Last night we were able to keep the tent off the ground on a wooden platform of a cattle shed. As a result, we are less bothered by the dew and the cold of the ground.
In the morning everything around us is white. At night it was -4 degrees Celsius. The beautiful ice crystals lie on the canvas and on our bicycles. Even though we are really cold, we enjoy this moment.
Fortunately it is a sunny day. We take a break in the sun to have breakfast, warm up and hang out our stuff to dry.
We continue cycling and notice a big difference between places where the sun has not yet shone and is already shining. We cycle along a beautiful light blue fast flowing river called ‘Inn’ on a nice bike path. Suddenly my bike slides out from under me. I hit the ground and my bike slides a bit further. I lie on my stomach and try to turn around carefully. I can’t breathe and lie down for a while to catch my breath. Q wants me to get off the ground because it’s ice cold but I can’t. The moment I catch my breath again, I notice that my wrist does not look good at all. I sit up and Q places a sit pad under my buttocks. After trying to talk to me to make a plan Q calls the ambulance because we are still too far from a hospital. While waiting, I become pale and nauseous. It feels like a decade for the ambulance to arrive. While we wait Q is packing some important stuff out of the panniers.
The ambulance arrived. From there everything went really quick.
My wrist is broken. They had to straighten the bone and when my wrist was in plaster we took a taxi to a hotel. We immediately started planning the way home.
The next day the taxi driver from yesterday picks us up with a van and drives us to the place where I fell to pick up the bikes. All bags and one of the bicycles fit in the van and Q cycles to the nearest station. We made an appointment at this station with Jan and Anita. The people we met at the campsite. They pick up our bicycle bags to take to the Netherlands so that we only have to take the bicycles with us. We take the train to Innsbruck.
Once in Innsbruck, we plan the rest of our trip home. We sleep one more night in a hotel in the centre and go home the next day by train. We have to change trains a lot and we ended up on the road for 15 hours.
This was it for now. We only just started and are being ripped out of a magnificent journey. There’s nothing we can do about it. We take it as it is. I’m going to rehabilitate, we’re going to get back to work and soon make plans for the sequel. Our adventure is far from over!!
