Tuesday, June 14 - Wednesday, June 15

The next morning I chatted with Peter, funny how many stories we could tell each other. We rode by Elba, past Corsica, the island of beauty, where I had ridden in 2019, saw a wonderful sunset and a full-moon rise. We also spotted dolphins jumping playfully out of the water, in the wake of the ship.

Now the scheduled arrival to Geneva was late at night, when no trains were operating.

I told Peter wish someone would walk up to us and offer to give a ride up north...now please be seated, ten minutes later someone walked up, called Amon, a German guy who was visiting relatives in Catania - and he struck up a conversation with us.

He was living in Zurich (and after I asked 😉), he offered to give me a ride there. We arrived at like at 11 pm, Amon disembarked like an hour later and we cramped my bike into his Mercedes.Dawn was already breaking when we arrived in Zürich, on the way there, I kept dozing off, luckily, Amon did not. We arrived like at 4:30 in the morning.

The first train was leaving for Vienna at 6:40 am. The issue was that the bike spaces on this Rail Jet were sold out - but perseverance helps - the Austrian train steward explained the firsttrain car was anyhow not operational, so it was not an issue to put my bike there. I was really relieved and another pleasant surprise was that the ride in Austria was free of charge, it being my birthday - I even got a free soft drink. Thanks, ÖBB!The train got ever more full, but I was a happy fellow - with just a couple of minutes of delay, I arrived back to Vienna – almost 6 weeks after leaving it.