Innsbruck Times

(Sept 19th & 20th, 2007)

And so we arrived in Innsbruck with the clean mountain air gladly filling our nostrils. Our hands and legs were glad too with the unexpected bonus of escalators and well maintained facilities.

We dutifully took public transport to our campsite- which looked beautiful. Sadly, our caravan was not. I have no clue what we did wrong-but we got the ugliest and dirtiest caravan that they had on offer. Dirtcheap could be a very apt name- what we paid and what we got.

Anyhow, we were in a mood to let it go and visit the city centre to get some grub. The food was amazing- the concept of vegetarianism was not alien to this city and I gorged on a delightful salad and mixed veg rice. A for awesome.

A very heady and convenient calculation showed me that this was yet another place where the cost of wine was equal to that of coffee and that of water :) Sigh.

We went to the Golden roof and the Haustbopf palace- basically explored the city centre, which, much to our horror, shut down at 6 pm! The town officially shuts down by 6.30 pm. I think the only establishments open were some restaurants, pubs and Mcdonalds! Since we had nothing better to do, we thought we'd surf the internet- but there were no internet cafes around! Our best bet was this pub that let us use the internet for 20 cents a minute. The surfing plans were abandoned in favor of dipping toes and scooting to a mall that showed some sign of life.

We went to a bar called Habana, that served great Chardonnay and had sufficient eye-candy for two bored girls. We rounded off our "evening out" with Apple Strudel. My tastebuds can still recall that divine creamy cinnamon. Yum.

Dirtcheap appeared even smaller by nightfall and though it was cramped for me, G and the bedbugs, we did manage to get some sleep. Actually a lot of sleep, because we woke up at 8 am! And the view outside was breathtaking!! This was right behind our caravan :) I think that's what they mean by saying 'look at the bigger picture'.

We checkout of the campsite and headed straight to the station, where we deposited our luggage and had a hot breakfast. This was the second big splurge day of the trip after the Venice mask+pendant day. We went to Swarovski Crystal world where I ended up buying a lot of what else, crystal! I think I ought to be a little more eloquent here- this was no jewellery showroom-it's more a combination of crystal theme park and a family's lasting way of showing off their wealth & expertise. I'll let the pictures talk more.

Though Innsbruck is a very popular ski destination, we went during summer, so that aspect of the town remained hidden. It's safe, clean, has great food and we really enjoyed our time there. All except this rather unfortunate time, when I got locked out at the station loo- Damn, that was scary! Is there some unstated understanding between those loo designers that no country shall have identical systems for locking/ unlocking, flushing and tap water? Also, instructions in local language don't really help when you think you will grow old in that tiny cubicle that flushes in some places, on the left or on the right, through a push or pull in others and in yet others, through a food pedal! Indian public toilets, esp at railway stations are quite simple in this respect- they stink so much, you'd never enter one so getting locked in one is quite out of the question. But coming back to the minor adventure- I did finally get rescued when I managed to turn the knob the wrong way. I got the tap all figured out in 2 secs though and made a dash to the exit in another 5, before all those Austrian aunties let out hearty laughs.

Our next stop was Salzburg which is about an hour away from Innsbruck, and deserves a separate post :)