Today we awoke in a great parking spot near "the world's largest ice cave" and got off to a good start after we found our bearings. Discovered a nice little village off the highway because we opted to not take the main tunnel South. You see in Austria they make you pay for using the highways, a flat toll for a minimum of ten days. And this by itself is not an issue at all - they need to build a lot of bridges and tunnels, and maintain roads throughout the year, especially now in winter time where plows travel the roads pretty much all day.
But then they charge you another ten bucks for using one of the main highway tunnels, which felt rather disengenious to us since nobody let us know when we purchased our main highway toll ticket. And so we wondered if this wasn't a great opportunity to not go straight down to Italy (who also make you pay for their highways) but take the smaller routes through the country and see where we end up.
But still we got stuck in a mountain pass and opted to return on a different route, making us let go of our convenient idea to reach the Slovenian West coast tonight. Instead we're now traveling on a road further East along the alps until they finally start fading so that we can cross southwards.
We felt a little bummed but were trusting that this in the end might be for the better. After all we could have taken that pass South today and figured out too late that our can wouldn't make it. We could have even slid down a steep mountain range so it's all good now, noticed that lesson early enough.
Once we got used to our new route today we stopped at a mini gas station and to our utter surprise they don't only offer free rest rooms but also free hot showers!!!
We were amazed! Both of us took a steaming shower and felt so great for having trusted that cosmic detour today, once again reminding us that it's all good and that the rational ego mind just can't figure this life out anymore. We still try more than we would like but it brings us into a terrible mood and we feel it pulls us away from our flow state so we take this lesson today with a smile, moving onwards East, then South, then West. If that is still in the cards at all ahahaha.
Tomorrow will mark the last day of our used up data volume, meaning I can be more active again afterwards, still wanting to work more on the Lanka articles of recent days and get back to a few important comments.
All trades have been halted, and I'm still hoping for some eventual internet and music time, in a nice spot where nature is kind and people are few - in order to catch up with our greater mission on the road and the things I want to be doing with steem and my other media projects.
So after this week, if you ever need some travel advice for Austria in late February - just ask <3
Hope you're doing well out there and are as excited about some new awesome articles as I am.
