Climb Every Mountain
While Meghan was with me in Vienna, I had my final day of teaching, which was exciting. While I thoroughly enjoyed my job (for the most part), I was really looking forward to having the month of June to just hang out with my friends and do some good sightseeing!The Wednesday after Meghan left (June 6), Emily Conger (a good friend of mine from high school) arrived in Vienna. She had been traveling with her family in France and was meeting up with her boyfriend Rob a week later in Germany, and she spent the intervening time in Vienna with me! I picked her up from the airport, and it was so great to see her – it had been over a year, which neither of us could believe.
We spent a few days doing some sightseeing around the city – the first district, Stephansdom and other churches, the Belvedere (where we had some fun with some crazy statues), Café Central, and other Viennese things. One day we took a walking tour of a part of the city I’m unfamiliar with, which was fun. We also took a trip to the Naschmarkt for lunch one day, and that evening we headed to Kristina’s for a end-of-the-year farewell party, complete with slideshow (courtesy of Jen, the technology genius.) It was a fun party, but it was sad that it would be our last time all together before Jen headed back to the States.
On Thursday evening (much in the same vein as with my sister), we decided to take a weekend trip. Emily wanted to go to Bratislava, but I’d been there already and had no wish to return, so we decided instead to go to Innsbruck. I am so glad we did this, because Innsbruck probably became my second favorite city in the world (or at least Europe!)
We left early Friday afternoon, but since the trip is almost six hours, we didn’t arrive until it was getting dark. We located our hotel (walking distance from the train station), and then set out to find some dinner (harder than it sounded since we weren’t near the city center.) We finally heard tell of a pizza restaurant that stayed open late and headed in that direction. We thought we’d found it when we spotted the large neon sign of a man tossing a pizza, but when we got closer, we realized it was actually a large neon sign of a naked woman flaunting her leg, beckoning us into a nudey bar. And right next door to THAT was the pizza place (that actually had delicious food!)
On Saturday, we took the street car into the city center, where we took the Lonely Planet walking tour and saw all the major sights and buildings. Innsbruck is really neat, because it feels very old and mysterious in the inner city, but on the outskirts, there are these gorgeous baroque-style buildings. Anyway, it was a great way to see the big sites in the city, and a nice morning jaunt. In the afternoon, we decided that since we were in the middle of the Tyrolean Alps, we should take advantage of it and do some hiking. We managed to locate the Innsbruck tourism office, who pointed us in the direction of Patscherkofel, the mountain that was used in several Olympic events when Innsbruck hosted the Winter Olympics in 1964 and 1976.
We were able to take a streetcar from the city center out to the town at the base of the mountain, and from there, we took a gondola lift (Wikipedia term) about 2/3 up the mountain. From that point, we decided we had enough time to hike down the mountain and back to the base town, which we proceeded to spend the next five or so hours doing. It was quite a hike – more rigorous than we thought initially, but it was a great way to spend an afternoon. We saw cows and climbed gates and stopped for a Coke at a little restaurant next to a little church about halfway down.
When we reached the town, we took the streetcar back to Innsbruck, where we had dinner in the city center and talked about what we wanted to do the next day. Luckily we were in agreement that the best thing to do would be to take the gondola lift back up the mountain and then hike up to the peak (and back down to the midpoint again.)
This proved to be much more strenuous than we thought, for several reasons. First, as we set out, I read the map wrong, and we accidentally started down the path that would take us over to the next mountain down the line. Whoops. Got about a half mile before we figured that one out and came back. Then we thought we saw the pathway up and started to climb. Man, that was a durn steep pathway, and about halfway up, the pathway kind of petered out. We were very confused, because, well, old people and young kids hike this mountain, and this was tough for two fit twenty-somethings. Then we got to the top of our little slope and saw…a road…that people were walking on…that led right from our little starting point to the top of the mountain. Double whoops. But I rest assured that we took the *ahem* adventuresome way up and thus were more rewarded because of it ☺ We got some gorgeous photos at the Spitze (peak) of the mountain, before we headed back down.
Since we had to catch a train, and since we’d hiked the rest of the mountain the previous day, we took the gondola back down to the town, and we headed back to Innsbruck to take our leave and go back to Vienna. I, for one, wasn’t ready to leave, but alas. I would go back to that city in a heartbeat!
The day after we returned, Emily set off on her own for a day trip to the Wachau (very fun) while I stayed in Vienna and studied for my final exam (less fun.) It sounded like she had a great river cruise, but I guess it was good for me to be responsible and prepare for my test. Meh. I’d rather be cruising the Donau ☺
The next day, we just hung out together around the city before we went to the train station. Emily caught an overnight train to Düsseldorf, where she was to meet Rob, her boyfriend, for some World Cup action (and yes, I mean soccer) It was so great to have her visit, and I had such a great time both seeing the familiar sights of Wien and traveling to a new place!
posted by Carly Fowler @ 7:54 PM
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