It was great to cycle with Michael, but our average speeds were not in synch and I was now covering around 21KM per hour and really wanted to get some KMs under my belt after the past few days of rain induced pit stops.
The accommodation last night was spot on however and gave me chance to get everything sorted, cleaned and stocked up on healthy stuff for the road. Every now and again it is worth having a decent room to stay, I find.
We swapped numbers & I set off to have a quick look around Linz in daylight. I wanted to try out and some Linzer torte, a traditional Austrian pastry of shortbread, fruit and nuts with a specific design on top named after this city. Its not really my kind of thing, but when in Linz and all that.... I had also wanted to visit a traditional tea room which I had heard was a thing, but at that time in the morning, all were shut.
But I didn't care, I was in an amazing mood, the sun was finally shining, I had a super healthy breakfast, everything was clean and dry and being Austria, the road conditions were perfection.
I crossed over the bridge (spying a much more funky bridge to my right, which I found out later was the newest bridge over the Danube and was just a few days away from its official opening) and turned right to follow the river and immediately came to the Skulpturenpark which had some great stuff in it. Particularly striking were mournful, serene and haunting statues of monks placed on the banks of the river and in boats overlooking the city, part of an ongoing art project by the Austrian sculptor Manfred Kielnhofer called Guardians of Time.
Striking, I thought, especially given the proximity of the concentration camps of Mauthausen and Gusen nearby.
I have been to Auschwitz and these camps are such depressing places that I intended on giving Mauthausen a pass. However a couple of things changed my mind; firstly a message from Bram who said it was an extraordinary place and then secondly, as I cycled in the general direction, I came across another striking installation by a local artist Rudolf Burger.
This work consisted of six concrete posts surrounding a concrete ashlar which was joined by thick chains to a couple of the posts, and in the centre of the block was a bowl with grooves.
The whole installation stood on a foundation of concrete and steel.
Drenched in symbolism, the concrete posts resembled posts that held electric wires into which POWs were forced to run or were pushed when at the camps themselves, whilst also evoking the feeling of incarceration, as if the posts were claws clasping a prisoner who is in chains. The granite block at its centre resembling a sacrificial site where thousands became victims of a murderous insanity. The bowl with its blood groove representing dissection tables whilst simultaneously acting as a focal point for the blood and tears of the victims. Honestly, you could interpret this monument to death, no pun intended.
It was chilling, oppressive, brutal, and uncomfortable. An information board explained that it was there to remember the inmates of Gusen camp who were forced to build the adjoining bridge and railway track to transport both POWs and vast amounts of granite which were to be used in Hitler's building projects at Berlin and Nuremburg, and a local stopped to show me the direction that the train tracks went though a local wood (at least, I think that's what he was telling me)
So what if it meant that once again I didn't get to cover so many KMs. It is important not to forget those that suffered, so I decided to make the detour.
At a gradient of 14%, it was a hell of a climb up to Mauthausen and I walked a fair bit of it. As with Auschwitz, it looked weirdly rather pleasant from a distance.
They info desk were very helpful and allowed me to leave my bags with them, so I downloaded the accompanying app and went walkies. Main things that struck me - the infirmary camp used to accommodate sick prisoners who were no longer able to work and went there to die whilst alongside was a recreation ground used by the SS for their own fun and relaxation. Imagine being out there enjoying yourself being overlooked by people who were dying in the most horrific circumstances.
Then onto the quarries (Mauthausen was there to mine granite for Hitler buildings in Berlin and Nuremberg) where inmates had to carry granite blocks up to 50kilos up the quarry steps to the camp, known as the stairs of death. Horrible things like prisoners being lined up and each one had to push their neighbour off until there were none left; those that were pushed over were colloquially known as parachutists.
One of the most moving and breathtaking parts of my visit was to the Memorial Park, which had been constructed on the site of the wooden accommodation blocks destroyed by the Nazis themselves at the end of the war in an attempt to cover up the atrocities that had occurred there.
All countries who had citizens that had been sent to the concentration camp submitted extraordinary monuments that covered the entire area and these were all just unbelievable in both their scope and originality. I could honestly have spent an entire day just wondering around these installations alone....
Then onto the various barracks, the area where Jewish prisoners were kept, the electric wire fence reconstruction where prisoners were forced to run into the fence and burn to death slowly.
The same as Auschwitz, the ovens etc.
I must have spent about 3 hours, but I got a feel for it. After a while in these kinds of places you become desensitised to the death and like I say, it is all so clean and neat nowadays that it is hard to imagine the unending roll calls in all weathers, the disgusting sleeping, living conditions etc.
I had a coffee and a cake and used the super sparkly, clean bathroom and imagined what an inmate would think of the facilities nowadays in comparison.
The rest of the afternoon was very pleasant. Coasted the Danube on the Northern Austria side all the way to the small town of Wallsee, crossing over on a small ferry at one point to the Southern Austria.
Wallsee was dominated by the tower of a Schloss Wallsee, an impressive and now privately owned castle. It was around about this point that I somehow deleted the google maps icon from my phone, which was annoying but all I had to do was keep following the river which I did until the next attractive town of Grein.
I absolutely loved this part, wow these road surfaces are astounding and the river was flowing full and fast. Grein had a pretty location with nice views over the water and windy atmospheric streets in behind, although there were also huge trucks that whistled along as well.
I set up my tent in the local campsite and got chatting to a friendly French chap who had been cycling Ukraine. The campsite was OK, but I realise that although it looked lovely, the huge trucks whistled close by and it was in fact earsplittingly loud. Still, I figured it would be fine later as I was sure the trucks wouldn't be flying through there all night, and I was right.
I decided to eat out as the town looked so pretty in the early evening light and I had still knocked off a fair distance as well as some top quality sightseeing.
The restaurants were full of tourists on their river cruise boats which had docked in the harbour. Cruises are never something that has never remotely appealed to me in the least, but I have seen quite a few such boats on the Danube around here and I can see the attraction.
Maybe one day when I am older and I can't cycle a few thousand KMs.
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