Social media has conditioned us to only present the most positive aspects of our live while downplaying the very thought that we have bad days. Full disclosure, I’ve had a bit of a rough week. My battle against allergy symptoms that popped up while cycling to Bratislava turned down a little with the help of medication, but then I was thrown a more mysterious ailment. Out of nowhere my stomach decided to tie itself into knots. My diet had remained pretty constant, so I had no idea why I was feeling so awful. That feeling persisted as I cycled west to Vienna for the weekend. It was raining quite hard on the morning I left, but the rain did clear a little after lunch. My plan was to just follow the EuroVelo cycle route along the Danube, but the trail was closed at a number of different points, and the replacement signage was severely lacking. I ended up back on a secondary highway for the last half of the trip. In Vienna, likely to my detriment, I proceeded to explore (nearly the entire city) on foot. I covered over 20 kilometers on foot on Saturday, but made the conscious decision to take it a little bit easier on Sunday. Not that there seemed to be much to do on Sunday in Vienna - the lion's share of businesses were closed and the streets were dead quiet. Saturday evening I got a message from a guy I went tree planting with in Prince George in the summer of 2013! We hadn’t really talked since then, so it was really nice to hear from him! He’s in the final stages of his second masters degree (first in history, and second in economics). His university is actually in Germany, but is spending some time in Vienna with a friend while finishing his thesis (the thesis is on the effectiveness of the British Columbia carbon tax - a subject I wrote two papers on in the late stages of my undergraduate career). Really good to be able to meet up with him last minute on my last evening in Vienna! I’m excited to see how many more people from home I can meet on the road! Yesterday I cycled from Vienna all the way to Brno in the Czech Republic. I know, it’s actually just called “Czechia,” or something like that, but I am still not sure how to pronounce that. The topography was a welcome change from the flat and somewhat boring terrain around the Danube from Budapest through to Vienna. As I got out of the city I was treated to rolling hills, fields growing more than just grains, and many charming little Austrian villages! It ended up being a little more than 130 kilometers from Vienna to Brno, a distance I’ve done on many occasions, the only difference with this ride was that I had to do it with the mercury pushing 30 degrees. It was hot! I did my best to continually replenish my fluids, even remembering to drink an isotonic-laden beverage at lunch - but that wasn’t enough to keep me cool. In hindsight I should have drenched myself in an effort to cool down. I did survive, and did my best to rehydrate and cool off once I arrived at my hostel. Brno, like Budapest is a bit of an add-on. I added it after realizing that I was doing well for time, and was entering the Schengen Zone earlier than anticipated. After looking through a couple brochures and looking around a little online, Brno seems really cool! Naturally it is overshadowed by the capital, Prague, but from what I can tell, Brno is a smaller, less touristy substitute! For the majority of my time on the road I have relied on the work of a website called European Coffee Trip to help me find good coffee in all the places I visit. Turns out the two guys who are the founders/primary content creators, live here in Brno! I sent them a message a couple weeks back thanking them, and asking if I could thank them personnally by buying them a coffee when I roll through! That’s part of the plan for tomorrow morning - I’m going to meet Ales at a local coffee/breakfast spot to chat! This leads into one of the things that I’ve been learning/working on while travelling - to put myself out there and ask for/about things. I was a barista for three years - still essentially a novody in the coffee industry. But, I sent a message (offered to pay for coffee), and now I get to sit down with an entrepreneur that creates content that profiles specialty coffee in Europe. Similarly, I met up with a man named Michael in Istanbul after he wrote an article on specialty coffee on the Anatolian side of the Bosphorus. It can be pretty easy just to get into my own head and tell myself that these people have better things to do, or their busy, or get brought down by insecurity in the fear of rejection. Sometimes all you have to do is ask. I think the stomach ailment I developed is beginning to disappear - fingers crossed! Some good news from last week! My FanID finally made it to BC! Both my FanID and match ticked are both in Squamish and ready to be mailed to me in Europe. I would feel much better to have them both in my hands - but we still have a week or two to make that actually happen. It’s a little less stressful to know that neither got permanently lost in the mail on the way to Canada! After three nights here in Brno I am headed off to Oswiecim and Krakow, then on to Warsaw before the final 320km up to Kaliningrad! Writing this post took much longer than it should have because I got distracted by the excavators working in the courtyard across the street. Even at 25 playing in the dirt sounds like a lot of fun!
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