19/5 Fabulous Innsbruck

Saturday 19 Innsbruck

I was very happy to wake up this morning capable of moving after lugging THAT backpack. We slept very well despite a bit of street noise filtering through. Brekky was a delight – nowhere near the cruise ship spreads but excellent by hotel standards.

We took to the bridge over the road to snap some pictures of the mountains that totally ring the city. Without particular hope, we wandered into the smarter part of town looking for a replacement wheeled bag or at least a trolley. There was a huge selection in one bag store but consistently mega-expensive. We dropped in to the basement of the shopping centre on the way out on one of those random Female Impulses. The basement was taken up with health stores – I glimpsed lawnmowers in the middle of the supermarket but everything else there was food (as you would expect). This gave J the chance to wander into a shoe store (as you do when you are looking for luggage) and bugger me there were a couple of wheeled bags up on the top shelf.

The medium one was too small and cost E35 but the much bigger one was only E39 so with little hesitation we adopted it. It is HUGE (which will only encourage a certain person to acquire more schtuff) and it has pretty fragile wheels – we will just have to stay off steps and cobble stones and hope that the baggage handlers are gentle. (only 6 weeks or so to nurse it)

There were two girls behind the counter – one spoke quite good English and the other had fashionably slashed blue jeans. I had never seen a pair so lacerated and said “There isn’t much left of your jeans”. This was duly translated by the girl who was built and attired like a Bavarian barmaid, who thought it was screamingly funny. Thus encouraged, I remarked that the jeans were about as wrecked as our old suitcase. The translator so convulsed herself that her colossal puppies nearly escaped.

Earlier, while J was looking for the conveniences and I was staring at the sign trying to work out where she should have gone, a young girl from the coffee shop asked if I needed a WC and I said no I'm looking for my wife. She said  . . it's ok as long as she hasn’t got the credit card . . and we shared some lighthearted exchange. What is it with Innsbruck? Has Eric Clapton just toured here or do they just like (much) older men? Maybe it was my lopsided $4 Bolivia soccer strip?

That paved the way for a morning of unrestrained expenditure OMG!! We had found out about the cable car up an adjoining mountain and invested E28 each for a ride firstly on a revolutionary architect-designed railway that turned into a funicular. It had a number of small carriages which were ostensibly normal, but when we came to the VERY steep incline, it turned into a funicular and ground its way up. The carriages pumped themselves up so that each one remained horizontal.

After a few hundred feet, we disembarked and transferred into a conventional cable car, which whisked us up another 1700m. The view was spectacular – snow had covered everything above 2000m and there was a large terrace spread out in the sun with GLORIOUS views across the valley and behind to the towering peaks. I kept looking up to the roof of the cable car, where I seemed to be expecting to see Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton.

Snow, snow everywhere there's snow

Innsbruck far below

The sky was full of high level  vapour trails, silent gliders, small black birds that hovered in the thermals looking for abandoned scraps, and the occasional small and large plane that took off from the airport and crept along so far below us before turning away to their destinations. One fellow turned up with what looked like a huge canoe in a sock, which turned out to be a hang-glider. He spent at least an hour assembling all the struts etc and then cracked open a Red Bull and drank it in a very determined fashion as though assertive action was imminent. But he then spent another hour gazing heavenwards and then disappeared. When we left it was still standing there?

Innsbruck developed on the site of the intersection of the ancient trading routes – NS between Germany/Italy and EW between Switzerland and Austria. We could see the other valley heading Eastwards away from us. Innsbruck sits astride the river Inn, which is a major tributary of the Danube and flows through Braunau, birthplace of A Hitler esq and Marktl, birthplace of Pope Benedict.

The city itself is quite compact, with a lot of green between buildings and in the surrounding countryside. The mountain sides are clothed in pine up to about 2000m and above that it was all white snow with granite bits peeping through. The nearby snowfields were the source of blinding glare and there were a number of people skiing down the slopes on very short skis, including a few family groups with small children.

We sat there happily for over an hour and then wondered whether we could get up in the cable car that was dropping the skiers near the top. We asked at the ticket office, where the old chap asked to see our tickets from the lower cable car. How delighted were we when he said we could go up with the same tickets!!! So we jumped in and went up the remaining few hundred metres.

The view was much the same, but the higher angle allowed us to see beyond the valley immediately in front and we also got to see the other side of the range behind us stretching away for dozens of miles in every direction. There was a zigzag path up to the very tiptop summit, complete with warning signs about Alpine Hazards. It was suddenly very windy and the path tracked the edge of a narrow ridge with very steep drops to either side. There was a small flat patch on top, with a few stones to sit on (or drop into a Lotus).

The path to the top

Takes your breath away

Innsbruck and river Inn

Any opportunity for a Lotus

We sat up there for a while longer and finished our last banana. It was rather like Machu Picchu in a way, without the ancient monument. I could have stayed up there for hours. How often do you get the chance to look down and around from the very summit of a high mountain . . . let alone an Alp!!

We had a late lunch (guess what was on special again?) with some German bread and I washed mine down with a very pleasant buddy size Starkenberger. I cant imagine when we might come this way again but Innsbruck is on the list.

Winding alleys, many buildings are built wider at the base, as the Inca and ancient Egyptians did.  Thus giving the structures extra strength.

Riding the happy crest, we logged on and booked the Rhine Cruise for 3 days time from Mainz down to near Cologne. This is the highly scenic Middle Rhine and we are greatly looking forward to that, and to going round Cologne with Elizabeth. Somehow the price was much less than we had expected but we will not argue about that!

Tonight was the World Championship Rock/Boulder Climbing competition which was held just over the river from where we are staying.  All I know about it is that there was an Australian representative in the female section.  There was much cheering and loud music at times.