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Thursday, August 29th - Soboth to Villach - 10,089 km
The morning sky has broken clouds and the air is fresh high up on the mountain. I am up by 8 and eating breakfast half an hour earlier. I am anxious to get going, to
push on towards Klagenfurt, since there is nothing up here but the fresh air, but of course Jochen and I must wait for Mathias to get up. The manager of the hostel is a very nice guy, very accommodating, and he saves breakfast for him. Breakfast includes a boiled egg this morning.
I busy myself writing postcards. I am not sure why I bother as very few people I have written to have bothered to answer. I have been sending weekly updates to my employer, the City of Toronto, sending a postcard to a different member of the department every week. I don't expect cards back from them but I should be getting at least half a dozen at every mailing point instead of just one or two. The next
Poste Restante address is in Venice, so I will see how that goes.
Mathias is finally up after 11 and he's ready to roll sometime around 12:30. I keep telling myself that he is fun and that it is better cycling with him and Jochen than cycling alone, but I am a bit frustrated to say the least. The mountain scenery makes it easy to forgive everything though. The road stays relatively level for the first few kilometres until we pass Stausee Soboth, a nearby mountain lake. Then it begins to climb until we are almost at 1400 m. Here the fun begins as we drop down 1050 m to get to the Drau River, the border of Austrian and Slovenia.
We stay on the Austrian side and follow the north side of the steep-sided Drau River valley for 15 km. Then the landscape opens up to a broad rolling valley and our road
swings north, away from the river. At the town of Volkermarkt, we move closer to the river again, which at this point has become a lake called the Volkermarkter Stausee. Past the town we get some 
pleasant views over the long, narrow lake from 100 m above. Then the road moves away from the river again as we continue west.
We stay fairly closely together, never getting more than 100 m or so ahead or behind. Jochen and Mathias believe in cycling together, unlike my former companion
Mike. But our late start has its toll. Today we are covering more than 125 km and there isn’t enough time to do that between 1 and 6 pm. Twenty-five kilometres beyond Volkermarkt, we reach the only city on today’s route, Klagenfurt, which has about 90,000 people.
It is already past 6pm when we enter the city and Mathias wants to push on to Villach, another 45 km further west, which means riding into the night. I have the energy, because 125 km is no longer a 
difficult stretch for me, but we are entering a mountainous area and I have been really interested in seeing the scenery. I gripe about this to Mathias, but he is from south Germany and not too interested in familiar scenery. It’s mostly cloudy anyway, he says to console me.
The last pictures I can take are beside Worthersee, the long lake immediately west of Klagenfurt. We are following a winding road above the south shore of the lake. The land is mostly dark now, with the sky reflecting on the water as though the
light was coming from the lake itself. At the hamlet of Maria Worth, on a small romantic promontory jutting out into the lake, there is a late-Gothic church begging to be adored. Beyond this point, it is too dark to take more pictures.
There are two more hours of cycling as the glow in the sky fades to black. I am totally dependent on Mathias and Jochen staying close in front and behind me now, as I have not brought good lights for night cycling. Riding in the dark is slower and
more dangerous. It is foolish, I tell myself, but I don’t get too worked up about it. I worry that the youth hostel will be full when we get there, or that the office will be, which will be just as bad.
We arrive in Villach around 9 and my worries prove to be unfounded. I am pretty tired by this point, having started my day four hours before we set off cycling. I just want a shower, something in my stomach and a little relaxation before saying good night. We make a picnic-styled dinner in the hostel after our showers and chat with a few other residents. The hostel is quiet overall and is set out far enough from the centre of Villach that I opt not to go for a walk.
PHOTO 1: Jochen and I is Soboth dorm
PHOTO 2: part way down the mountain
PHOTO 3: valley of the Drau River that flows to Slovenia
PHOTO 4: rainbow over Drau River Valley
PHOTO 5: Volkermarkt
PHOTO 6: Jochen and I cycling together
PHOTO 7: approaching Klagenfurt
PHOTO 8: statue of Bernhard von Spanheim in Klagenfurt
PHOTO 9: near Worthersee
PHOTO 10: St Maria Worth
PHOTO 11: Mathias and Jochen, arriving at the hostel in Villach
PHOTO 12: Jochen, Mathias and I at the hostel
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