Our Easter Sunday in Austria

A buzzing wakes me up at 10:45 pm. "It's a motor somewhere," Scott mumbles. Sounds to me like a chainsaw except maybe a fairy-sized one inside my air mattress! Every time I lay my head down, it starts up again, magnified 10x by the thick air chambers of my beloved Big Agnes air mattress. Damn, it's a bee! But I don't know whether it's inside the tent or under the tent. And I certainly can't sleep peacefully knowing this small, industrious creature is struggling for its life beneath me.

So begins a frantic 15 minutes of pulling up all the tent stakes (me in just a t-shirt, white butt as bright as the moon), shining the iPhone flashlight, searching in the not-short grass for Mr. Bee, cranking at each other ("Careful, you'll rip the tent!")

Scott spots the bee sauntering out from beneath the tent, but then the iPhone blinks out. "How do you stop this damn thing from flashing?!" "Hit the button!" Scott loses sight of the bee and I am back in the tent hiding. The innards of the tent now look like a bomb has gone off. I lay down on my pillow (parka stuffed into a tiny homemade pillowcase I sewed before we left) to listen. Ah, all is quiet.

When we finally get all cocooned in our bags again, we realize all the neighbors have been returning from their Easter dinner celebrations just across the freshly tilled field from us, laughing and chatting for some time into the night. Once again, the ignoble aspects of roughing it - my butt gets way too much air time when we travel (sorry Elizabeth and Ben).

Our tent venue is an open field of wild flowers in a small fruit orchard (hence the bee) in front of a restaurant. 10 euros buys us a view of yellow rape seed fields in the distance and a small neighborhood in a hundred yard radius around us. Again, we are the only campers. Scott warns me earlier that people can see us, but I forget all that when I think a bee is in the tent with us. 

We are allowed to use the old shed for cooking (see pic below). A frisky cat entertained us while we made vege soup. A super hot shower in the morning made it one of our favorite campsites so far. 

Prime real estate for bees!

Fancy dining area

View from the tent

Kitty greetings!

The river a quarter mile away

Yesterday morning was the most beautiful part of the ride so far. Rural Austria is gorgeous, although we haven't found the people to be as friendly as in Germany, so far. Cars drove by us on the bike paths extremely fast, nearly hitting us, and so did some other serious bicyclists is matching flashy outfits!

One of those pinch-myself-this-is-too-perfect mornings.

A swan and a castle

What the ferries used to look like

Cuckoo birds fill the woods here with their resigned morning calls. I think I remember my Dad's parents (Mother Gretchen and G-pop) had an authentic cuckoo clock from Germany, which made the identical sound. Dad, did you know your name is pronounced geh-erf in German (that is, if the O had 2 dots over it) and it means "open" is there is a -net at the end? We are definitely on the lookout for Geoffnet (open) signs.