Day 89, Friday, November 22, 2019
You may wonder why we went to Verazdin, seeing as there really wasn’t all that much to see or do there? It has to do with something called the Schengen Agreement. The Schengen Area is an area with 26 European countries that have officially abolished all passport and other types of border control at their mutual borders.
The catch is that you can only stay 90 days in these Schengen Countries once every six months. Our holiday is 92 days, so we needed to go to a country that was not part of the Schengen Agreement so that we would not have any problems.
Most people we have spoken to don’t know anything about this rule…but then most people don’t spend more than 90 days on holidays in a six month period!
However, there are going to be changes to travelling in Schengen countries that will affect anyone travelling to Europe. “World travelers privileged with visa-free entry to the Schengen member states will also be affected in the near future from recent changes that the EU has decided to implement. The most important change is that as of January 2021, travelers will need to apply for an online authorization, and wait for its approval before heading to the EU.”
It is very foggy when we start our drive to Vienna, only we soon realize that it is smog, not fog! It smells awful and bothered my eyes and chest.
It clears up for a bit but then we drive back into the band of smog that stretches across the countryside. We have never seen anything quite like this before.
One of the many small villages in Croatia. Most of these villages only have one row of houses along the highway, no side streets at all. Notice the pretty yellow and purple chrysanthemums growing along the fence. We saw lots of these flowers along the way.
One fairly long stretch of the road has a shrine every 300 to 500 metres, and each one had fresh flowers placed in front of it.
Another little village. We don’t see many people about and think that they probably have a hard time keeping people from moving to bigger urban centres.
The highway mainly passes through farmland, and I quite like all the trees along the side of the road.
We finally get a bit of sunshine. There are winter crops planted which are just beginning to grow that are many different shades of green.
We get to Bratislava about 3:00 pm, return our rental car and catch the Flixbus one last time back to our apartment in Vienna. We are surprised how quickly it gets dark now. This is photo taken on the bus just after 4:30pm.
We catch an Uber from the Main Bus Depot. Twenty euros well spent. We are dropped off at our apartment door, which is the same apartment we had a couple weeks ago in Vienna. It almost feels like coming home. In three more sleeps we will really be home.
It is certainly the tiniest book I have ever seen.
Our apartment is the second from the bottom balcony on the left side of the photo. The end of our street is countryside.
I took a peek into the empty apartment building across the street. One of the empty store fronts on the ground floor looked like someone might have once stayed there. I was startled when a wild cat gave a loud yowl and ran past me to get out the door. I decided maybe I better not explore any further!
I saw a really neat way to cut open a pomegranate on the internet. I bought one to give it a try.
Firt cutoff the blossom end by making four cuts and pulling the piece out. I was surprised how easily it came out.
Next slice down the length of the pomegranate wherever there is a membrane.
And presto, pull the pieces apart. It worked really well. This was my big adventure for the day.
with not a lot of room…
but we are soon on some wider roads…
and crossing the Danube as we start a four hour drive to Verazdin, Croatia. 
The Hungarian countryside is much like back home in Alberta.
At the border they checkout our passports and the car registration, then let us pass.
We arrive at 
Here is another view across the street from our apartment . There is a small grocery store on the corner, but not much else close by.
I liked this one of the young man with the bandaged nose.
Our drive to Vienna was long and uneventful. We stayed on the freeway and it still took us about 5 1/2 hours. We had to wait about an hour for our Airbnb host to meet us, but we found a parking space just outside the apartment and our car was warm, so it wasn’t too bad. It took forever to figure out how to pay for street parking but we finally sorted it out. We take our rental car back tomorrow so we just need parking for one night.
On the way to say goodbye to my friends the sheep I snapped a few more photos of the farm buildings. There were certainly lots of interesting things to see here.
Only the young fellow destined for the table came up to see me today. The other two were playing shy.
This shows how long the front of the house is. The attic full of stuff ran almost the whole length of it. On the far end was the smaller attic above the two bedrooms in the auntie’s house.
Part of the route to St. Florian Monastery, which is our next stop, is a very narrow road through some woods.
The monastery is very large. The stretch of red roof from the church to the front corner is 200 metres long. It covers a corridor that runs its length.
This is the fountain in the middle of the large courtyard.
I am so excited…we actually get to go into a library. This library has 150,000 books, 35,000 of which are in this one room. They are mainly books on Religion and History.
You can see the bookcase door that opens to another room. The spiral staircase to the second floor is in that room. There are many more rooms full of books but we only get to visit this one. We are told that this library is available for the public to use. Wish I lived closer!
I love the library ‘ladders’ used ot reach books on high shelves. Heck, I pretty much love everything about this library!
Later on during the tour we see this photo of Adolph Hiltler standing in the same place we had just stood. It is a strange thought…that we were someplace that he was.
Of course this library also has a magnificent ceiling.
This is why I end up with a sore neck after sightseeing!
Our guide pointed out some of the many fossils that are in the marble on the floors and walls. I never thought of marble as being a stone the came from ancient oceans. The big ammonite was on the fireplace hearth, notice the toe of a shoe in the corner for scale.
One of the many very ornate carved wooden doors in the monastery.
The Monastery church is grand. Lots of carved white stone and dark carved woodwork.
The altar is decorated with bouquets of sunflowers.
We have never seen drapery carved in stone in a church before. Everything in this church looks so very well preserved, there are no broken or dirty bits. In fact everywhere in this monastery is very well taken care of. We wonder where the money to maintain a place this large comes from. 
The church organ was built in 1774 and it is one of the largest working organs in Austria. It is known as the Bruckner Organ as it was played by composer and organist Anton Bruckner. He had been a choir boy at the monastery, and he was the church organist, between 1848 and 1855.
I do not know much about classical music so did not know anything about Anton Bruckner. He was a famous Austrian composer, organist, and music theorist best known for his symphonies and masses. On the floor directly below the organ is a memorial plaque and …
in the crypt directly below this plaque is his sarcophagus. His wish was to be buried here at St. Florian Monastery even though he lived and died in Vienna.
Yes, those are bones behind the sarcophagus, the bones of over 6,000 people, dating back to the 4th century. It is thought that the bones of St. Florian could possibly be in here. 
A few more pictures of the 700 year old crypt which is still used today as a burial place for the monastery monks. The windows open to outside, there is no glass. I wonder if this was so decomposing bodies were ventilated?
We visit twelve guest rooms in the monastery. These rooms have not been used since the mid 18th century and have been preserved as a museum. These elaborately decorated rooms were reserved for royalty who might visit the monastery. These doorways connect all the rooms.
The red bedroom was reserved for Pope Pius VI, although he only spent one night here.
The walls and chairs in this room are covered in matching tapestries. There is a big masonry stove in each of these rooms.
Each room is lavishly decorated. 
The last two rooms are a shrine to Anton Bruckner. The photo shows him in his bed in his Vienna apartment. He died in this bed, which is now on display here along with his other furniture.
Remember those big masonry stoves in the royal apartments? These metal doors in the hallway open to the inside of the stoves. This is how the fires in the stoves were cared for by servants without bothering the apartment occupants.
There are thirty monks at this monastery. Only thirteen live here full time, the rest live in neighbouring parishes. Over the last 950 years the monastery had 108 monks at its peak and only three at its lowest. I am told that thirty monks is quite good ‘these days’. There is one young monk, several in their fifties and sixties and the rest are older. We see this monk as we are leaving and assume he is the one young one.
The cemetery beside the church is the prettiest, most well cared for one we have ever visited.
As we drive towards Salzburg we pass several huge piles of sugar beets in the fields. Austria grows more than 3 million tonnes of sugar beets every year.
Finally we find a safe place to pull off the road so I can get a photo of one of the fields of pumpkins we have seen along the way.
We make a quick stop at Kremsmunster Monastery but it can only be visited by guided tours and we don’t have time. The church is open and it is the only one we have seen that has tapestries wrapped around its pillars.
Back on the road, from a distance, I thought this was another field of pumpkins or maybe squash, but they are sunflowers.
Good thing the sun wasn’t shining or I would have wanted to stay much longer and take many more photos. What a beautiful sight it was to see so many gorgeous sunflowers.
On our way in to Linz we see this ‘green’ apartment. Lots of gardeners must live here.
It took some time to find the bike rental company. They weren’t easy to locate. We pass this big mural during our search.
I thought these bikes were quite interesting. They fold up compactly.
We start out on our bike trip along the Danube. Bob wants dot take my photo while I was still in one piece!
There are some great views along the way…
and some wooded trails. I did quite well until the killer hedge tried to get me…and then there was the vortex railing! If I got too close it tried to suck me in!
Bob left me at a coffee shop to rest and sketch and he went a bit further down the river, crossed a bridge, and then returned on this strange looking ferry. 
These flowers are much like the anenomes we grow at home only much larger.
We see the long barge steaming down the river.
This curious mural is on a building near the café where I waited for Bob.
Our selfie along the Danube.
I need a few breaks on the ride home, so a photo is a good excuse for little rest 😉
These river cruise boats remind us of our cruise on the Nile, where the cruise ships were lined up 6 or 7 deep along the shore. Passengers had to walk through all the ships, sometimes walking across the water on a narrow board between the ships, to get to shore.
This wasp was really big!
We take our bikes back. They are in a building which is an incubation centre for start-ups. Looks like these steps are a place to relax, or even snooze. 
We see two souped up go-carts being wheeled into the building.
I am happily surprised to discover Gerstäcker, a huge art store, in this building. After our ride I spend at least an hour exploring and find some new drawing pencils, and two really nice hardcover Hahnemühle Sketchbooks, a 10″ square and a 8.5″ x 12″ rectangular one. They were really reasonably priced too! I couldn’t resist even though my suitcase will be a lot heavier.
Nearby is an industrial area called Mural Harbor. Artists from over 25 nations created more than 100 works of art on warehouse buildings.
The date 1705 is carved in the ceiling beam, but Peter tells us that the cottage is actually 400 years old and was originally a fisherman’s cottage. He says this is a typical farmhouse. I never got a chance to ask him if the original fisherman’s house was always this big, or was it added on to over the years? 
I would love to be able to poke about in this attic! There are spinning wheels, a sewing machine, old chests and trunks, baskets, containers of all sorts, and lots of boxes filled with who knows what?
The entry area between our apartment (which used to be a stable), and the living quarters has this big metal door behind the stool. Upstairs is another enormous attic that runs the length of the building.
Here there are even more interesting things: old fishing nets, more chests and trunks, old baskets and wooden buckets and vats, and all sorts of interesting things that have probably been there many years. Now I look at all the houses we drive by and wonder what is up in those attics! I wonder what treasures might be hidden away in all these old houses?
This is only some of the huge woodpile Peter has cut and stacked, ready for the winter. We think that the air quality here must be very poor in the winter with all the wood burning that takes place. Most of the houses around here have enormous piles of stacked wood just like this.
I went out to pick a few apples to cook for dessert and noticed a pear tree. Most of the pears had fallen and weren’t good to eat but this one pear had landed on a branch and was sitting balanced there, just out of my reach!.
One more view out a pretty window. Bob went for another bike ride this afternoon and I did a bit of blogging and relaxing. We are both finding it a nice change staying in the country. It is so quiet and peaceful. We have enjoyed our time in the cities, but this is a relaxing break from that routine.
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