I can’t believe it’s only been three days since I’ve updated. Seems like much longer. We are currently slumped in our room, rubbing our aching feet and wondering why we thought it was a good idea to cover around 35km in two days. Sure, it’s not the 30km hike we did in one day, but it’s enough to have our bodies whinge at us.
We are in Innsbruck (pronounced Innsbrook), Austria’s answer to Interlaken, and it is gorgeous. Not quite as picturesque as Interlaken, but it has a lovely feel to it and we are still surrounded by mountains and a usually pretty-coloured river.
The B&B we are staying it is fantastic. Although we had to change rooms today to a much smaller twin room, the room we had for the first two days was worth a lot more than the €52 we paid for it. It was about twice the size of a normal room, having a small table with chairs next to a wall which was essentially entirely window, letting in a stack of sunlight and breeze. Then across the other side of the room was a couch, a bench and a kind of a cupboardy clothes-rack. It was ace. In addition to this there is a kitchen (so Andrew has been cooking up a storm) and they give you breakfast, which is really filling. They are connected to a patisserie, so they give you bread, cereal, coffee/tea/hot chocolate and a piece of cake each for breakfast! Do I need it? No. Do I eat it? Hell yes! Their lemon meringue pie is fantastic.
The churches ring their bells every hour here, and they are slightly out of sync. Whilst this sounds like it would be annoying, it actually adds to the feel because it is like listening to the start of a strange symphony and is surprisingly pleasant. In my opinion, anyway.
Innsbruck is a lovely little town, albeit a bit touristy, but the ‘old town’ centre is pedestrian only, cobbled streets lined with colourful European buildings and bustling German. We have had nothing but positive experiences here so far – we had a guy at the help office who gave the best damn directions I’ve ever seen (plus, understood the concept of sarcasm! How I miss you!), a guy help us buy the cheapest tickets to Munich, our hotel is awesome, and even bizarre experiences leave you feeling happy (Cristalwelten (see below) and a strange shop that stuffs animals and swaps parts of their body – beavers with wings and fangs and a rabbit with antlers….just strange!).
There are a few ‘sights’ around town – the big draw card is the golden roof, which is exactly that. A golden roof on a balcony. Hey, it’s pretty and shiny. Yeah….shiny. However, most of our time has been spent outside the actual town. Yesterday we went out to Cristelwelten, or Crystal World – a bizarre museum for Swarovski. It was a little expensive, having to pay top dollar to get in and to get a shuttle out there – but it was one of the strangest things I’ve seen.
The entrance is under a green Inca-like hill and into the underground full of Swarovski crystals. One is the biggest jewellery stone in the world, and I made sure that I showed Andrew just how beautiful shiny rocks are! After mumbling something and walking away, we started to explore the museum. There were many exhibits displaying random things with crystals on them, from sculptures to a Dali clock to the walls. We then left and walked into the most bizarre room. With techno beats in the background, it had dancing trousers and a walking robot and flying shirts and a human figure that kept coming undone. The only thing I could say for certain is that the designers were on more drugs than most musicians. It was strangely entrancing but also slightly alarming. Bizarre was the only word that I could utter as I stared around at the moving exhibits. I’m not too sure what they wanted to portray, particularly as you couldn’t actually see any crystals on anything except for the flying shirts. *shakes head*
We then walked into the Crystal Dome, which immediately made me feel like I was in an X-men film. The dome was full of mirrors and crystals and continued to change colours and oscillate in light intensity, enchanting you to hang around and watch the dome morph in blues, reds, greens and silvers.
Leaving that to another exhibit with more moving crystallised sculptures – a zebra in a shoe (don’t ask, I wasn’t sure either); the sun and moon waltzing (and if you used your flash you discovered that they had skulls embedded on the backs of their heads!); moving butterfly trees and accordions…the list goes on.
Into another couple of rooms with exhibits and moving colours, and lastly out by a crystal sea jelly next to a mirror, again moving through the rainbow spectrum. You certainly left with a feeling that you don’t actually need to experiment with drugs – just come here and you leave feeling enchanted, calm, happy and on top of everything, bewildered. The one thing I did like was a crystal version of the Platonic solids for sale in their shop (it’s a maths thing), which provided me with some amusement amongst showing Andrew all the pretty rings on sale! For some reason he didn’t think I was funny!
We then decided that we would walk back to Innsbruck – it should only be about 15km, a nice afternoon filler. Well, after realising that we didn’t have any water, had no idea how to actually get back to Innsbruck and it was stinking hot, it didn’t seem like so much of an enjoyable adventure. Yay…..adventure. But, after much sooking, whining, sweating and feet aching, we made it back, about three and a half hours later. The views were interesting though – we went through roadworks, beautiful green on blue, mountains and rivers, cornfields, cabbage patches (well, I don’t know if they were cabbages or cauliflower, but I just kept expecting a cabbage patch kid to jump out)…it was really quite diverse.
Today, stupidly, we still decided to go on the hike that we had originally planned to do but ummed and ahhed about it when we got back yesterday. We wandered around completely lost to begin with (who am I kidding? Try the entire freaking time) because the map wasn’t well marked. Normally this is a fun adventure but I woke up in my angry boots and unfortunately passed some aggression onto Andrew when he couldn’t find what he wanted. Thankfully we eventually found a path that took us away from the road and traffic and decided to give up on our original plan and see where that took us.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that it took us along the river with landscapes highly reminiscent of Canada, though what I imagine it would look like in the summer. I was quite happy about this because I had looked at the potential hiking across the other side of Innsbruck and (whilst I was not quite sure my body could have handled the mountain ascent and descent) it looked much prettier, so I was happy to find myself surrounded by green and a sense of seeping serenity, needed after our grumpy start to the morning.
We wandered up and down next to the river for about 10km (maybe a bit less) stopping here and there to ponder the meaning of signs in German. One sign I’m sure told us to stay off a pedestrian bridge (added to the fact that it was sort of blocked off. Well, it wasn’t permanently blocked off or anything….) to which we hesitated then duly ignored. It’s okay, the bridge felt solid and didn’t fall down when we crossed, so hurray!
We took a few wrong turns here and there, having no idea what path we were supposed to take, but we ended up in a small village called Vill (and it’s on a hill!) and then found the path back to Innsbruck. All in all it’s been a nice day, though my legs are bloody well aching! We did find some great signs along the way….’Mutter – 45 mins’ (don’t mind if I do); ‘Jakschitz’; ‘Vill-Igls’ or ‘Vill-Igls über Pains’ (I think the hard way – we didn’t take it!); ‘Uhren schmuck’ (No, you are!) and even ‘..Schwestern..’ (This obviously means that my love of add Schm to everything is in fact an international pastime. Awesome.)
Andrew is going to cook us dinner (I love him SO much) and we might talk to an Australian couple we met last night that we spent all night talking to last night (well, till midnight. That’s all night, right?). It was so fantastic to have human interaction other than my marvellous Snuffy Pig. Turns out Sarah and John are actually both maths teachers (well, John is retired now) and we had loads to talk about even aside from that – travelling (they have been riding around on whims, I mean, bikes, for the past 3 months), what we miss about home, politics (home and international), education and how much we miss our kids, our plans for the future….it was just bloody ace. Unfortunately for Andrew and Sarah, I’m not sure who talks more – me or John! Ergo, it was a really nice night.
So, hope you’re all doing well. We’re going into Munich tomorrow for a few days before coming back down to Austria, Salzburg I think.
Ciao!
Innsbruck photos.
