Change of transport

Woke to a light rain and quickly packed my gear. The Hungarians were still asleep in their enormous tent. The rain remained light and I was wearing rain gear and all the packs were covered, so it was not so bad. Was looking for a café but not finding anything. Usually I like to stop within the first hour for a coffee. It is nice to ride for a while then find a comfortable place to sit, read the paper or watch a small town come to life. The few towns I passed were not coming to life at all and had no cafes for that matter, so carried on down the road. A few hours into it I came to a small town with a very big monastery situated directly on the river. There was nothing going in the town and I was not expecting to find what I was looking for. The bike trail runs just between the wall of the monastery and the river and as I passed it seemed that all was quiet. Then I turned the corner into the courtyard of the monastery and found it full of people, other cyclists, a café and beer-garden. It was as if all the people I had not seen in the last two hours were here. Sat at a long table under an awning, ordered coffee and took a look around. 

There is a ferry boat service that comes from the next major town down the river to this monastery and that explains all the people. They had arrived by boat from downriver to visit the monastery and church and then to later return downriver by boat. I received advice that the next stretch of the river should be done by boat in order to experience the rock formations along the river. I sat back down to a beer brewed in the monastery and a pretzel and considered my options. In order to complete this trip I have set a tight budget and the beer, pretzel and ferry boat combination would ruin the budget for the next days. Nonetheless, in order experience all that is on offer, one does need to spend some money. The monks brew the beer here, so I had to try it, and a beer in Bavaria must be consumed with a pretzel, and then the boat journey also sounded good. I will blow the budget now and see how to manage later. An hour later I was disembarking from an indeed very nice, but short boat ride down the Danube.