Why this?

After something like 30 years on the internet, less and less liking how “platforms” “own” and “control” and "harvest” “my” content, it’s time to try something new. This is an attept to share with those interested in what I am doing some of my experiences/thoughts etc. on what I am doing.

1. Why here?

I have 0 experience as an author with substack yet. This is why I am going to start with a travel diary of my late bicycle summer trip with my son from Vienna to Dresden.

2. What to expect?

This is a very short summary of some of the things I do and see seach day. Quick and dirty, very little editing etc.

Day one (September 13, Vienna-Kalladorf, 70 km)

We left Vienna at around 11.00. Very sunny, rather hot.

5 main learnings today:

1. Lower Austria is empty

When you happen to ride through lower Austria on a regular working day you happen to see almost noone. People are either in Vienna or in their gigantic houses or dead.

2. Lower Austria is worldclass in land sealing

In all this emptiness you see newly built grey houses everywhere, each of them looking exactly the same (grey with some decorative paint in pink or lemongreen, parking port in front, sometimes around an artificial lake, no infrastructure, no public transport) in particular in the middle of nowhere.

3. Hollabrunn has an “Espresso Herbert”

And it looks how it sounds. Some elderly men with grey hair and a full beard who drove a Harley if the could afford it; smoking as if it were in the eighties and drinking 1 bottle of Gösser beer/30 minutes. A cigarett vending machine inside, a TV showing Europsport (Tennis?), a (Hungarian?) young waitress, etc.

4. There is a village called Kalladorf

Right after Hollabrunn, the rain came so that we stopped in Kalladorf (near Wullersdorf, near Hollabrunn). Approximately 300 inhabitants and a nice vinery. It’s still raining, so let’s see what tomorrow will bring.

5. Komoot works well (at the moment)

Most of the bikepaths are “Landstraßen” and “Feldwege” with very little traffic. Quite convenient (if there is no new construction site unknown to the app due to another group of new grey houses in the middle of nowhere that are freshly erected).

Thanks for reading Nikolaus’s Substack!