Innsbruck and Salzburg, Austria

After Laura got home from work on Friday, we took off for the 2 hour drive down to Innsbruck, Austria. Again, the views on this drive were absolutely amazing. About 30 minutes into the drive, we crossed into Austria, and drove through the Tyrolean Alps all the way to Innsbruck. Very little of this drive was on the Autobahn, so it was a couple hours through winding roads and tunnels to get past the mountains. Unfortunately, we stopped for gas before we crossed into Austria, because we were told it is more expensive there. I think we were mis-informed. While gas may be more expensive in Switzerland, it is almost a dollar cheaper in Austria than it is in Germany. Oh well, we learned our lesson and filled up in Austria on the way back. Along with the impressive snow-capped mountains, there were several castles (some still in good shape, some just ruins) that we saw on the way. We could have stopped for photos every ten minutes on this drive, but we limited it to just a couple times, as you can see with the pictures of the Ehrenberg Castle in Reutte, Austria (very close to the German border) and Schloss Fernstensee (schloss is the German word for castle), just after we went through the main mountain pass.

We arrived in Innsbruck at about 7:00pm, in time to catch a couple hours of daylight before dinner. But we wasted quite a bit of time trying to find a place to park. Our hotel was on a pedestrian-only road, so we had to find street parking elsewhere. After two failed attempts with parking in illegal spots, the hotel receptionist felt bad for us and told us to just go in their garage a couple blocks away, and they waived the fee. We stayed at a very nice bed & breakfast-style hotel (more because of location, nice hotels are all relative in Europe) called Hotel Weisses Kreuz (White Cross), in the "Altstadt" (Old Town)/main square of the town. We were on the top floor, with a balcony out back that looked out over the mountains. The hotel is also proud of the fact that "Leopald Mozart and his son Wolfgang Amadeus stayed here on their first journey to Italy in 1976," as described on the plaque by the front entrance.

The feel of the city in Innsbruck was outstanding. It had the typical European narrow cobblestone streets, and with the weather still nice enough, plenty of tables setup for outdoor dining, bars, and cafes. The city felt very quaint, though large enough (population 125,000) to be a two-time host of the Winter Olympics - in 1964 and 1976. I have yet to figure out why they had the Olympics there twice in just a 12 year span, but with the mountains literally right there in Innsbruck, I'm sure it made a great host city.

After dropping our stuff in the hotel room, we tried to keep up with my Dad's fast-pace to see some of the sites in the city before it got dark. My mom was persistent enough to check every single door, but we couldn't get into the main cathedral, the Dom Saint James. Right on the main square by our hotel was the City Tower, and the Golden Roof, two of Innsbruck's major tourist attractions. I'm not sure I quite get the significance of why they made the roof gold, but it's a building that really stands out on this street, and was built in 1420 as the residence of the Tyrolean sovereigns (Innsbruck is the capital of the state of Tyrol).

After just wandering around the quaint streets of Innsbruck for a bit, it started to get dark and we were ready for dinner. We had a great meal, outside at a traditional Tyrolean restaurant called the Goldener Adler. The Goldener Adler is also a hotel, and they too have a plaque outside commemorating the stay of Mozart, along with Emperor Maximilian. After dinner, my parents wanted to get some ice cream, but Laura and I opted to sit at one of the outdoor cafe's and have a drink. This allowed us a bit of time alone, and for me to sample one of the local brews (Zipfer was on tap here) in a very nice setting. But they started shutting down all of the cafes at 11:00pm, so we weren't there too long before heading back to the room.

We had a long day planned on Saturday, so we got up pretty early and took advantage of a pretty big breakfast buffet at the hotel. The Ricker was a bit antsy in the morning, and he had already been out exploring more of Innsbruck before we got up at 7:30am. He went to the cathedral that we got shut out of the night before, and said it was quite impressive. So after checking out of the hotel, the rest of us took a look inside the cathedral for a minute before hitting the road. There was actually a service going on, so it was a bit awkward to be in there, but it was nice inside.

After that, we drove to the outskirts of the town to see a couple of the old Olympic sites. We found the Bergisel Stadium, which is where they had the ski jumping events. They still use the ski jump annually for other events. I would say it wasn't all that worth it to go up there, except there was a great view of the city from up above. We also drove past the Olympic Ice Sport Center, the arena that held events for hockey, figure skating, etc. back in 1964 and 1976.

We also saw the soccer stadium, which I am hoping to be back to visit again next month. Austria and Switzerland are co-hosting the Euro2008 soccer tournament beginning in June (http://euro2008.uefa.com/index.html), a huge event here in Europe between the top 16 national teams in Europe (well, not necessarily the top 16 - really the 16 teams that qualified, England not being one of them). There are host sites in various cities throughout Austria and Switzerland, Innsbruck being one of them. As you can see from the picture with the countdown, and the many flags, etc. all over the city, they are very excited about the event in Innsbruck (our next destination, Salzburg, is also one of the sites, but they didn't seem to be as excited for it as Innsbruck). Anyway, if all goes as planned, I'll be meeting my friend Brad in Innsbruck next month for a match between Russia and Sweden. It's not the most exciting matchup, compared to some of the other countries involved, but it is a good meeting spot for Brad and I, since he will be living in Florence, Italy by then and hopes to have a week off from work. I won't know for a few more weeks whether or not he can definitely come, but it should be cool if he's able to. I also have no idea how we'll get tickets, so it could just be us meeting there to take in the atmosphere, and then hopefully he'll come up to Germany from there. Innsbruck is such a cool town, so I'm really looking forward to going back to spend more time there. What I'd really love to do is go back in the winter time, when everything is covered in snow, and it's ski season!

The main point in going to Innsbruck was for my mom to go to Swarovski's Kristallwelten tour/museum, in nearby Wattens. My mom is a big collector of the Swarovski crystal figures, so I promised I'd take her there if they came out to visit. So after looking at the Olympic facilities, we drove about 20 minutes out to Wattens, stopping quickly at the Schloss Ambras (pictured here) on the way there. To put it nicely, I would not recommend anybody I know to visit this tourist trap. Kristallwelten was the biggest waste of time and money I've witnessed in a long time. I guess I should've taken my friend Carl's advice on this one (he went last year and gave a big thumbs down), but it looked so neat on their web-site, and my mom really wanted to see it - but even she was disappointed. For 9.50€, we walked through the lamest exhibits, which were only partially using Swarovski crystals, before getting funneled out to the unimpressive Swarovski store (the one in Innsbruck looked neater to me). The only room I thought was remotely worthwhile was the dome pictured below. The "Giant" at the entrance wasn't even as large or impressive as the web-site made it out to be. Also, Kristallwelten uses Primavera Life (Laura's company) essential oils in some of their exhibit rooms. So, there was no history of the company, and no tour of the manufacturing plant next door. I had to ask at an information booth why we couldn't see the plant, and he told me it is all top-secret, and he has never even stepped foot in the door. Apparently, it's so secretive and no other company has figured it out how to cut the crystal the way Swarovski does. So only a few of the higher-ups in the company know the entire process - even the plant workers are only able to see the part of the process they work on, their badge won't allow them into the other rooms. Because my mom is a Swarovski member, we were invited into the VIP lounge at the end of the tour, which is really just a hospitality room so you can take your time to look through the catalogs and purchase the over-priced crystals. Really, it's more expensive to buy this stuff (partly because it's in Euros) at the store right next to the plant than it is to buy it in the United States. We did, however, take advantage of the snacks and champagne for a bit in the VIP lounge before heading out, but my mom wasn't even interested in purchasing anything there. As overrated as Kristallwelten was, I guess I can say I'm glad we went, because otherwise we probably would not have discovered what a great city Innsbruck was. Innsbruck turned out to be mine and Laura's favorite part of the weekend trip, and I would recommend it to anybody - I wish we would've spent more time there, instead of going to Kristallwelten.

After Kristallwelten, we got back in the car for the two hour drive east toward Salzburg, Austria, another city my mom really wanted to go to because it is the scene for The Sound of Music, her favorite movie. We had actually planned to visit Berchtesgaden National Park (in Germany, only 30 minutes from Salzburg) on the way, but it was very cloudy and threatening to rain, so we opted to just go straight to Salzburg, and try for Berchtesgaden the next day (which also didn't happen because the weather only got worse). I had actually been to Berchtesgaden (and Salzburg) a few years ago when I visited Europe, and thought it was something worth bringing them back to. At the top of one of the peaks is the "Eagle's Nest," one of Hitler's vacation homes that was built for his 50th birthday. The view from Eagle's Nest, looking at the Alps and lakes in all directions, is amazing, but I didn't think it would be worth it unless it was a more clear day. Below is what we would have seen, a picture I took in 2005.

After bypassing Berchtesgaden, we drove directly to our hotel, Haus Lindner, in a mountain suburb with views of Salzburg. The hotel was really just somebody's private residence who rents out a few of their rooms to tourists. It was nothing special, but was cheap and we had a car to get us the 15 minutes into the city. Nobody was there when we arrived, just a note on the front door and a set of keys. So we dropped our bags inside, and went into town. We drove around a bit to find a place to park, then walked across a bridge over the Salzach River, into Salzburg. It was actually nice to park a bit away, because the view of Salzburg walking along the bridge was outstanding. When we got into town, we ran right into Mozart's Geburtshaus, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, in 1756. There is also a town square called Mozartplatz, where there is a stature of the famous composer. We then walked toward the Residenz and the main cathedral, which we went inside to look at the impressive architecture. Outside of the cathedral is a town square where we saw a game of life-size chess being played.

The Ricker was again on a mission, trying to check things off his map as we'd seen them. The main thing I remembered from Salzburg a few years ago that I recommended, was to go up to the fortress that towers over the city, the Festung Hohensalzburg ("High Salzburg Fortress"). To get up the cliff to the fortress there are two options: take a cable car, or walk. Guess which option the Ricker chose? Much to Laura's displeasure, we walked up the steps to the fortress, saving a few euros each, before we hit the entrance gate. Lucky for Laura, entrance to the fortress and the museums includes a ride down on the cable car. The views of the city from the fortress were just as spectacular as I remembered. After stopping at a couple of lookout points and taking some photos, we went through some museums that are a part of the old town within the fortress. For some reason when we were there before, we didn't go into any of these museums, so it was all new to me and we spent way more time there than I had expected. Parts of it were interesting, but to me the views were still what going up there was all about.

After we saw all we could see at Festung Hohensalzburg, we descended via the cable car, and then walked around the town a bit. Salzburg is known as a very musical city, but they also had some music festival going on in a couple of the town squares. It started to sprinkle a bit, so Laura and I opted for the Biergarten under an umbrella in front of one of the stages setup for a concert (which conveniently went on break once we sat down). I got to sample a local Salzburg brew (Stiegl), while my parents wandered around, in pursuit of finding some of the scenes from The Sound of Music. They apparently found the Abbey which played an important part of the movie, although I've never seen the movie so I wouldn't know. Anyway, it made my mom happy and the nuns were singing in the Abbey so they stayed and listened for a bit. After they came back, we tried to find a couple other things, but then just kind of wandered around some more of the very nice pedestrian-only streets. By the time it got dark, all the shops that were booming earlier in the day had closed. I was in search of another outdoor restaurant on one of the streets, but apparently those are tougher to come by in Salzburg. While Salzburg is a very nice city, and we really enjoyed it, Laura and I just got a much better feel about Innsbruck. Nonetheless, we found a little Italian restaurant where we could eat outside, on a side street alley. It had been a long day, and we were all a bit grumpy, so the food really hit the spot. The walk back to the car gave us a great view of the city at night. After that, it was back to Haus Lindner, where there was again a note on the door saying they were gone, but to pay for our stay next door in the morning.

We planned to wake up early again the next morning so we could see Berchtesgaden, before heading back to Munich to drop my parents off at the airport. But the weather, again did not cooperate so we changed our plans again. Before heading to Munich, we did find a couple more of the sites from The Sound of Music, one of them being a church where the characters in the movie got married. This one was about a 20 minute drive east to a town called Mondsee. A church session was just getting out, so we had to battle our way inside for Nance to get a look at that scene. From there, we went back into the outskirts of Salzburg, where we were able to find The Sound of Music Pavilion and gazebo from the movie. Then it was off toward Munich.