Innsbruck, Austria
Visiting the Alps has been on our bucket list for awhile and something we definitely wanted to do when in Europe. The Alps are huge of course, but the Austrian area made the most sense for us traveling overland from Poland. So, after a visit in Vienna, we headed to Innsbruck. Innsbruck is a small city that lies in a valley within the Alps. As the site of both the ‘64 and ‘76 Winter Olympics, it is known as a mecca for skiing, hiking, and extreme mountiain-biking. We were all looking forward to playing here for a week!
This was our first experience with the highly-regarded Austrian train line, OBB, as we took a four-hour high-speed journey into the Alps. They scenery during this ride into the mountains was worth the price of the ticket itself. As a typical 10-year old, Zach quickly grew bored of and stuck his head in a book (“it’s just trees and mountains, Dad”), but Trish and I had our faces plastered to the oversized windows for most of the four hours and kept pointing out the beautiful views. We learned that the trick to really catching the view while traveling at 150mph is to look far ahead and then turn your head as you pass. Then you exclaim - “Did you see that?” to each other. This is the same basic strategy for watching the Indy 500, by the way.
We stayed in an apartment on the outskirts of town and bought a weekly bus pass for transportation around the city. They have a convenient Peak-to-Peak line which, as the name implies, runs between the base stations for the opposite peaks of the valley. We did four hikes over the course of our six days here.
For our first hike, we went up the Haefelkar Station via a series of 3 cable car rides to get to the summit. We then started trekking from that point around the summit with views that were amazing. When we decided to head down, I had the brilliant idea to hike down to the mid-station rather than ride the cable car. That was a mistake as we ended up on a very steep trail down with lots of loose rocks. Once committed, no turning back. We made it down safely with a near-mutiny from the troops, but celebrated with a beer at the mid-station. We were still high enough that the gliders would silently buzz us - that was so cool!
One of my favorite days actually started as a comedy of errors, when Zach and I took the Peak-to-Peak bus to the Nordkette cable car. while Trish took a train trip to Salzburg to visit some film locations of some old movie. :) This was our first time on that bus route and at some point, I thought we missed our stop. So we got out at the next stop, which was along a country rode to walk back. Luckily, the return bus came by within minutes and we took it back to our missed stop. Ended up, what I thought was the right stop was actually a post office in a small village, and not the lift station. Argh, those long German names were so similar, yet obviosuly not the same. Eventually the next bus came by and we finally got to the Nordkette base lift which was used as one of the Olympic course runs.
As a quick aside, this was one of the very few times that Google Maps failed us on this trip, and who can blame it. It had none of these transportation links under it’s typically rock-solid public transport tab. Earlier when we bought our bus passes, I’d failed to grab the paper bus schedule, because who needs paper?
When we finally arrived at the base of the mountain, I was surprised to see that when the ski slopes are not being used by the skiers, they are used as cow pastures. Cows, each with a bell on, sleeping alongside ski lifts was just odd to me. But what a great idea if you think about it.
So, Zach and I headed up the cable car to the mid-station where we planned to take another cable car to the summit. From there is was a 3 hour hike across the summit to another peak and we’d take a different set of cable cars down to that base, where a dedicated hiking shuttle bus would get us back to the original Nordkette base in order to catch the Peak city bus home. As I write this, the chances of this all working that day was almost nil. I think we lucked out because as we came up to the mid-station platform, the wind had the gondola at a 45-degree angle. We stepped out and walked across to catch the car to the summit when the operator ran up and pointed to Zach worriedly. Through a combination of charades and Google Translator, I found out they expected even worst winds at the summit and he was strongly suggesting I would be a bad parent to take a kid up there. So… hike cancelled after all that, or at least changed as we decided we’d just hike back down, which was fun but not as exciting as we’d planned.
All was not ruined though. We came across a tavern on the way down. It was closed, but had an Honor Bar with a trough of cold water filled with beer and soda along with a paybox. Wow, I had heard of these, but never seen one. We settled in alongside a few other hikers who had also had their plans cancelled to enjoy a drink before heading back down.
The remainder of our hikes were less eventful, though still amazing. We hiked among the valleys and ran into herds of sheep grazing on the slopes and at the lower levels, the sounds of the cow bells in the distant, was ever-present. We also very happy when we came to the summit of one very long hike, to find a tavern that was open and served the best sausage and beer we’d tasted in Austria - perhaps somewhat due to our hunger.
A highlight of our Innsbruck stop was that our good friend Marie was meeting us for a day. Marie was up in Munich for OctoberFest and took the train down for the day. This was our first lengthy conversation with a native English speaker outside our family in over 2 months. Let’s just say that I am pretty sure we overwhelmed her! Marie was a great sport as we ate our way literally around Innsbruck with coffee and strudel on one peak, lunch at another, and one of our favorite dinners in Austria at the restaurant right next to our apartment. What a great treat it was to share part of this trip with a friend from home.
Probably obvious by now, but we absolutely fell in love with Innsbruck and the surrounding area. We’ve been lucky enough to see some magnificent places on this trip, but the views, activities, and I think the “just big-enough” city, really struck a chord with both of us. Really hoping we can return some day soon.
