Tue, 30 Sep 2003

author Liz	location Interlaken, Schweiz
posted 20:05 CEST 06/10/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Osterreich/Osterreich 2 ( all photos )

North into Deutschland ( 2 photos )
On Tuesday, we again had a lovely breakfast at the hostel, packed our bags and headed up to the train station.
Austrians are obviously much more efficent that Italians - the train arrived and left on time, and was even on the right platform.
The countryside was beautiful - huge forest-covered mountains, and little farms with cows and fruit-trees on the valley floor.
We crossed the border north into Deutschland.

author Liz	location Interlaken, Schweiz
posted 19:44 CEST 06/10/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Osterreich/Osterreich 2 ( all photos )

Innsbruck ( 40 photos )
On Monday morning, we had a delicious buffet breakfast at the hostel and then we headed out to explore Innsbruck.
We crossed the River Inn and went into the old part of town. The tall and narrow houses looked beautiful and we saw the Goldenes Dachl (Golden Roof), a beautiful little building with a roof made of 2657 gilded copper tiles, which would have glinted beautifully had the sun been shining, but still looked very nice as we wandered along.
We looked through a few touristy shops and wandered around a lot of the small streets before heading out towards Markthalle, a large indoor market with lots of fresh fruit, vegetables, bread and meats. We bought some fruit and a pastry snack to eat during the day. From there we walked a short distance to an internet cafe to check our e-mails and so on.
After that we decided to see some of Innsbruck's past Olympic sites. Innsbruck hosted the Winter Olympics in 1964 and 1976, and the city is certainly in a great position for winter sports, with lots of snow during the cold months and mountains all around it.
We could see the Bergisel Stadion from where we stood, but it was at the edge of the city and it took us quite a while to walk to it. The last bit we had to walk up to get to the bottom of the Stadion was very steep, but then we were there, and the bottom of Bergisel Stadion, and Olympic ski jump stadium.
I had no idea how steep these things were, but I guess if you want to launch yourself into the air, you have to be going pretty fast downhill first.
We caught a little cable car to the lookout tower at the top, and even just going up in that made me dizzy! In the tower, we caught the lift to the very top and walked out onto a viewing platform where we could look down the length of the ski jump out over Innsbruck and across to the huge mountains opposite. We could see the big central train station, the line of the river, and we guessed the spot where we were staying, and saw the graveyard at the bottom of the jump where people who missed must end up. A rainbow even came out over Innsbruck and it all looked very pretty.
We caught the cable car back down, getting out about half way down for a bit more of a look around at the very bottom, Tim sat down and I climbed up to the other side to see a good view of the whole ski jump, and the place where the Olympic flame had been lit.
From the ski jump, we made our way back down the hill and walked to the old stadium, which turned out to be run-down and closed. Along the way, we stopped at a bell-makers and looked in the shop at the many different bells of all different shapes and sizes.
We stopped to have a bit of lunch and just sat and relaxed for a while. By now it was about 3pm, and Tim and I decided to phone the Italian garage to see how Rosie was going. We had phoned our insurance company the week before to see how it was all going, and were assured we would get a call when everything was ready, or if there where any problems. So when we called the garage in Italy on mondy afternoon to see how it was all going, we had a huge shock - they hadn't even ordered the part yet, let alone started the job!!! They said some rubbish about waiting for authorization from our insurance company which is crazy because they got authorization the day we were in Padova and approved the go-ahead for the repair.
So we had just spent a week and a half travelling around and waiting for nothing. Seeing everything we have seen has been great, but we were both very frustrated and angry about this, as we were hoping to get the van back at the end of the week. Also, the garage was now going to increase their fee from 2500 euro to maybe 3000 euro, maybe more, as well as taking weeks or months to repair it.
To cut a long story short, we contacted our insurance company and we phoned our contact in the Netherlands, and we have now decided not to go ahead with the repair in Italy, but for a much cheaper price to have the van towed from northern Italy to the Netherlands. Once in the Netherlands, the van will have a whole re-conditioned engine put in for about a third of the cost of half a brand-new Volkswagen dealership engine.
So at the end of Monday afternoon, we were feeling lots of emotions that we shouldn't be feeling when we are on holidays. But at least now it is all sorted out, we are saving heaps, and we can continue the last bit of our travels by train. The only unfortunate side is that because we were expecting to get back to the van after two weeks, all of our warm clothes, shoes and so on are in the van while we are here getting colder and colder. But still, we are very happy.
After that we went back to the hostel, had sandwiches for dinner and went to bed early.

author Tim	location the 10:34 Innsbruck to München Inter-City train
posted 11:44 CEST 30/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Osterreich/Osterreich 2 ( all photos )

Into Innsbruck ( No photos )
(Continued from Italia)
At the border station Brenaro/Brenner, the train stopped for quite some time, with plenty of armed Austrian police wandering up and down the train. It turns out this was just routine, and also that the driver seems to get out and is replaced by an Austrian one. We had thought that maybe we would need to change trains, but this was not the case.
We travelled the remaining distance to Innsbruck in no time at all, arriving at the presently being upgraded Hauptbahnhof. Being a little more organised than usual, we had rung ahead from Italia to see if there were rooms available at one of the hostels on the other side of town (but still the closest in), Jugendherberge St Nikolaus.
Walking there, it became readily apparent that we were in another country - no vespas, taxis were Mercedes instead of FIATs, we crossed roads without fear of death, and everything was calm and serene. We were going to like Innsbruck, we could tell already.
We crossed the river Inn (since bridge in Deutsch is brücke, Innsbruck is named after the main bridge) at a small footbridge Inn Steg, finding our hostel/pub/restaurant combination just on the other side. It was a pleasant, lively place, filled to the brim with Aussies. Almost everyone was either going to or coming from Oktoberfest, thinking the same as us that this was quite a pleasant convenient place to stop over.
We were once again in separate dorms, which we don't really mind but all our stuff is packed into the one pack, which makes showering and finding clothes a little difficult. My dorm was the strangest yet I have seen. Picture a bunk bed, one up down. Got that? Now picture a double bunk bed, so that there is a double-sized bed on both the top and the bottom. Still with me? Well, this room was completely filled with a quintuple bunk bed - five up, five down. I was more than a little concered about finding myself sleeping next to a large blubbering drunk Aussie, but I needn't have worried. They cleverly fill up the positions with spaces in between, only filling the other ones when they are really full.

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