Bregenz is where Austria touches Lake Constance, the Bodensee, and the town makes the most of a small piece of shoreline. The lake is huge, shared with Germany and Switzerland, and on a clear day the far shore melts into haze. Behind the town the Pfänder rises to just over a thousand metres, with a cable car that carries you from the harbour to a ridge in a few minutes, and from the top you see the whole lake, the Rhine delta, the Alps and, with luck, a good part of three countries at once.
The best-known thing here is the festival. Each summer an opera is staged on a floating platform in the lake, with a set so large it seems to belong to a different scale of theatre, and the audience sits on a steep grandstand on the shore. The tradition goes back to the 1940s, and the sets keep getting more ambitious. The town also has the Kunsthaus, a glass box designed by the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, which glows at night like a lantern. Higher up lies the Oberstadt, the old town, with the Martinsturm, a tower with a big onion dome from the seventeenth century. The Romans called the place Brigantium, and the lake was a highway for them long before it was a holiday destination.
For a rider the town is a gateway. East of it, the Bregenzerwald rolls out in green valleys of wooden farmhouses, cheese dairies and good, flowing roads that climb toward Alpine passes. West, you can follow the lake to Switzerland or north to Germany along the shore. Traffic in town can be heavy on summer weekends, and the lakeside road clogs when the weather is warm. Föhn, the warm southerly wind, sometimes blows through here, bringing sharp clear views and a mildly restless mood.
Bregenz has about thirty thousand people and every service: fuel stations on the ring road, bakeries, lakeside cafés where a coffee costs more than it should and is still worth it. Parking for bikes is easier near the harbour than in the old town. Autumn is calm and often clear, when the lake mist burns off by noon and the leaves turn on the hills. Spring brings fruit blossom around the lake and a general feeling of release after winter.