Sonnenuntergänge und Werkstätten

Following the very hectic week in Bratislava and Vienna, a bit of peace and quiet was in order. Regrettably Moira had other plans...

On Thursday we awoke to a beautiful park up in a nature reserve and spent much of the day fixing some bits on Moira, our bikes, and applying for some jobs. Feeling well rested we headed off for a drive over to Enns with a view to visiting Enns and Linz to break up the journey from Vienna to Salzburg.

Within 10 minutes of our planned park up this gal decided to play up and after some inspecting, and a good deal of stressing, we established it was a broken alternator. With limited garages (or auto werkstatten) in the area, Moira having a short range due to the failing battery, and only one day until the weekend we weren't feeling confident of getting it sorted any time soon.

Putting the poorly van out of our minds we spent some time down by the river before sleeping and Rob showed off his sick stone skimming skills. Legend has it he reached 10 skims but we can never know for sure.

Waking up bright and early on Friday we headed around a few garages and finally found an amazing one with a free space for us. Not only that but the mechanic encouraged us to hang about as she was getting fixed. Pictured is Rob in his budding career as a mechanic.

With a surprisingly quick fix behind us we still were unfortunately too behind schedule to go to Enns so we skipped over it and headed straight to Linz to be greeted with a hefty amount of Baroque architecture. This style of building, partly inspired by a post-reformation Catholic desire to contrast austere Protestant churches, had yet another example of the ubiquitous Austrian onion Church tower.

We had a lovely time wandering around this very picturesque Austrian town and treated ourselves to some new board games, some burgers and some ice cream. On our way out of the town we passed through the Hauptplatz (formerly Franz Josef Platz then Adolf Hitler Platz) and its iconic Trinity Column. This mighty 18th century monument doesn't represent the holy trinity but the avoidance of three crises in the 1700s: war, fire, and plague.

Danni's best Maria Augusta impression from The Sound of Music, it seemed fitting since we are in the location of its setting.

After a rollercoaster of a day we settled in for a glorious sunset in the Austrian Alps before heading to potentially our last Austrian destination of Salzburg tomorrow.