Travel brochure writers are well-known fibbers. Two years ago, my wife and I took a bicycle trip through Burgundy. The terrain was described as "rolling hills." To us that meant some up and some down, more up, more down, etc.

But the ride that writer was describing meant bicycling straight uphill for hours, followed by a very fast but too short downhill dash.

We still had a good time, but in seeking another bicycle trip, we had but one criterion. Flatness: no more hills like that one.

What we found was a wonderful six-day, self-guided bicycle trip along the Danube River from Passau in southern Germany to Vienna, the capital of Austria. My father was born in Vienna 100 years ago and I had never been there, but that was not why we chose this trip. The description promised no hills — and it was true.

Anyone could do this trip and love it. Kids make this trip. You could, too.

In total, the Danube Bike Trail stretches 1,785 miles from the river's source at Donaueschingen in the Black Forest of southern Germany to the Black Sea. It passes through Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Ukraine.

The most popular leg of the "Donauradweg," as the bike path is called in German, runs 220 miles from Passau to Vienna along the slow-moving river.

In most places, paths once used by mules and oxen to pull barges upriver have been paved over to provide a two-lane bike path far from any motor traffic. Going downriver, the wind is at your back. Brief occasional upward slopes are quickly repaid with downhill coasts.

The same people who make the trains run on time in Austria seem to be in charge of signage because it is superb. As you near an intersection or turn a corner, before you can think, "I wonder where ..." a green-and-white sign reading "Donauradweg" with an arrow appears before you.

FINDING THE WAY, BY BOAT AND BY BIKE

More serious cyclists — the spandex shorts and shoe-clip set — can challenge themselves with faster speeds and side trips to increase the mileage or they can easily find hills to climb. But for those of us who want to look around and bike leisurely, this is a very doable ride. (If you are really worried, an electric enhanced bike is also available.)

The "self-guided" concept works differently than better known (and much more costly) guided bike tours with firms like Backroads or Butterfield & Robinson. Self-guided means you're on your own — no guides or sag wagon to give you a lift if you tire. For this trip, we used a company called Bravo Bike, based in Madrid, and they were great.

Companies offering self-guided tours make hotel reservations (with a choice of two categories of accommodations) and dinner reservations if you wish. We did not pick this "half board" as we prefer to make our own dinner plans. In some small towns, there are few choices, but we still like to explore a bit and often share a meal. All hotels offer a complimentary hearty breakfast.

The companies also provide good quality touring bikes with all equipment and helmets; a short stack of guidebooks, maps and brochures; plus a telephone number to call if you have a problem.

The best service these companies provide is moving your luggage from hotel to hotel, so you have very little to carry in the panniers or saddlebags they provide.

Of course, it is possible to travel with nothing more than what you can carry in those panniers — backpacking style. And it is possible, especially on a ride like the Danube Bike Trail, to travel without reservations and look for accommodation each day as you tire of cycling.

Winging it, however, is not for us. We like a hotel room waiting with our luggage in the lobby. We like an immediate shower, clean clothes and all the creature comforts our 24-inch suitcases provide.

The glory of self-guided bicycling is that you leave each morning when you are ready, ride at the pace that suits you, turn around for some interesting alley or storefront you glide past and you stop and go as the spirit moves you.

The bad news was that it rained for the first two days of our planned bicycle trip. The good news? Ferries ply the Danube River several times a day and it is easy to roll bikes aboard and travel in absolute style, lunching on local specialties and drinking local wine or beer.

CROSSING THE RIVER

Most people have heard the 1866 waltz "The Blue Danube" by Johann Strauss, which has become an unofficial Austrian national anthem. It played constantly on the Danube ferries. It is a triumph of promotional marketing, as the Danube is in no way blue. Brown with occasional patches of green is more like it.

Still, all along the river you will pass delightful small towns and neighborhoods, farm fields and forests, hill-top castles, palaces and monasteries, and many, many small cafes and heurigen or wine bars, especially in the vineyard-lined Wachau area near Vienna, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

It is possible to bike on either side of the river in most places but the north or "left" bank is the most scenic. You can cross the Danube at many bridges along the way, including some that pass over the massive hydro-electric dams that cut the river every 30 or 40 miles providing power to the region. In some places, small roll-on, roll-off bike ferries, driven by a single outboard motor, regularly cross the river.

Passau, where our trip began, is a lovely medieval town in Lower Bavaria known as City of Three Rivers as the Danube is joined there by the Inn River from the South, and the Ilz River from the Bavarian Forest to the North.

Rain was pouring on Day One when we went to bed and it was raining still when we awoke and made our way to the bike pick-up point. So we pedaled a few blocks to the river docks and found a ferry to take us three hours downriver to our next stop, Schlogen, where the Danube does a 180-degree turn, known as the Danube Loop.

At the base of the loop stands a lone hotel, the Donauschlinge. It is lovely but was nearly deserted as we were traveling early — actually before — the "season." As the sole diners in the hotel restaurant that can seat 250 people, looking out on the gray rain, we felt a bit like characters in "The Shining."

Having missed a day of biking, confined to our empty hotel by the rain, and the strong prospect of another day of rain to follow, this was not a happy time for us. It led to a lot of bad jokes, like, "Time moves schlowly in Schlogen" and "Is this all there is? Yes, it's the Full Schlogen."

As feared, we awoke to rain and the ferry to Linz left at 9 a.m. so we had to make an early decision. Another four hours on the ferry was painful but had its bright spots. Every time the ferry, capable of carrying hundreds of people, reaches one of the power dams it must go through a lock that lowers it to the next level of the river. It is an experience, once, maybe twice. But, the beer is great.

LANDING IN LINZ

We were starting to feel like we were on a cruise versus a bike trip, but our next stop, Linz (which Adolf Hitler considered his "hometown") was a wonderful surprise. The third-largest city in Austria is traditionally an industrial town but is making itself over as a cultural center with a vibrant music and arts scene.

Along the Danube, a "Kulturmeile" ("culture mile") includes the Lentos Museum with an outstanding collection of 20th and 21st century art, a concert hall called "Brucknerhaus" named after Anton Bruckner and a very inviting riverside park packed with statuary.

Across the river, the Ars Electronica Center is a significant center for new media arts, attracting a large gathering of technologically-oriented artists every year for the Ars Electronica festival. It is truly one of the most intriguing "museums" we've ever toured. At the top is a very cool club called Cubes, with a great, panoramic view of the city.

We could gladly have spent more time in Linz, with all its attractions. Our hotel, the Arcotel Nike next to Brucknerhaus, was the best of our trip, very classy and full of enough modern art to qualify as a minor museum. From the lounge you can see the Lentos and the Ars Electronica illuminated from the inside at night with blue, pink, red and violet lights whose reflections danced on the river.

It rained again, very hard, that night, but the morning broke rain-free, if somewhat cloudy and we decided the time had come. It was chilly and the streets were still wet, but we had paid for a bike trip and the thought of another day on the slow moving ferry, with the Blue Danube waltz playing on the PA, was too much. It was time to buck up, strap on the helmets and ride.

For the next four days we enjoyed some absolutely glorious biking — along the river, through the fabled Austrian woods, skimming down paths in golden fields of buttercups, winding down country lanes, gliding through terraced vineyards and postcard-perfect villages.

GOING GREIN

Each town had sights and delights. In the small castle town of Grein we visited the oldest theater in Austria (still functioning), built in 1791. Among many oddities are seats that can be locked so no one but the owner could use them, a forerunner of the season ticket. The theater also features a "toilet" separated from the audience only by a short curtain, so the user would not miss any of the dialogue.

There was more to see in Grein and other towns we biked through, but we were content to have a late lunch, select a few sights and then relax in the town square, sampling some of the local beer and soaking up the atmosphere.

After Grein, we took the bike ferry across the river, as the north shore bike path is not good and rode for the day on the south or right bank. About 30 miles later, we arrived in Emmersdorf, a small town across the river from Melk, site of an incredible massive baroque Benedictine monastery named Stift Melk.

This is a must-see, with an ancient library of 100,000 books and the most ornate, gold-leafed, statuary-stuffed chapel you are likely ever to find. The message in all that splendor, as the guide described it, was, "Our heaven is better than your heaven."

Next day we set out for Krems, the last stop before Vienna. We were now firmly in the Wachau, with terraced vineyards rising on both sides of the valley as far as the eye could see.

Continuing through small towns, we arrived at Durnstein, an adorably preserved village, that is one of the most visited destinations in the region. Austrians had driven or biked from Vienna for the special wine weekend, with all the tasting rooms open dispensing samples.

We finally reached Krems on a Sunday afternoon to find the sidewalks had already been rolled up. Our hotel, the pleasant enough Hotel Klinglhuber, "closed" at 8 p.m. That means locking the front door and turning off the elevator! Luckily, our room was on the second floor.

We walked around the town, back and forth on the cobbled main street to window shop, which was pleasant enough. A word of caution: when in a small Austrian town on a Sunday night, do not eat in any Italian restaurant called "Al Capone's."

The next morning the tour route took us to the train station to travel part of the remaining way to Vienna and then cycle for the last leg of our trip. The last day of riding took us along an island in the middle of the Danube, which we followed into Vienna proper until we found the right bridge to take us to our last hotel of the bike journey. It was near the United Nations center in Vienna, a very international city.

We stayed for almost another week in a bed-and-breakfast style "pension" in Vienna, a charming place sometimes described as "Paris without the French." The rest of our stay in Vienna was wonderful, but that, as they say, is another story.