Inspecting Innsbruck

I checked out of Wombats and was on the train to Innsbruck by about midday. After a heavy few days in Munich I delighted in just being able to relax for a while on the train, and sunk myself into some hardcore Nintendo for a couple of hours.

I arrived in Innsbruck about 3:30, got a map from the station and headed to the hostel that was recommended in my guidebook, one of the few times I've actually used the thing! I'd asked the guy at the station where the hostels where, an he had provided me with a list. The interesting thing was, the one I expected to go to wasn't on this list, however I decided to head to the location anyway. After a half hour trek with my bag, I eventually found where the hostel should have been and quickly realised why it wasn't on the list provided me by the information booth. Basically it had been completely gutted and was in the process of some pretty severe renovation. Cursing my poor forethought I wandered back into the city and went to the first place on the list recommended to me by the info guy. This turned out to be a great decision, and whilst it was quite a small hostel, the beds were nice and the lady running it very friendly. She provided me with a bunch of pages about what to do and see whilst in Innsbruck, which restaurants were decent and a better map. I had a chat with the couple that had checked in at the same time as me, and then set about organising the canyoning excursion; the primary reason that I had come to Innsbruck. I found the mob that were responsible for organising it and booked myself in for the next day.

Once I'd made my way back to my hostel I found there was another guy in my room now, a German by the name of Christian. We got to chatting and then decided it was time to get dinner and something to drink, and ended up at the local beer garden known as "Hofgarten". Austrians speak German, so I asked Christian what the translation of the name would mean, after seeing the term "Hof" in quite a lot. He couldn't come up with a literal translation, but it seems that "Hof" means essentially encircled by something. So "Hofgarten", as best I could figure it, was an encircled garden. At any rate, we sat down and ordered a couple of the local brews, and Christian then proceeded to translate the menu for me. We both settled on the ribs, which were absolutely brilliant. Well roasted with a great sour cream dipping sauce, we were both treated to a rack and a half of excellent meat, a meal that had us both bursting. We had another beer at the place and then moved to another bar known as "Treibhaus", that had a small salsa dancing section downstairs, but we felt comfortable enough sitting at the bar in the large upstairs area. We were there until close, at which point we both stumbled back to the hostel.

This particular hostel provided breakfast in a different manner to most. The owner of the hostel was also the owner of the cafe on the ground floor, so rather than eating in a common area, we were simply given a ticket to exchange at the cafe. This resulted in the best hostel breakfast I've had yet, of cereal, coffee, bread rolls with some incredible home made jam followed up by a freshly made pastry. Christian and I met up in the morning and enjoyed this bountiful meal before I headed out to the rendezvous point where I'd be picked up for the canyoning excursion.

It turns out that the group was all American, and the pickup point being a university dormitory housed 250 American students currently studying abroad. I quickly realised this is why I'd seen so many yanks at the Hofgarten the previous evening. They were studying all sorts of stuff, from engineering to arts, and the group ended up being me, 10 american guys and one american chick. A minibus was required to get to the canyoning area, which wasn't in Innsbruck itself, but a nearby town about half an hour away. We payed our fee (85 euro, not cheap!), were handed out wetsuits, harnesses and boots which, despite the cold weather, had us all sweating almost instantly. This proved for another short, but uncomfortable bus ride to the point at which the canyoning tour was to start.

The beginning was a downhill hike (in wetsuits, quite a bizarre sight) through some pretty rough terrain. There were a lot of steep hills to climb across which involved us attached our harness to a steel cable that had been previously slung across the cliff face. Eventually we made it to the stream that was cutting through the mountainside, and our first entry into this was down a naturally formed rock-waterslide into a pool of (very cold) stream water. This was a very welcome relief to the hot wetsuits, and from this point forward the temperature maintained a much more reasonable level due to the constant jumping or sliding into pools of water. The excursion lasted for about 3 hours which involved small amount of hiking, climbing, abseiling down rock walls and jumping and sliding into pools of water. The most exhilarating bit would have been the 15 meter jump into a deep pool of water. This was originally going to be a 10 meter jump, but some of the Americans found a high vantage point, and after a bit of convincing the canyoning guides allowed those who were interested to jump from there. Standing at the edge of a cliff face looking many meters down into what seems to be a very small target was quite a harrowing experience, and despite what you may thing, hitting water from that height isn't the softest of landings, but it was definitely worth it!

The whole time the two guides were snapping photos and taking videos. I have a dvd full of them in my bag, and assuming it doesn't get snapped in two itself during my travels, I'll be sure to upload some. The whole thing ended with a schnapps and a beer back at the base camp, and everyone agreed it had been an awesome experience.

I ended up back in Innsbruck around 6, hobbling a little bit as I'd jarred my left leg slightly whilst climbing out of one of the pools. I met up with Christian and two other guys who'd moved into our room while I was out. An Australian guy, Brody, and a Finnish guy by the name of something that sounds like "Yoho". We went out to a very small Indian restaurant with about 3 tables for dinner for what was basically a home cooked meal. The lady serving and cooking the food did so from the counter behind us, and we would have been able to watch the whole process unfold before our eyes if we weren't concentrating on our beers and chatting about each others day. After the meal we headed to an Irish pub for a round and then to Hofgartens for more drinks. Hofgartens had an excellent deal of 6 beers for 10 euro or something similar, so we were able to get through a few of them. Christian and Yoho left around midnight, but Brody and I terrorised the local womens of the place, albeit unsuccessfully, for the next few hours before calling it a night.

Being my last day the following morning, I had a quick breakfast with Christian and Brody and then said my goodbyes. It happened that Brody was to be in Salzburg the next day and we made plans to meet up there.

My day was essentially the Innsbruck sightseeing day, and I wandered around the town taking in their tourist attractions. Their most famous being the "Golden Roof", which has got to be the lamest most famous tourist attraction I've ever seen. It's a fairly small roof that, whilst being fairly gold in color, is made out of copper and is certainly not that large. Why it has become their most famous attraction I have no idea, and I think their tourist PR should take a good hard look into how they're promoting it.

I also checked out the "Schloss Ambras", a fairly unimpressive castle in a very nice park. I saw a variety of duck fowl in the park, including some black swans that they had imported from Australia. From here, running out of time, I quickly made my way in the lightly falling rain to the Alpine Zoo which was pretty cool. The part that wasn't cool was the kilometer hike up the extremely steep hill due to my missing of the bus. The Alpine Zoo in Innsbruck is apparently the highest in the world, a fact made abundantly clear from this little trek. I arrived extremely damp, and not primarily due to the rain.

I only had an hour and a bit to get through the whole place, but managed to do so. There were a lot of mountain goat style animals and some absolutely massive birds, various types of eagles and hawks I think (all of the signs where in German). There was a farm area with cows, pigs, regular goats and the like, which I can only assume are there for the Europeans which may not see such animals very often. Certainly this area was fairly boring for myself, as these animals are all very common back home. They had a couple of bears and some wolves that were pretty neat, but I got the biggest kick out of seeing some moose. I've never seen one in real life, and I may have been heard to utter quietly "Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!".

I caught the last bus prudent back to the hostel to retrieve my bag and made my way down to the train station to catch the next available locomotive to Salzburg, my cabin populated with some Germans having a very loud and apparently hilarious conversation. I got there around 8PM, checked in and spent the rest of the evening chasing up some food and doing my washing whilst chatting with an American chick waiting for the dryer to finish. I managed to get to sleep about 1AM, which has become an early time for me over the past few months, and got about 2 hours in before 5 extremely large Russian guys came bursting in the room, switching on lights and creating quite a ruckus. There seemed to be one guy in control of the group (ironically the smallest of the bunch), who cracked a beer from the slab they had in the room and after half an hour of a lot of noise seemed to tell them to go to bed and left the room. Then, at about 7:30AM, the same guy hammered on the door a few times, and obviously having been given a key from one of his crew, burst back into the room, switched the lights on and proceeded to crack yet another beer. I have no idea what this guy did all night, but he looked exactly the same as he had the few hours previously, and I don't think he was the kind of gentlemen for whom sleep was very high on the priority list. The ruckus started all over again, and deciding that I wasn't going to be able to sleep further that morning I gathered what I needed to have a shower and headed up there.

I organised some breakfast at the hostel. They offered an "Austrian Breakfast" that involved for a couple euro some great scrambled eggs with ham, tomato and various herbs, and by the time I got back to my room an hour or so later the Russian mob had departed the hostel. It also appeared that one of them had dropped some kind of important-looking documentation, not a passport, but similar kind of identification. There was also a fifty euro note and some currency I wasn't able to identify. Being the good citizen I am, I made sure that the ID got to reception for safekeeping.

Innsbruck was fun, but unfortunately for the most part, except earlier on the first day it was either cloudy or raining. This meant I couldn't get any decent photos of the incredible mountains surrounding the place, but at least I was able to see them for a short while all the same. It truly was spectacular, with enormous peaks surrounding the little town. The canyoning was great and I recommend anyone interested in giving it a go, although apparently Interlaken in Switzerland is a little better (but probably also a lot more expensive!). There aren't a lot of sights to get through, and I get the feeling that Innsbruck and its advertised surrounding "Holiday Villages" is more for those looking to chill out for a while. There are great hikes available around (not that I did any), and apparently it's a great base for those wanting to go skiing and snowboarding during the winter months in the Austrian alps.