Innsbruck and Salzburg, Austria – 06/17 – 06/19

(Michelle) We arrived in Innsbruck at 6 am on a Sunday morning after taking an overnight train from Rome. Finally, a town in Europe that I have been to and TJ hasn’t. Innsbruck is just as beautiful in the summer as it is in the winter (I was there for skiing last time). There aren’t many “sights” in Innsbruck, which is fine. We were looking forward to a little relaxation. We went out for breakfast, where saw a group of guys drinking beer who looked like they hadn’t been to sleep yet. Definitely not unusual in some European towns, but I didn’t expect to see that in sleepy Innsbruck. We did some laundry and then hung out at a cool little beer garden in a the palace gardens. Note for the future – in the summer the town of Innsbruck sponsors free guided mountain hikes. If we had stayed there two days, that would have been high on the list of things to do.

We took the slightly slower train to Salzburg, as it goes a different (and allegedly more scenic) route than the fast train. It was worth it as it is such a pretty train ride.

Salzburg… We spent our first evening in Salzburg trying to figure out what to do about the broken computer (as you read earlier under “Meltdown”). We had to spend a lot of time at a somewhat shady internet /international phone store. I will now have the Fujistu-Siemen jingle permanently embedded in my brain from the time spent on hold.

The next day we went in search of a good Sound of Music tour. This is something TJ was really looking forward to. It was just as cheesy as you would expect, but we were fully prepared for that. Afterwards, we found a crazy big beer garden, so we had a beer and some snacks there. Back at the hostel bar, we were enjoying one more pint when we saw a girl hitting on a dude who looked like he was wishing he was elsewhere. TJ and I took upon ourselves to save him, so we waited until she took one pause to breathe (this was a pretty long wait) and then butted into their conversation. It must have been the right move, as they immediately joined us at our table. So we stayed for another pint and we then got to meet “Middle Aged Toilet Flushing Man”. This guy is traveling to every 10th longitude at various places on the planet to photograph a flushing toilet at each location. Bizarre.

(TJ) I’ll apologize in advance since I have a feeling that some of these recollections are going to be relatively short from me since all of this stuff happened over a month ago.

Innsbruck-Nice scenery, I think that it would be a much livelier place in the winter, there is a ski jump less than a mile from downtown and ski resorts in every direction.

Salzburg- It really is as picturesque as it is in the “Sound of Music” even more so with out the Nazi flags up in the town. Since Michelle suggested that we go to Salzburg and I was subjected to as a child to watching the sound of music hundreds of times, I figured what the hell we’ll do the tour. The tour was pretty laughable; mostly facades of houses or driving around and the guide saying that this was such and such mountain in such in such scene that’s the lane were she skipped, blah, blah. The most interesting story was about when filming one scene with the children and Maria in a Canoe and the Canoe flips over as scripted. Apparently all of the children could swim accept for the smallest child. Julie Andrews was supposed to fall out with the smallest child but fell out of the opposite side of the canoe; hence the child nearly drowned which you can see in the film. It took the whole rest of the day to calm her down. Michelle and I were apparently the only ones on the bus that found this funny as people turned around to see who was laughing. Another fun part of the tour was when a girl a couple of rows in front of us puked in the bus aisle on do to the twisting roads and the terribleness of the tour we were on, good times. Fortunately we were able to buy beer on the bus which made it better.

I also bought a Frisbee and made Michelle learn how to throw a Frisbee. It only took her two hours to learn and the countless flowers that were mangled by errant throws in the city garden.