Somewhat inglorious finish
Vienna was around 220 km’s away, so after having done just under that much in the last two days, I felt I cloud make it. As this was my last day, I woke up really early and was on my feet (wheels) by 6 am. So it were the towns of Prievidza, Novaky, Partizanske, then Topolcany (where I had slept on the way from Bratislava to Krakow). My progress was somewhat slower than I thought, after all, I had many smaller hills to cross, but the real elevation came on the way to Piestany, where I had to cross the first, lower section of the Lower Tatras. It was just after noon that I got to Piestany, famous for its spa. By this time, I had completed about 100 km’s, so I was about half-way in getting there. I allowed myself a small rest and had two delicious chocolate cakes. A the cake shop, I talked my Slovakian waitress, who spoke perfect English, having lived in Washington DC. I asked her to look up a way to cross the border river, Morava (March in German). I asked her to check whether the ferry from Zahorska Ves in Slovakia to Angern in Austria was operational.
She said ‘no, it’s closed till June 26th’, but I told her it’s June 30th, so it must be open. She said, ‘ah, OK, then it must be open’. This later on turned out to be a pretty big error.
Anyhow, I continued towards the higher ranges of the Lower Tatras, and it seemed someone up there did not want me to make it to Vienna. While it was still fair weather, the wind picked up, especially on the first few kilometers on the uphill road, blowing right at me, so progress slowed down almost literally to a crawl. There were no trees, building or any other obstacles to hold up the wind and it became my big opponent. It was a good feeling when I was deeper into the mountain, when at least the wind did not bother, still, there was quite a lot of elevation to conquer. When I finally got to Brezova, much later than expected, I still had the option to cross into Austria over a bridge or head for the ferry. I went for the latter option. I was not pleased to see the road sign to Rohoznik, saying it is over 40 km’s away and the city of Malacky about 55 km. That is not a short distance and while there were no more passes, it was still a road on the side of the mountain, so it had enough hills to cross. The scenery was pretty, there were some nice quiet villages and I also rode by a nice castle ruin. It was 6:30 pm I got to Malacky, about 60 km’s from Vienna. This meant I needed the most of the afternoon for the roughly 70 km from the spa of Piestany to Malacky. In Malacky, I saw a nicely restored synagogue and then it was just 16 kilometers more to the ferry crossing of the border.
I think by know you know what happened here: the road from Malacky to the river crossing was surprisingly quiet and I had this bad feeling the ferry might not be operational. Well, it wasn’t. It was a pretty sad sight, seeing a big ‘do not enter’ sign at the ferry terminal, with nobody around. Two ladies drove after me by car just to confirm the obvious: due to the continued flooding of the Morava, the ferry is not crossing the river. So it was close to 8 pm that my month-long bike trip came to an abrupt halt, due to a little river not much wider than 20 meters. I thought of swimming across, but this would have been somewhat complicated with my bike.
It is needless to say how disappointed I was. It did not improve my mood that this border town, Zahorska Ves, did not have a train service, it had a bus service just back to Malacky – and I was about 35 kilometers from Bratislava. My spirit was rather down and I had no real idea as to what to do; did not really feel like making the detour to Bratislava. So I started hitch-hiking, not really expecting anyone to stop.
Then something unexpected happened: a hatch-back taxi stopped all of a sudden in front of me. He did not make the stop for me, it was someone the driver wanted to talk to. I asked the driver where he was heading to, he told me his destination was Bratislava. I knew this was my chance: he asked for Eur 30 to drive me there, I offered the half, we finally agreed on Eur 20. He was one of the craziest drivers I’ve ever seen: not being buckled-up, texting on his phone, we were doing 120 km/h on those tiny curvy roads, not even slowing in the villages. We covered distance to Bratislava in no time, and the driver dropped me off at the railway station. The next train was just a few minutes away, it was something the driver had checked on his phone while driver at full speed. At 10 pm, I got to Vienna and well before 11 pm, I was at my parents’ place. That was it.