Innsbruck, Austria

When we got to Innsbruck we had no idea where we were going to stay, but a helpful lady at the tourist information center pointed us to a really great bed and breakfast hostel in the center of the old town center. We dropped off our backpacks at the cafe connected to the hostel and we walked around the town waiting for the lady running the hostel to return so we could check in.



We went to St. Jacob Cathedral, which was beautiful, and then to a nearby park. I made the bold suggestion that we walk to the old Olympic village from the winter Olympics some odd years ago. We started walking in that direction but gave up long before we got there and ended up near a skate park. We watched some skaters practicing their neat tricks and then moved on to watch some Austrian kids practice breakdancing moves. We ran across a climbing wall nearby the skate park and I messed around for a bit and then we made the long walk back to the town center. We stopped for some gelato (the best since Roma), and then went back to the hostel to check in. I tried to make some dinner in the kitchen, but it was somewhat of a challenge. I wanted to cook some pasta, but they didn't have a stove. There was only a water boiler thingamajig that would boil water which could then be poured into something else. I had to keep boiling more water and dumping it onto the pasta in a ceramic bowl. I'm a little lacking in the patience department when it comes to cooking food, so I ended up eating half cooked pasta. While we ate, we met Laura from Canada who was staying in the hostel with us. Innsbruck is a really tourist friendly place, anyone who stays a night there gets an Innsbruck club card which gives you free guided hikes, free guided lantern walks, a free welcome drink at the casino, and other discounts. So we went with Laura to the casino to get our free welcome drinks. We tried to get in at the main desk but the lady just looked us over and said, "You look a little too.... casual for the main floor, but you are more than welcome to enjoy yourselves in the second rate casino downstairs with the slot machines" (or something to that effect). So we went downstairs and got our welcome drink at the bar, Greg then got one chip at the counter for ten euros (apparently the minimum bet for black jack, pretty high stakes for the reject level of the casino).



The cashier guy kind of chuckled as he gave Greg the chip. But Greg cleaned up by turning his ten into forty at the blackjack table, I on the other hand lost two euros on video roulette. Laura and I pulled Greg away from the blackjack table before he could lose his winnings and we headed back to the hostel.

The next morning we ate the included breakfast with Laura and another backpacker Tom from Boston at the cafe attached to the hostel. The breakfast was awesome, most hostels give you a roll and a cup of coffee and some butter if you're lucky, but this place served us cornflakes with fresh fruit, a slice of pastry (that normal sells in the cafe for 3-4 euros), plenty of rolls w/ Nutella and butter, and hot chocolate. Afterwards we went to a hat store (I was getting jealous of Greg's hat), but it was too expensive there so we started hiking up the mountains to the cable car. We finally made it to the cable car and took it to the top of the alpine mountain ridge surrounding Innsbruck. We followed a stone laid path to a tourist lookout point and took some pictures and then found a bench to eat some lunch (salami sandwiches). We found a patch of snow and I made a snow angel, and then we decided to start a real hike.



At this point I better point out a big difference between the US and Austria. In the US warning signs usually are overly cautious and often unnecessary (usually so somebody doesn't get sued). For example in the US you might find a sign that says "path extremely dangerous, steep drop offs," which really means "there is a slight down grade and about two miles away from the path there is a cliff that could be dangerous." In Austria you would find a sign that says, "Path dangerous for hikers without Alpine experience and equipment," what they really mean is "If you do not have Alpine equipment and experience you probably will fall to your death off the cliff one foot to the right of the path or you probably will slip on the snow covering the path and not stop until your broken body is lodged in a rock halfway down the mountain." It was a cultural difference that Greg and I learned very well on that mountain. We started off on the only path on the ridge, which happened to have a similar warning sign to the one I just wrote above. The path was about two feet wide with a steep dropoff to the right and mountain face to our left. We made it about ten feet on the path and noticed that there was a sheet of snow across the path.



We didn't have those nifty hiking poles or even hiking boots with deep treads so we decided that with our worndown tennis shoe treads, traversing the snow sheet would mean an abrupt and unintended descent down the mountain side that could only lead to death. Needless to say we were determined to find another route. We turned back and found a one foot wide path that went around the snow sheet and met up with the original path. It was on that one foot path gazing out at the beauty of the alps that Greg tells me he is scared of heights. But he sucked it up and we kept going. The view was amazing.






We kept hiking and came across a flock of mountain sheep with a shepherd and his sheep dog. After about 45 minutes or so we came across another snow sheet, but this one had no handy side path to get around it, and since we were already thinking about turning around, we decided that we didn't want to die that day so we turned around.



On the way back we came across a man with two kids who was way up on the top of a ridge. I got jealous so I decided to climb (why is there a b in climb) up there. Greg didn't want to come so he stuck to the lower path as I forged my own trail up the mountain ridge.



I got to the top and just looked around at the amazing view for a while. I decided I really wanted some pictures up there so I set the ten second timer on my camera, hit the shutter button, and ran/scurried across the ridge as far away from the camera as I could and when I heard the beeping of the camera speed up I turned around and struck a pose real fast.



After that little adventure on the ridge I found Greg below me on the path and I made my way back down to meet up with him. We hiked past the sheep and shepherd again, and almost made it back to the start of the path when I saw that the path split into the one we had taken on the way out and one that went up to another peak. I decided I wanted to take the high route, Greg decided to stay on the lower one. I went up to the top and I could see the start of the path and the tourist look out point, which was on the adjacent peak just higher than the peak I was standing on. The path I had taken ended at the top and I was trying to figure out how to get back down to Greg on the lower path, (it was a lot steeper than the ridge). I yelled down to Greg to see if from his point of view he saw an easy route to take. He told me to just try to get up to the tourist lookout point. I looked up and saw near vertical mountain face that I would have to scale in order to get up, but I thought what they hey, I can do this (I later found out that Greg assumed that the path I had been on continued up to the tourist lookout peak and it would be a simple hike to get up there).



I said a quick prayer and then started pulling myself up the mountain side. I had to check each rock before I used it as a hand/foot hold because many of them were loose. After about twenty minutes of climbing I reached the stone wall encircling the tourist lookout point. There was a elderly German women sitting on the wall as I reached up and grabbed a hold of it. I pulled myself over the wall right next to her.



I'll never forget the expression of shock on her face as I rolled over the wall to safety. She started muttering in German and peered over the wall down the mountainside I had come from as I chuckled to myself and jogged down the stone path to meet Greg. We took the cable car back down the mountain and found a mountain train that took us back to level ground. We went back to the hostel, got a bit to eat, and then went to a nearby mall that had a room full of computers with free internet (I love Innsbruck). We then met up with Laura back at the hostel and set out for the free guided lantern hike. Our guides were an Austrian couple named Heinz and Helga. We took a bus ride to the foothills of the alps and then walked up to a pub/bar/cafe next to a church. There was a fountain near the church that is said to be from a spring that has holy water (I guess people have had cures from it or something like that, I didn't understand the whole story).



We enjoyed a glass of wine as we watched the sunset over Innsbruck and then everyone on the guided hike went to an upper room in the bar where we listened to an accordion and a guitar player sing traditional Austrian songs for us. The taught us to yodel and they taught us a traditional wedding song and dance.



There was also a traditional Austrian drinking song that they would play about every third song. The musicians were great and it was a lot of fun. After about an hour or so enjoying the Austrian culture we went back outside where we lit our lanterns and went back down the hills/mountain (I whistled the Harry potter theme pretty much the whole way down). We then took the bus back to the hostel and went to bed.



The next morning Greg and I had another awesome breakfast at the cafe and walked around the town for awhile until we could catch a train to Zurich. We listened to an orchestra/band playing in the town square, and I might have been on Austrian TV (I walked behind the band in the view of the TV camera recording the event).



There was an Austrian lady in full Austrian traditional dress walking around with a mini keg of schnapps giving out free samples. We were planning on taking the 12:30 train, which was a direct train to Zurich, but there was another train that left around 11:50 that would get us there earlier but there were a lot of changes we would have to make. At about 11:40 Greg asks me, "do you think we could make the 11:50 train?" After jumping that train to Barcelona I was of the mind set that anything was possible, so I of course replied, "sure." We ran back to the hostel grabbed our bags, and quickly walked to the train station and hopped on the train. We ended up having to make a ton of transfers, including a bus ride through Liechtenstein, but we eventually made it to Zurich (about 10 minutes later than the 12:30 train would have got us there).