Week 35/2025
Se sabato c'è il sole posso andare al mare
Forgive me that this week's edition is very long but still has very little substantial information.
It's because I am on vacation and on my bike most of all days, so that this contains a rather detailed travel diary about our bicycle ride from Salzburg to Trieste and what I see and listen to - but not too much else. If you're not interested in this, simply scroll over the Look and Feel Section and finish directly with Daisy. Thank you.
NSFW
This week's song is from an Italian singer/songwriter, Giuseppe Peveri, stage name: Dente - Cosa devo fare.
The song fits well to a summer ride in Italy. It's also on YouTube.
Retrospect
#arsboni
The Vienna Legal Literacy Project did an episode on child care and custody with family judge and Juridikum-author Thersia Angerer as interviewee.
Surveillance
As Der Standard reports, the minister of the interior's internal regulation is not published yet and will presumably not be published in full at all.
Prospect
LLP-Podcast
On Wednesday, September 27, at 19.00 CET, LLP's podcast's 10th episode will be streamed.
#arsboni
On Thursday, August 28, at 10.00 I will have the pleasure to talk with Julia Krickl from ÖIAT about her very relevant study on trusted flagging in Austria
The study was covered, inter alia, in ORF and Der Standard.
Look and Feel
Hitler's Religion
Thanks to the recommended podcast on Peter Thiel and his weird theological beliefs,
I listened to an OE1-feature on Hitler's theology with interest.
„Ich kämpfe für das Werk des Herrn!“
It's based on an interesting book I am therefore currently reading (available in electronic format at UNIVIE's library).
The author, Rainer Bucher, is, as I learned, also the host of a theologial podcast
I found this thanks to a LinkedIn-comment from Verena Ringler. I have known Verna better since her great presentation at Sommerdiskurs in Strobl.
From Salzburg to Trieste
As mentioned last week and above, Felix and I are currently on a bicycle tour from Salzburg to Trieste. We do it in a rather luxurious variant which means that we stay in hotels overnight and go into restaurants to eat. It's a very varied way of travelling and, as a bonus, I can listen to music or podcasts or audiobooks almost all day (with open ear headphones so that I do hear the traffic and my surrounding).
Here's a short diary and "reading list".
Day 1
Salzburg - Hallein - Werfen - Bischofshofen - St. Johann
70 km, 800 m elevation gain, rather difficult
We went from Vienna to Salzburg by Westbahn which is, still, sorry to say, in every detail better than OEBB (comfort, reliability, easier with the bikes, friendliness). Temperatures were summer like, but much cooler than in Vienna. I learned during lunch in Hallein from Wikipedia, that Hallein is a city with a strong left majority, read about salt production and enjoyed the ride along beautiful Salzach on Tauernradweg. Some parts are beautiful, others not so much as on rides in parallel to the federal road (but, at least, most times not directly on a car lane so that it's relatively safe).
A last minute booking lead us into Panorama Hotel Weitenmoos that, indeed, has a nice panorama, but is in the middle of a rather artificial sikiing village ("Alpendorf") 300 m (or so) above St. Johann so that the day ended with a rather annoying climb that we hadn't anticipated. But the panorama!
Most of the day I listened to a recent episode of the very nice Zeit-Podcast "Alles gesagt" with Wim Wenders who turns 80 this year. The podcast's idea is to allow really, really long conversations (the one with Armin Wolf, also very nice, lasts 6 hours and 52 minutes) allowing - somehow - to look behind curtains as nobody can act and hide everything for such a long time. Wenders is a very interesting personality and shares lots of anecdotes about himself, his films and some of his friends/colleagues (such as Ry Cooder, Nastassja Kinsky, Peter Handke, Dennis Hopper, etc.).
I currently have heard 5 hours and it's worth it. It reminds me of many films I saw and liked many years ago (such as Alice in the Cities, Summer in the City, but also, more recently, Perfect Days]).
Day 2
St. Johann - Bad Gastein - Mallnitz - Spittal/Drau
90 km, 1.100 m elevation gain, rather difficult
From Alpendorf, quite a steep decent later (the 300 m we had climbed the day before), we made our way up again to Bad Gastein which was, in parts, not easy (14 % elevation) and not nice (in particular a rather long tunnel, parallel to the federal road with heavytraffic), but over all ok.
It's astonishing how intensely all Western Austria seems to be enveloped in a rural cloud of fragrance - a mixture of hay and cow dung - in (late) summer. You drive through 50 km of cowshed.
Bad Gastein itself, is quite obviously still struggling with economic "challenges", but the waterfall in the center is just as beautiful and dramatic as ever.
From Böckstein we took the Tauern Motorail to Mallnitz which was a good idea as it brought us quickly and conveniently to Carinthia. There's a seperate coach for bikes with every train in summer so that there was more than enough space.
From there it was another 40 km to Spittal/Drau. The city has a campus of the University for Applied Sciences Kärnten which is probably the reason why there's a Kolping house here where we can stay overnight. It's a student residence with important advantages: washing machine, even a dryer and very decent internet.
I listened to the rest of the Wim Wenders interview, again with joy. After 5 1/2 hours or so they also talk abot Notebook_on_Cities_and_Clothes which is a film that had a lot of influence on me and introduced me to Yohji Yamamoto .
I also heard lots of music and an interesting podcast episode from Übermedien in which Ingrid Brodnig speaks about the (media) campaign against Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf.
In Spittal, we saw Porcia castle (from outside) which is nice. I learned that "Team Kärnten"'s Gerhard Köfer is the mayor. And had the impression that the village clearly faces economic (and cultural) challenges.
Day 3
Spittal/Drau - Villach - Tarvisio
75 km, 450 m elevation gain, easy
This was more of a rest day. After a quick breakfast in Stadtcafe Spittal/Drau (credit cards only above 25 €) and an ice coffee in Gelateria Candolini in Villach (no credit card) and a nice ride along Drau and Gail
we managed to transit the boarder at Tarvis (no issue with any card since then, Coffee 1.40 €) and checked in at Hotel Il Cervo in Tarvis early afternoon.
Everytime I cross the boarder I am astonished how culturally different everything becomes so instantly, only a few minutes bicycle ride ride away. The dinner, a self service buffet in a random hotel, for example, with grandmas and families and babies and tap water and noise and chaos, was better (and significantly cheaper) than in most of Austria's fanciest Italien restaurants (the only downside: vegetarian means "fish is a vegetable" here, if one doesn't insist).
There's plenty of e-bike tourism on the trail which is sometimes a little akward as hords of elderly men and women in sandals and bicycles that look like tanks appear - often in groups, chatting, but developing remarkable speed when it goes uphill . The other group of athlets appearing frequently are the race bikers in fancy clothes and with sunglasses that look more expensive than my whole bike and whose bikes sound like tanks (or machine guns) when in idle mode. I get it that both groups do just a different sport and a different way of travelling than we 😄. And I am also already quite good in making a typical headmove checking whether there's a battery attached when I am overtaken.
I listened to two extraordinary podcast episodes. The first one is with Steady-founder Sebastian Esser about the AI-disruption just happening in European (German) media. The analysis is very precise and explains clearly why companies such as Google are at risk to be put out of the markets and how companies like Cloudflare gain power.
The second is a very nice and very personal conversation with David Remnick, editor at The New Yorker (since 1998). This is a just brilliant 2 1/2 hours talk about journalism, Trump, the internet, Bob Dylan, success and so on. I felt really sorry that it ends very abruptly - possibly because Remnick said the code word in error.
Day 4
Tarvisio - Udine
100 km, 200 m elevation gain, 4/5 easy, 1/5 difficult
We started from Tarviso on a kind of highway for bicycles - the Alpe Adria Cycle Path that is a former railway line. It's constantly going downhill in a beautiful landscape. Refreshments were provided during the trip.
It's obviosly and with good reasons a very popular route so that one sees many race bikes and even more e-bikes, many of them also going into the opposite direction - uphill. One of my learnings this time is that a whole touristic sector has evolved for people wishing to ride in groups of 20 or so, with a guide wearing a security west at the beginning and another one at the end checking that nobody gets lost.
After 50 km or so the mountains disappear and lowland opens, with clearly fewer bikers. We had a nice rest in a pizzeria at a shopping center on the way (excellent Roman style Pizza Salami, 9.50 €).
Everything was easy, until approximately 20 km before Udine when Komoot (the sports and navigation app I am using and that works well, over all) once again decided that deep in our hearts we are ambitious mountain bikers so that it sent us on a sometimes jungle-like single trail through a forrest.
Felix found the appropriate video on this behavior on YouTube (the video comments are funny too and show that we are not alone with this problem).
We managed, somehow, to get through th eterrain without a fall or a tire failure and landed in a nice, centrally located hotel with a bike garage and, again, washing machine and dryer in Udine. The situation in the garage was, again, a minority report for regular bikes.
I listened to three podcasts during the day, all 3 of them worth the time.
First, I did som bingehearing of The New Yorker's Radio hour as I wanted to learn more about and from David Remnick.
I liked, in particular
and
Then I switched to Lex Fridman and listened to
and then to
The one with Keyu Jin gives a remarkably nuanced picture of modern Chinese politics and economics. The last, with Google CEO Sundar Pichai, draws a very interesting picture of this personality coming from a poor Indian houshold without fluent water supply, making his way to the top of Google trying to navigate the company through the AI disruption.
Both are very much worth being listened, although it's a pity that Fridman is very good in establishing a very relaxed talking athmosphere but not so good in asking critical questions so that both interviewees manage to paint their picture in very nice colors.
Day 5
Udine - Trieste
80 km, 200 m elevation gain, easy but not always pleasant
Today was a mixed day. On the one hand, the biketour per se was rather easy, going mostly downhill with no major elevation, 20 km along the coast. On the other hand it was a little challenging. First, because of some rain (not too long, not too hard, nothing serious, but enought to make us enter a tiny Tabacchi somewhere full with elderly men drinking their morning glass of wine and not amused about us bringing all the wetness and unrest into the cosy athmosphere). Second, because 20 km or so were along major federal roads without real bikelanes which is not very pleasent, in particular in combination with rain and the Italian way to drive cars.
On our way we came across and visited Redipuglia and the Austro-Hungarian cemetery of Fogliano Redipuglia. I hadn't visted this place before - it's gigantic and probably larger than any war memorial I had ever seen (including those in Washington).
We managed to arrive safely in Trieste in the early afternoon and will make use now of our 1-2 days safety buffers that we didn't need - before returing by train on Saturday. Trieste is a marvelous city.
I spent the last day listening to the audiotapes of Hermann Göring's statements in the Nuremberg trial 1946 that I hadn't heard before. It brings a lot of historical details but it's also astonishing how much he "plays by the rules" of the Court and almost litterally says, inter alia, that the only bad anti-Semite in the Nazi-establishment was Goebbels - but neither Hitler nor him.
It's interesting to hear this, but I don't know whether I like the audiobook, though, as it abstains almost completly from any contextualisation or commentary and hides the prosecution so that Göring gets the full stage and can develop his narrative without any limitation.
Over all, it was, again, a wonderful journey with lots of different impressions and views and learnings. Felix was a marvelous companion. I am very grateful that, again, thanks to Raimund Singer's (Radhaus Singer) excellent technical service not the tiniest issue happened with both bikes.
I would very much recommend the tour - one sees so much more than with any other means of transport, the landscape is marvelous, one can get as many excellent Pizzas as evere wanted on the way and it helps resetting the mind.
Daisy
is the most relaxed passenger one can imagine; not on a bike (didn't try that yet), but in a car.
Have a wonderful week!
Kind regards
Nikolaus (Forgó)
