Bratislava – Day 14 – And Hungary

I arose early today, and it was too cool to eat breakfast outside, and because I was in the dining room earlier than usual I found it very busy.

I was out of the hotel by 8:45 AM. The goal today was to ride from Slovakia to Hungary, visit the Danubiana Art museum, and ride across the Floodplain Bridge, Bratislava‘s newest, and longest bridge.

This short bi-directional cycling path is one of the best on a city street in the core of Bratislava. It has a lot of work to do to separate cycling within the built-up areas of the city, but, the infrastructure that I experienced today outside of the built-up areas was awe inspiring.

I found the detour signs to get me over the Apollo bridge today without riding on the road for the first hundred meters. I’m not sure how I overlooked them last week. I noticed a little weather station on it today.

Much of the day today I rode on EuroVelo Route 6. It runs from the Atlantic coast of France to the Black Sea. The website is an amazing resource which I want to explore more when I get home.

My turn-around point is Rajka, Hungary. My route is a rough figure 8. This was my first spotting of Rajka on a wayfinding sign.

I’ve been noticing these posts in various places, close to the river, and wondering what they are. It occurred to me as I rode past this one today that it is a flood gauge. Later in the day, I saw this submerged one which confirmed my speculation. I also saw ones on an incline with which I am familiar from the Ottawa River flood gauges.

EuroVelo Route 6 is a wide, smooth path, far from roads, and with bright, beautiful views, excellent wayfinding, and excellent connections. It runs down both sides of the Danube or its tributaries, with frequent bridges to cross from one side to another.

I encountered this bike counter that indicated 211 cyclists had already gone past this point at 9:20 this morning, and over 97,000 so far this year.

This was an underpass to get under the highway to go to a small village.

In many places, the path was not only in both sides of the river, but twinned, even on the one side with cyclists on the right and pedestrians on the left.

There were frequently places adjacent to the path where one could stop for meals or coffee. There were no public bathrooms, but typically when one pays for a meal one can use the bathroom here, but in public bathrooms, one needs to pay about $1.25.

At major intersections between the paths, these mirrors were mounted to prevent collisions.

This is under the Floodplain Bridge. On my way south I went under it. On my way back I crossed it.

Here you can see a crossing of the river to the path on the other side.

I read about Rusovce Mansion on Atlas Obscura so recognized it when by chance it was in my route. It was “constructed between 1840 and 1906. Part of the foundation of the building dates back to the 16th-century. Several royal families once called the mansion home prior to World War II. During the conflict, the mansion was used by Nazi SS officers.”

I planned this route before we came on the trip, but redid it last night using the OpenStreetMaps cycling layer. I wanted to do a loop to Rajka so planned to leave the Danube Cyclepath, and travel along the road, and then return on the path. When I got to the road, and saw the traffic and speed limit of 80, and lack of shoulders, I decided it wasn’t a good idea. I was able to look at the heat map, which shows where cyclists ride, and it looked like they do not ride on this section of road. So I turned back and went on the Cyclepath for another kilometre and then branched off into the small town of Rusovce where I rejoined the road.

The speed limit was lower through the town, and the traffic lighter. As I got to the south end of town, I saw this amazing piece of infrastructure and rode over to it only to have it end 100 m later, and put me back on the busy road.

However, from this point, there were two lanes going south, and all of the cars changed lanes to pass me. It took me almost 2 hours to get to the “no more Bratislava” sign and only a couple minutes more to get to the border.

20 minutes later, I reached my turnaround point. I had a significant headwind going south of 24-36kph that turned into a lovely, 26 to 39kph tailwind on my return. The whole route was essentially flat other than the climbs up over the bridges.

Unknown to me, the place I had chosen to turn around was a bar, but did have an espresso machine. No one there spoke English. All the other customers were men in their 60s and 70s and there were lots of bikes.

I was very happy to take advantage of the facilities as I was feeling rather like the woman in the picture.

Rajka has a population of less than 3000, but has a phenomenal amount of cycling infrastructure for s place with very few cars, and no busy roads, and most of the people I observed were walking or riding. I only encountered a handful of cars. It was a very quiet place.

They had a pleasant little town square.

The cycling infrastructure ended at the edge of the village, but I didn’t encounter any cars on the road I continued along.

Shortly I came to a sign, indicating the way back to EuroVelo Route 6, and another cycling route called SacraVelo. It is a bike pilgrimage of 648 km in length and offers 209 sacred sites.

Back on the pathway, it wasn’t long before I came to the large dam across the Danube, where the Danubiana Art Museum is located. I hadn’t planned to go in, but had expected to be able to access the grounds to sit and have my lunch, but because it is on a pier of land jutting off the damn, and many of the exhibits are outdoors, you have to pay to go into the museum to see the outdoor exhibits. I decided to leave it for a less beautiful day on a possible future trip.

A surf and kayak school have been set up with artificial rapids part way across the dam. There are two different courses. It looks fabulous. And once you get to the bottom, you can paddle around to the left to take out and carry your boat up to the top and come down again. There are stands for viewing. There was a sign advertising European youth championships this summer. There is a hotel and campground, restaurant, outdoor dining, pool, and playground. I would have loved to have tried this back when I was kayaking regularly.

I left the dam and continued north.

I sat on this little crossing for my lunch of soft boiled eggs and banana smuggled out of the dining room this morning.

This was one of the regular crossings. This is a tributary of the Danube at this point with paths on both sides.

When I got back to the Floodplain Bridge, I crossed the bridge over the tributary and wound my way up onto the bridge. This bridge opened in September 2021. It consists of multiple bridges, connecting multiple arms of the Danube river and carries motorway traffic. It is 2.9 km long and 35 m wide. There are cycling paths on both sides. Unlike some of the other bridges it doesn’t have stairs as well as ramps.

The views were incredible.

And the bridge itself was a mind-boggling at 2.9 km long with these emergency exit doors every few hundred meters.

These paths run parallel to the ones that I was on prior to climbing the bridge.

The scale of this active transportation bridge was phenomenal. Look at how small the cyclist is compared to the bridge.

A switchback ramp, rather than a spiral, led down off the bridge.

This beautiful new path separated bi-directional cycling and pedestrians with a tactile strip, and ran back under the bridge.

Then I turned north again, and rode this path most of the way back into the built up area of Bratislava.

In this area, they have an elevated pipeline running behind these homes, and over the road. The municipal bus system runs almost to the Hungarian border. There’s a bus stop here on the left.

I passed this vehicle twice before, and wanted to take a picture with my bike, but I was wearing shorts on those days, and the grass was knee length. Today I had long cycling tights on and socks, and someone had cut the grass. Serendipity.

This is a tree lined cycling path near the hotel, relatively short, I think, but I haven’t explored it yet. I plan to do so on Friday. Note the garbage can angled so that cyclist can throw something out without even stopping.

My ride was 62 km today. I stowed the bike in the luggage room again and headed up for a quick shower and then out for coffee.

There’s an adorable coffee shop in the elevated park which we can see from our hotel room window. Today was the perfect day to try out. I ordered latte and cheesecake and sat on the roof on a beanbag chair.

We met a colleague and friend of Michael’s for dinner at Cierny Pes. We had to duck slightly to go into the door and down a few steps to this basement bar.

Jon has also done quite a bit of cycling in the area and recommended a town in Austria that I will be passing through tomorrow on my way back from Vienna.

I left early to let them talk shop and came back on the tram to write my blog and get an earlier night. I’ll be taking the train to Vienna in the morning and riding back.