NSFW (Nikolaus' Song For The Week)

It's this time of the year again: Felix and I were, just like 2025, 2024 and before, on our yearly bicycle tour this week. This means that today's weekly is a travel diary. The song makes reference to the journey. It's Bob Telson's song, written for Percy Adlon's film Out of Rosenheim (Bagdad Cafe), sung by Jevetta Steele, in 1987/1988. 

Wikipedia tells me that Vienna plays a role in the song as well.

We departed from Strobl, after Sommerhochschule's graduation ceremony (that was moving, as always) on Saturday afternoon. Here's what's happened since then.

Saturday, Strobl-Salzburg (50 km, easy)

This was a nice warm up, along Wolfgangsee and Fuschlsee, past the Red Bull headquarters

that I found remarkably ugly, but others consider worth being a trip on its own.

We did an evening walk in Salzburg, failed to drink an alcohol-free beer in Augustinerbräu Mülln (they serve the alcoholic variant only) and saw many festivalgoers in long robes and tuxedos hurrying past us on their way to the Festspielhaus later. A public stream, funded by Siemens, showed Carmen close to the Domplatz (but we didn't watch) and Hohensalzburg Fortress shimmered in the evening light.

When returning we crossed Salzach (at very, very low water level)

and found a motto, scribbled on a wall, in the hotel.

Sunday, Salzburg-Rosenheim (95 km, moderate)

We left Salzburg and crossed the border at Freilassing, without being controlled by the many border guards present there who didn't care about bicycle riders at all. We then stayed south of Chiemsee and went west through the Bavarian province. The landscape is dominated by cows and cars, so that it constantly smells slightly like in a cowshed and the - nicely seperated - bicycle paths often run in parallel to a roadway. The landscape is slightly hilly, more bicycle riders than I expected are on their way in both directions.

I listened to several episodes of OK, America?

and followed a recommendation heard there to discover the Verge Decoder-Podcast with an interesting episode on the growing skepticism among conservatives against data centers.

We ended our day in Rosenheim (without any cops seen), had dinner and strolled through the city center.

Monday, Rosenheim-Greifenbach (100 km, hard)

We left Rosenheim via a Bruck-an-der-Leitha-Weg in Bruckmühl (were they looking for villages with similar names?)

and rode through south and south-western suburbs of Munich, in particular the "Fünfseenland". Some of the routes were scenic, in particular along the via Julia which is the original Roman street from Augsburg to Salzburg, with several kilometers of straight line. Others were astonishing, such as in Oberpfaffenhofen (what a name!) where one can find a rather larger 'special airport'.

Wikipedia tells me that the airport is used, inter alia, by FC Bayern München today and that there have been heavily contested plans to extent commercial usage.

We came across a herd of wild boars along the way and kept a safe distance.

With more than 6 hours moving on the bicycle, I had more than enough time to listen in full length to the most recent episode of "Die Neuen Zwanziger". I highly recommend this. It's more than five hours of very intelligent and up to date conversation between Wolfgang M. Schmitt und Stefan Schulz on recent political and technological topics. This month, the spectrum goes from surrogacy (Jens Spahn!) with, inter alia, a very critical analysis of Frauke Brosius Gersdorf's position, to China's AI and oil policy. Moonshot's Kimi K3, for example, gives room for 30 minutes (or more) of debate with very bad forecasts for the US AI industry, with dozens of links and excerpts and hints of many well informed and inspiring sources. Very well done.

It can be watched on YouTube

or (which is obviously much more appropriate while riding a bike) listened to via the podcatcher of your choice (or Spotify)

I spontaneously subscribed to their second podcast (Die Neuen Zwanziger - Salon) - that is behind a paywall (36 €/year) where they discuss noteworthy texts they have read.

One of my posts on Instagram that was (automatically) forwarded to Threads went somehow viral there.

Tuesday, Greifenbach-Memmingen (90 km, easy)

I would have expected much more bicycle-tourism here, we went mainly either in parallel or across a highway or via small and empty roads and didn't see many other people. Infrastructural issues in Germany became rather apparent again, it was hard to find an open restaurant, one of the supermarkets we found was permanently closed, the pizzeria we finally wanted to have lunch in didn't serve anything after 1.30 pm, etc.

We made s short stop in Landshut due to a minor problem with one of the brakes (thank you, Radsport Preiss!); this was again a positive experience as it's always impressive in what a friendly manner all bike-shops I had to visit in such situations yet help fast and efficiently and without making too much noise around it.

The route chosen by Komoot, funilly, led us to the next airport, Memmingen, that is used by low-fare airlines and quite busy, with some military aircraft close to the terminal.

I listened to the July-edition of Der Salon-Die Neuen Zwanziger during the ride and was very much convinced that subscribing to their podcast had been a good idea.

This is more than 4 hours of very intelligent conversation about books and other texts. An important part is dedicated to Theo Baker, How to Rule the World, which seems to be an excellent analysis of Stanford University and its interdependencies with Silicon valley - written by a 17 years old undergraduate student (!).

The author, Theo Baker, was pivotal in making Stanford's president Marc Tessier-Lavigne resign due to allegations of scientific malpractice against him. The New York times reported on this in 2023 and there's much more on the internet now due to the publication of Baker's book.

I was strongly reminded of the excellent book from Adrian Daub, Was das Valley herrschen nennt

that I had found in Buchhandlung Riedl (Thank you!) prior to my departure and had read with great interest. Here's an excerpt from this book that I had liked so much that I even took a photgraph of it.

Over the past five years, [the silicon valley] companies have stopped promising us the world and are instead content to dominate it.

Many of the other recommendations given in the podcast are interesting as well, I want to look, in particular into

I listened to a Decoder episode with the Bose-CEO, Lila Snyder as well.

This was very American - and a little boring with the exception of one short passage in which she was asked in how far Europe's Digital Markets Act had changed anything in Bose's position against platform providers like Samsung, Google and, in particular, Apple, all of which come with a whole world of aligned devices, including loudspeakers. She didn't answer the question.

Memmingen has a nice old town

and is, as I learned, one of the world's oldest places fundamental rights were formulated in (12 articles, 1525).

Memmingen's Stadtarchiv has an English version, Bavarikon a facsimile. To my shame, I can't remember anymore whether I learned about this during my education in German legal history.

Wednesday, Memmingen- Bregenz (75 km, easy)

It took us another 5 hours to get to our final destination. We went through the Allgäu with beautiful forests and some rivers. There were more cyclists on the road here; however, as we learned, Allgäu is closed on Wednesday. It took us (again) more than an hour or 20 km riding between 'I am hungry and would love to have some lunch' to 'Finally, this restaurant is open'. Even a supermarket was closed due to a 'system update' (for three days?!- must have been a big system).

I listened to the June-edition of Die Neuen Zwanziger-Salon which was - again - full with interesting hints and discussions on relevant books and other texts. To highlight just one: They hint to a text in The Verge 'The world’s first trillionaire is a killer/Elon Musk’s empire of wealth is built on suffering" dealing with Musk's devastating bustling around with DOGE - activities of which some say that they caused several hundred thousands of deaths.

In the evening I (technically) hosted the next episode of the Legal Literacy Project's podcast 'Recht freundlich' from the Airbnb

and tried for the first time on air the Hollyland Mark M2S microphone that I had purchased after the Bose disaster from Heiligenblut in February. I am probably the only person I know taking a mic-set with on a week long bicycle trip for one single sentence (less than 10 seconds) to be heard at the very beginning of a show.

Later that evening we had the incredible luck that Bodensee was presumably the nicest place in whole Austria to watch the solar eclipse - and the lake was literally in front of our Airbnb. We saw the crew from Servus TV broadcasting from where we just passed by.

We walked along the beach asking passersby every now and then whether they would allow us to take a look through their special sunglasses (that had been sold out everywhere, also in Bregenz). Later I could even take a photo where one can see the moon in front of the sun clearly.

Thursday, Rest Day

We went to St. Gallen, by train, which was a nice. The train going there, was, as usual, 40 minutes late 'wegen Verzögerungen im Betriebsausflug in einem Nachbarland' which is a very Austrian way to blame Deutsche Bahn. Bregenz is, probably, Austria's ugliest station (which is a competition hard to win in).

We saw interesting words I had never heard before,

interesting organisations

and visited the spectacular Cathedral of St.Gallen with its even more spectacular library and manuscript collection.

I read a lot about Saint Gall, and Irish monch St. Gallen is named after, and had a wonderful (not so) light lunch sitting under a tree after having visited a local cheesestore (Kündig).

On Friday, possibly while you are reading this, we go back home - by train,for very little costs, thanks to Klimaticket. It was a marvelous week. No breakdowns (thank you to Radhaus Singer, again, for checking the bicycles so well), nice (yet hot) weather, and so much to see in Bavaria and beyond that I hadn't known anything about before.

Have a wonderful week, I hope you can relax a little - and take care of yourself!

Kind regards

Nikolaus (Forgó)