The Dachshund or Sausage Dog Museum in Passau

If you are cycling the Donau Radweg (Danube Cycle Route) and pass through or start from Passau to cycle off to Vienna don't miss Blumen-Seppi's (Josef Küblbeck's) and Oliver Storz's Dackel (Dachshund) Museum. They share a very special passion for the Dachshund. Their love for their four-legged friends is so great that they have opened a Sausage Dog Museum next to Passau Cathedral. They have collected 250 Dackel (dachshund) exhibits. The short-legged dog can be admired in all its facets in 80 square metres. For example, on beer mugs, beer mats, as pretsels, postcards or Nymphenburg porcelain. 250 dachshund exhibits have already been collected by Blumen-Seppi and Oliver Storz.

E-Bike and Special Needs Bicycle Hire in the Danube Valley

The range of bicycles and tricycles available to rent in Germany is growing year by year. We were interested to come across the e-bike-verleih-bogen at a recent bicycle touring fair in Frankfurt recently. Bogen is a small settlement near Straubing on the Danube, north east of Munich. The company offers not only good quality e-bikes, but also a range of vehicles for people who have difficulty with bicycles due to physical impairments. This range includes    

• Electrically assisted Hand Bike with wheelchair seating (ProActiv NJ1)
• The VeloPlus wheelchair transport bike designed to transport people, who remain seated in their own wheelchair, by cycle.
• E-Trike therapy cycle for adults
• Tandem
  
• E-transport bike for children or of course for large dogs.

The company offers both bicycle/tricycle hire and touring holidays based in a hotel in Straubing with wheelchair access. The websites are in German: e-bike-verleih-bogen.de (Hire) and e-bike-radtouren.de (Holiday) but offer photographs of the various bikes/trikes on offer. There is always Google Translator, of course. If you are interested in hiring a bike or two and don't speak or write German just send the company an email in English. In our experience German companies always have somebody on their staff who understands English. 

 

Danube Cycle Way: Hire bikes for a one way trip between Passau and Vienna

We've just spent a few days in Austria cycling down the Tauern Cycle Path from 1100 or so m down to Passau on the Danube. As usual I took the chance to check out bike hire facilities on the way. In Passau we found the Fahrradklinik (www.fahrradklinik-passau.de) in the old town not far from the Danube Suspension Bridge.  This shop has an innovative bike hire policy and rents high quality bikes with puncture proof tyres and in part Rohloff 14 speed hub gears. These are better bikes than we have at home. The company also offers bike trailers, Ortlieb panniers, tandems and e-bikes. Prices seem reasonable to us starting at 13€ a day for one day hire and 70€ for a week for the normal bikes. E-bikes and tandems cost twice as much. The real clincher though is that the shop offers one way hire to the edge of Vienna for 29€ extra. The shop also offers repair and service of your steeds.

Fahrradklinik,
Bräugasse 10
94032 Passau
T: +49 (0) 851 33411

eMail: info@fahrradklinik-passau.de

There is a second shop in Passau in addition to Fahrradklinik offering one way hire bikes for the trip down the Danube as far as Vienna: Bikehaus. This organisation will pick up bikes from hotels and B&Bs along the route. Prices are much the same as those from Fahrradklinik: One Day: 13€, One Week 70€. Pickup prices are slighly higher than Fahrradklinik at 35€ per bike, but the company will pick up their bikes from any hotel or B&B en route between Passau and Vienna whereas Fahrradklinik uses one hotel near Vienna. The bicycles have only 8 gear Shimano hub gears rather than the fourteen speed Rohloffs offered by Fahrradklinik. The hire base is in part of the Hauptbahnhof (railway station) in Passau. Opening hours in season are surprisingly long for Germany: 9am to 1pm and 2pm to 6pm every day of the week including public holidays! The company also offers a repair service and sells spare parts, tyres, maps, panniers, clothing and drinks.

Bikehaus
Bahnhofstraße 29
94032 Passau
T:  +49 (0) 851 - 966 25 70
Mobile: +49 (0) 151 - 1283 4224
E-Mail:  info@bikehaus.de

Value for Money Cycle Tourists' Hotel in Passau on the Danube Cycle Route

By chance we found and stopped in the Rotel Inn in Passau recently. It's on the Danube Cycle Route. We can recommend it. The beds are 2.50m wide as are the rooms. The rooms are not ensuite but the facilities are across the corridor.  Fifty Euros for a double room or 30 Euros for a single plus six Euros each for breakfast. The hotel is clean, comfortable and the breakfast is value for money. It is five minutes from the Hauptbahnhof (main railway station). There is WLAN/WIFI if you ask for it at the desk.

Vienna as a cycling city

Earlier in the year we wrote: "We are hoping to spend some time in Vienna this summer and intend to hire bikes for a few days". We have just returned from Vienna and we must be honest: We failed to fulfil our intention of hiring a velocipede or two to make the odd trip out into the woods and fields around the city. The friends we met there are not cyclists and so we decided that we would shelve our cycling plans in the interests of harmony. However we made some enquiries and kept our eyes open.
The city has 1200km of cycleways, 30 000 bike park racks and over 100 City Bike pickup points. Obviously Vienna is not yet a cyclists' city like Amsterdam or Copenhagen, but it is well on its way. Without being unpatriotic it is farther down this road or cyclepath than London for example. However the city is not as flat as the two forerunners mentioned above.
There is an excellent cycle map available free of charge from the tourist office, which is much better than the general city plan also given out by this organisation. There is a navigation app for cyclists which can be downloaded from the city's cyclist website: www.fahrradwien.at (in German, of course). The website also offers a route planner, a list of events and hints for cycling in the city.
Public transport in the city is so good that I think if I l lived in Vienna I would be using this a good deal rather than cycling.
If you are visiting Vienna in the next few weeks, it is worth nipping into the MAK to see an exhibition of classic bicycles called "Tour du Monde". You need to be quick though it closes on 6 October 2013.

Neil discussing cycle routes in the city centre with two touring cyclists.

The Swabian Potato Cycle Route

There are a number of culinary bike tours in Europe and we hope to describe some of them over the next few months. We will kick off with the Swabian Potato Cycle Route. It is a 215 km long family-friendly loop south from the Danube in the four districts of Günzburg, Augsburg, Ulm and Neu Ulm through the Allgau Bavarian Swabia. It is hilly in parts.  Ten inns along the route have joined together and each one offers very innovative and interesting potato dishes.
It is a round trip, so you can simply enter where you want.
http://www.radtour-schwaben.de/ (In German, but the sketch map of the route is understandable whether you speak German or not,)

Cycle touring as a mainstream activity

We have written recently that cycling has become a normal feature of holidays offered by German companies. I was still surprised to read that Nicko Tours carry a fleet of hire bikes on one of their ships: MS Wolga travelling from Passau along the most famous section of the Danube cycleway. On most of the eight days of the trip cyclists can borrow a bike and cycle between 40 and 70 km along the cycleway. This would help work off the meals that one is offered on the ship. Of course, if it rains, you can sit in your cabin and watch the scenery going by at cyclists' speeds. The same company offers a return trip from Ruse to Vienna or Passau, so cyclists on the lower reaches of the Danube could possibly come back with the company by ship. Thee are a couple of snags: the price 1000 Euros plus and a week of sitting watching the scenery go by and eating large meals.