I planned meticulously my trip, talked to a number of bikers and ended up with version 8. But as the boxer Mike Tyson said: Everyone has a plan till the first punch into the face. My punch was the weather. The first two days heavy rain. Mentally locked in my plans, I was desperate imaging myself going up the hills till 1800 altimeters, on lonely biking trails, wet and close to freezing. Luckily my daughter suggested I should do a warmup around the Bodensee / Lake Constance instead. 

So today, I passed through Austria, Switzerland, and Germany on the southern bank of the largest West-European lake. Half of the journey in a heavy rain but with such amenities as coffee shops and restaurants 🙂

Switzerland, as always, was double incomprehensible to me. 

First, I really do not understand how this country can be so well maintained, so clean, so “Swiss watch like”that even, Germany cannot cope with. (I beg for pardon here with my German friends.)

Second, though my understanding of German is next to perfect, my understanding of Swiss German is next to zero.  Waiting at a railway crossing I was eavesdropping on a conversation of  a large Swiss family speaking their “Schwytzerdütsch”. My intake was 20% max.

When setting off today in the morning, I met another cyclist in the hotel in Bregenz. He could barely walk down the stairs.
I asked him: “Oh, you are injured?”
He replied laconically: “No, just not in shape”

Having managed 101 km today I still can walk the stairs but also feel very exactly where he had his pain resided 🙂