Day 7 – Getting VERY High in Innsbruck

It was supposed to rain again all afternoon and evening, so we decided to get an early start and do our outdoor stuff in the morning so we could at least see the mountains before the clouds rolled in.

We had planned to take the Innsbrucker Nordketten Bahn, the new funicular underground railroad, from the center of the old town up to Hungerburg and then, weather permitting, taking the cablecar up to the high camp, and then the smaller gondola to the top. From there we could hike up the last 300 feet or so to the summit and survey the entire region, with a view of more than 240 mountains in the Northern Chain of the Alps.

But, of course, by then it would be pouring down rain and we’d have to settle for the view from the bar and restaurant midway up. A piece of strudel, maybe a schnapps, maybe visit the Alpenzoo at the lower station. If the weather pattern held true to form, we’d give it the old college try and save the heavy schlepping for Switzerland…

NOT ONLY DID IT NOT RAIN, BUT THE SUN CAME OUT AS WE RODE UP HAFELEKARSPITZ, which I believe is German for “heavy tuchis.”

The view was incredible. We were above two layers of clouds. People were “Nordic trekking,” which is cross country skiing without the skis, in both directions, and lots of people were screaming down the mountain on bikes; Hungerburg is one of the world’s top downhill mountainbiking venues, and it looked both exhilarating and dangerous.

There were obnoxious mountain sheep walking around in the snow…so I gave them a little West Texas “howdy!” The head ram didn’t particularly like what I was saying to him and began inching closer to me…followed by the entire flock. He didn’t look happy. I didn’t know if he was going to follow me or attack me. FREAKING SHEEP! But I wasn’t about to find out. We were at altitude, I was ankle deep in snow and carrying a daypack, camera and in no mood for a confrontation with Mother Nature.

A few yards down the road, I caught up with Genevieve, who began nervously walking with me, as the flock got ever closer, some in the back even beginning to run after us. I couldn’t believe we were about to be fleeced! I turned and shouted “GET THE FLOCK OUTTA HERE!” as the patrons on the patio were suddenly overrun by the whole bleating lot of them! A mountain biker dropped his helmet on the pavement and the sheep turned, startled, and fled. I felt like a complete imbecile! Pretty Baaaaaad, in fact!

Now I was out of breath and with the clouds breaking up, and another gondola to ride – not to mention the equivalent of a 25-story building to climb afterward… what the hell, I’d survived the killer sheep, what else could happen?

Fortunately, I didn’t fall off the mountain. Genevieve, who is in wonderful condition, just bounced around the place, dodging the winded tourists and mountain sheep droppings strewn as she made her way to the path to the top. I followed and yes, I made it to the top of the mountain.

It was cold, windy and smelled of sheep. BUT WHAT A VIEW (enjoy the photos). I could only imagine what it would be like to ski the bowls on the high side of this mountain chain.

We spent a while taking in the vistas and soon realized that the air was a tad thinner than we probably thought, so it was back in the gondola for the ride down to the town of Hungerburg and the connection with the Nordketten Bahn train back to town.

Of course we missed the train. So we decided to – gulp – hike down to the next stop, visit the Alpenzoo, feed the mountain rats and catch our breath. The fraulein at the restaurant said it would be a nice easy 15 minute walk that we’d really enjoy. OBVIOUSLY she didn’t speak English very well.

30 minutes later, I took a short video and wiped out on the downhill slope. Fortunately the cameras were unharmed. But we were both becoming quite exhausted, only briefly visiting the zoo and then practically crawling back up to the train station for the ride home. It was a precursor for our planned high country hikes in Switzerland, but a necessary reminder that gravity is good, when taken in moderation!

NOW, SANE PEOPLE WOULD HAVE CALLED IT A DAY, TAKEN A NAP AND HAD A NICE DINNER. BUT, AS YOU KNOW, WE ARE FAR FROM SANE.

There was still a few hours left on this Fourth of July, so we hopped on the tram and headed to the other side of Innsbruck to Berghisel, site of the Olympic Ski Jumping stadium, and still one of the premiere sporting venues in the Alps. From town, the ski jump ramp is visible so clearly, it appears to be overlooking the city no matter where you are.

That’s because IT’S UP ON TOP OF A BIG HILL! Nobody told us that. The transit map shows a bus stop and a tram stop at Berghisel. It didn’t show an elevation map… and with barking dogs and mooing calves, we were in no mood to do another uphill shlep.

But, there was no tomorrow. And the Olympic rings beckoned. So… up we started again, holding on to the guardrails for support all the way. Finally, as we rounded the corner at the top of the trail, we saw a bus leaving. And I thought being chased by sheep was the dumbest moment of the day.

OK, enough kvetching. The ski jump stadium was fabulous. If you’ve ever seen ski jumping from Innsbruck on TV, you’ll see a shot of a jumper in midair with the entire town of Innsbruck in the background. That’s the view we had. And unlike our visit to the Olympic Village in Munich, there was nothing negative about being there. The torches were there, along with a monument to all medal winners in the 1964 and 1986 games in Innsbruck.

We were so tired, I don’t know how we got back to the hotel. But by the time we got there, it was raining hard.

NEXT STOP - Zurich

Day 6 - Innsbruck

Before we took this trip, we had planned out every day in every city ... except Innsbruck. That was because we have come to depend on European guide/ hippie/nerd /genius Rick Steves for suggestions both mainstream and off the beaten path. So far, I think about 90% of his recommendations have panned out for us. But we couldn't find anything by Rick for Innsbruck, so we figured we'd do it bareback.

After a very emotional few days in Munich and Salzburg, a couple of days with no agenda or itinerary sounded pretty good.

Innsbruck proved to be a great place to platz.

Of course, it wasn't that easy. Upon arrival at the train station, we promptly got lost and spent an hour wandering around aimlessly while truck drivers and sunbathers tried to give us directions and we tried to understand why, if all Europeans were supposed to speak Englisch, we found the only 10 people who didn't. (In truth, I'm positively embarrassed we Americans are so linguistically challenged ... I guess we need more Bible in our schools and less education, if possible! But that's another discussion.)

The one thing that became apparent as we shlepped our bags down the street was that Innsbruck is surrounded by HUNDREDS of BIG MOUNTAINS. Most of them were obscured by thick black clouds, but I couldn't get over the forboding, imposing Alps and the way they seemed to crowd the people of this ancient city into a single green valley. The black clouds made it look almost surreal. Though none are as big as the Rockies, they sure seem bigger, sharper and, well, rockier. Maybe that has something to do with the difference in altitude between base and summit. Innsbruck isn't a mile high like Denver, or 6,000 ft. high like Santa Fe.

We spent the afternoon exploring the old city of Innsbruck and the black clouds became a very heavy rainstorm, which continued until evening. So after all the feelings we'd had in Munich and Salzburg, we had a new feeling in Innsbruck. We felt ... WET!



Took a bunch of pictures, had a very nice dinner -- including something that resembled matzo ball soup (except the knedel was full of bacon!) -- and went home hoping that the skies would clear and we'd be able to get up into the mountain villages overlooking Innsbruck the next day.



As the clouds began to clear and the peaks began to peek through the sunset, I began to think that I'd be nuts to actually try to haul my somewhat sedentary self up higher than two or three flights of stairs.

NEXT -- I am nuts!

Day 5 - The Sound of Music Tour

A Little Cheese Mit Your Strudel?

Unlike the tour of Dachau, I felt no deep seeded moral imperative to take the "Sound of Music" (SOM) tour in Salzburg. But just the same, I knew I just had to do it.

Sound of Music was my grandmother's favorite musical and when the film came out in 1965, she took all the grandkids to see it. I'd played tunes from that musical in various bands and orchestras throughout my life and no matter how "gay" my sons call me, I LIKE musicals, dammit!

Besides, the SOM Tour gave us a chance to take an intimate - 6 people - guided tour of Salzburg and the Lake District. We'd get to see some small non-touristy (allegedly) Austrian villages, lunch by one of the lakes and a luge ride up in the mountains. To get all of that, even the most self-conscious would endure a visit to the places where they shot the movie and listen to "Do Re Mi" as you bounced through the high Alpine meadows.

Our guide, Cathy, a young Viennese woman who'd moved to Salzburg and learned her English in Scotland, began the tour by telling the six of us that this would be as cheesy a thing as we'd ever done and it also would be a great time. She was right on both counts.

We began the day with some outstanding views of old Salzburg (see slide show below). Then we visited Leopoldskron, the palace on the lake that was one of the two homes used as the Von Trapp mansion in the film. Following that, we saw Helbrunn Castle and the gazebo where they shot the song "Sixteen Going on Seventeen." I was beginning to feel a little goofy by then.

We then headed out to the Lake District, taking the "scenic route," a narrow one-lane road, through idyllic farmlands full of cows and goats, etc. Cathy gave us a ton of great historical information along the way; one of the better guides I've ever had.

Also, she had the drive timed perfectly. As we climbed into the mountains, she pushed the play button on the CD player at the right moment so that when we emerged into the high meadows, Julie Andrews began singing "The Hills Are Alive..." I couldn't help laughing. The cheese had set in for the rest of the day. While it is positively beautiful up there -- looking, smelling, sounding -- mixing it with the soundtrack from SOM was somewhat volatile. I turned back to the Canadian men whose wives had dragged them onto the tour just to make sure they hadn't slit their wrists. (They were fighting over the razor blade!).

Watching them cringe was as fun as the tour itself.



Before we hit Lake Wolfgang (named after you know how), we stopped for a luge run. Thank God Genevieve voted to go because the four Canadians were rather sheepish about it. But three of them did take the ride. It was a LOT longer and HELL OF A LOT higher than the one I'd taken earlier in the week at Tegelberg, but a great ride...maybe when we get to Innsbruck we can take a real bobsled run. (RIGHT!)

Next, we saw several of the lakes in the Lake District, starting with Wolfgangsee, which we viewed from a balcony of a cafe. It was still only about 11am, so we got cakes and strudel. The Canadians had their chocolate cake with beer... go figure! I had a strudel, but frankly the one we had at the cafeteria at Dachau was much better. (What a day that was!)
The lovely lakes led to the village of St. Gilgan, home of the Basilika Mondsee, the church where they filmed the wedding of the Captain and Maria. An interesting church -- they LOVE their churches over here -- and the first time I'd ever seen a mummified bishop in a glass case. Pretty weird and quirky, just like the whole day was.

And totally delightful.

Next stop -- INNSBRUCK! Enjoy the photos and the video!

Day 4 - Mozart was nuts!

We arrived in Salzburg around noon and immediately fell in love with this historic and cultured town. Last year, we visited Vienna and it was hands down my favorite stop on our entire trek through Europe, but Salzburg is a completely different kind of Austria.

Granted, it's a tourist trap with the Sound of Music mishugas, Mozart souvenirs, etc., but we didn't mind getting trapped one little bit.

First thing we noticed from our hotel room was the view of the old town, the impressive Hohensalzburg Fortress overlooking the town and the mountains in the background. Yes, some of them still have snow. We saw some of the smaller mountains of the Alps on our trip to Fussen, but these rocks are significantly bigger. (The REAL big ones are coming next week in Innsbruck and Switzerland, and I'm sure Genevieve will want to climb all of them!)

Actually that was the second thing we noticed. Our hotel, Hotel Europa, is a 4-star floppenhaus (air conditioned) that's part of the Austria Trend chain, a reputable group across Central and Eastern Europe. They pride themselves in their connection with the more exotic locations in the world and sport photos of outworldly locations on walls throughout the place. Outside of our door hung one such photo of an exotic location -- FORT WORTH, TEXAS!

But I digress...

We couldn't wait to get onto the street and into old Salzburg and dropped our bags and almost sprinted to the bridge over the Salzach River. This town was founded sometime in the 7th century. They said it was mostly Baroque, but from the looks of things they'd had plenty of money through the ages. Incredible palaces, narrow well-kept streets full of shops, restaurants, BAKERIES and coffee shops and a boatload of churches built seemingly on top of each other.

The main platz, Mozartplatz, is one of a series of plazas which lead from the Salzach River through the old town. Of course, the centerpiece is a statue of Wolfie himself. He lived in Salzburg until he was 24 and left for Vienna because the archbishop-prince didn't dig his sound!

Mozart was nuts. This place is super!

Those Salzburger archbishop-princes (odd mix of clergy and royalty) erected magnificent cathedrals and palaces and monuments to themselves, carving into the heart of the mountain itself.

We wandered the streets all day, culminating with a visit to the Hohensalzburg Fortress where we enjoyed some positively knockout views of the old city and the entire area. You can view some of that in the slide show below.

SALZBURG IS AWESOME. Tomorrow, we head out to the Lake District and the Sound of Music Tour. (No, I'm not gay, but sometimes I wonder!)

Stay tuned!

Day 3 - Dachau

We knew we had to go. Visiting one of the camps had been something I'd thought about virtually every day of my life. It meant something different but no less important to Genevieve, who hadn't grown up in the shadow of the Holocaust.

We'd visit the museums in Washington, Dallas, and Houston (Genevieve had). All were designed to capture the feel of the suffering. Dachau needed no such designing.

Felt pretty much the way I thought I'd feel afterward. Not angry. Not vengeful. Not a victim. Determined. The take-away was simple: Never Again. Period.

So rather than dwell on it any more, pleas just look through some of the less disturbing photos we shot.




Ironically, we completed the day at another rather bizarre location but absolutely in character with our trip to Dachau. We visited the 1972 Olympic Park. What a gorgeous park and the city of Munich has done such a fabulous job repurposing the Olympic venues as recreational facilities for the people. We saw the pool where Mark Spitz won his 7 gold medals and then thought about the Israeli athletes who were taken there. (OY! WHAT A DAY WE HAD!)

By the time we got back to our neighborhood, most of the restaurants were closed. All we could find was some ARABIC food. And, without meaning any disrespect to the day we'd had, after a day of Dachau, Munich 72 Olympics and Arabs, we were expecting our room to explode. After the dinner we had, it did!

Next stop SALZBURG!

Day 2 -- Fussen (and fightin!)

"When you wish upon a star..."

When Disney built his castle at Disneyland, he modeled it after "Mad" King Ludwig II's Schloss Neuschwanstein (the new swan stone). Ludwig II, according to all reports, modeled the castle after his fantasy obsession with Richard Wagner, his friend and who knows what else.

Be that as it may, (Wagner was the man) the castles of Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau near Fussen, on the Austrian border, was our destination on Monday.

We wanted to do a little different tour of the region than most folks do, so we booked with Mike's Bike Tours, recommended by Rick Steves (our European savior for the most part) and who offered a bus ride to the castles, a hike through the waterfall gorge below Neuschwanstein, a bike ride to Swan Lake (Schwansee) and the chance to ride an alpine luge. Expecting disaster? Knowing us, you should. But, it was awesome!

First sign that this would be a different kind of trip was the guy behind the signin desk at the Discover Bavaria desk. Guy was wearing a UT cap and an Academy fishing shirt. Called himself Tex, and in fact, had grown up in Houston and attended UH. Throughout the two hour trip down to the Fussen area, he quoted Kinky Friedman (REALLY!) and told rather offcolor jokes, which caused the chaperone of the 25 high school students from Washington to kick his ass rather unceremoniously.

Once we arrived, we were dumbstruck by our first real sight of the Alps... dotted with two majestic castles and a bunch of similarly dumbstruck tourists.

Up we hiked... huffing and puffing... and Tex suggested that older heavier types take the bus up the mountain. Stubbornly I resisted until we got to the cutoff into the vertical part of the trail. Tucked tail and ran back to the bus stop while Genevieve intrepidly climbed with Tex and the younger, fitter hikers. She wasn't very happy at the top, sucking wind and disappointed that the hike up didn't have any kind of view. She should have taken the bus.

After another 200 vertical steps through Neuschwanstein, (I think now that they called him "Mad" King Ludwig because he didn't build an elevator in the place. Hell, I'd be mad too! I WA mad!) we were both winded and happy to be hiking down. That's my specialty. Aided by gravity, we tracked a long waterfall all the way back to the base of the mountain. Of course, after all the water we drank (and a beer!) the waterfall had a predictable effect on me. Could have made a commercial for Flomax!

Next came the luge. Whoopee. I would say that I soiled myself, but I already had. So we needn't elaborate.

Next came the bike ride to Swan Lake. Very nice, marginally challenging ride to a freezing cold Alpine lake. Poured down rain all the way back. They provided us with "emergency rain ponchos" as you can see on Genevieve at left, but they didn't keep us dry and quite frankly, I felt like dry cleaning.

Dried out in the bus on the way back. After a couple of German beers, the Kinky Friedman jokes didn't hurt any more.

Enjoy the photos!



Wrapped up the day with dinner at the Augustiner Brauhall... a well antlered restaurant but subdued compared with the rowdiness of the Hofbrauhaus. It was perfect.

Next stop, Dachau.

The Longest Day

NOTE TO FRIENDS AND FAMILY -- We were unable to connect to the blogger site in Munich, so you're going to get the first three posts all today...

It had been a brutal week at least for half of this scouting party. Began the week in New Jersey, caught a nasty cold, finished the week in Seattle and got back to Austin in time to leave again for Munich.

I'm sure there will be better commentary once the scrambled eggs in the head are sorted out but right now, I remember the day began with Ambien and ended with Beer. Other events did transpire -- street performers. noisy neighbors on the plane and a performing dachshund that refused to perform and yes there is a vomitorium at the Hofbrauhaus -- but for now...