keep important things in the tent, and everything else in sealed bags under the rainfly. Honestly, we had been more concerned with our bikes being stolen and took extreme care to make sure they were securely locked up and covered in a non-discrete tarp. Never had we considered a robber actually entering the tent while we were asleep and locating the bag with the valuable items.

The lesson of this story is to never assume you are safe. When telling our experience to fellow bikers, they were shocked to hear we were robbed in Austria, after having traveled through poverty-stricken Eastern Europe without a hitch. I suppose it doesn’t matter where in the world you are, there are people who will take advantage of you.

We also are now more careful about where we place our tent. We had previously avoided being next to other tents because we liked our privacy and didn’t want to be kept up by noise, but as a robber, you are more of a target if you are off on your own. Our tent was also wedged into a corner of shrubbery, with a roadway on the one side… creating an easy get-away. No other tents were robbed that night, that we know of, clearly indicating that location is extremely important. We also now lock the inside screen zippers and keep all valuables in a separate bag by our heads. Although this may seem ridiculous, simply the idea of fumbling through a lock or extra deterrence really makes a difference. The side of the tent that Todd was sleeping on had also had the rainfly opened, but all of our bike panniers were stacked up precariously and folded and snapped down. The robber clearly was deterred from looking through, or trying to enter from that side and instead choose the easier route which only had a small backpack in the way.