An Austrain Gem

We arrived at Innsbruck on Saturday the 19th, and headed straight to Kranebitten Allee. A caravan in a campsite here was our accomodation for the next few nights. It's a lovely location for a campsite with beautiful views of the snow-capped mountains and lovely green valleys. We were quite excited at the presence of a gas stovetop in our little caravan, but come nightfall, the novelty of our little place wore off somewhat as we were plagued by flies. It was the old juxtaposition of being hot and stuffy if you didn't open the door and windows or being covered with flies if you opted for fresh air. I ended up having to go on a killing spree with a rolled up magazine every night before bed to save us from the horror of having flies crawling over our faces as we slept (we then had to step rather carefully in the morning to avoid treading on the bodies!). It was the smallest bed we had slept on in all our travels - a 'double' bed not much bigger than a single. Apart from Minnie's insistence one night at sprawling her legs over my portion of the bed (Minnie claims no recollection of this event), it was fairly comfortable sleeping though. The other inconvenience was no running water - we had to go all the way up the hill to the toilet blocks and fill whatever vessels we could lay our hands on. A minigolf course down the road had caught our eyes earlier, so we paid a visit after dinner. It was a rather random course, quite new but not a normal get-the-ball-round-the-obstacles-and-into-the-hole type course - it was more of an aim-carefully-and-you-get-more-points type. Some of it was rather fun, such as making your golf ball doing loop-the-loops, but other holes were either extremely difficult or unintelligible to anyone unable to read the German explanation of how to score points. I also had the misfortune of using a golfball which insisted on going far distances away from the course, off into the bushes. It was an interesting idea though.

A cooked breakfast started off our Sunday (we reckoned it was a good way to make the day special, and celebrate our having the facilities to cook!), of the bacon and fried bread variety - rather delicious, although it did smoke out the caravan somewhat. We headed off to an evangelical church we had found on the internet, once again arriving slightly late to a strange service which appeared to be a mass Anglican confirmation service. There were so many visitors and relatives we had to stand in the doorway. Needless to say, we understood little due to the language barrier, but they had a lovely German hymn they had sung at Graz which we really like. We then headed off up the hill to the Alpine Zoo, which really was very well done. They had all sorts of interesting creatures there including fish and birds, and had very good displays for each one, showing pictorially their habitat, predators, diet, distribution etc. We spent a good long time there, and ate our picnic lunch by the otter enclosure. It was a beautiful day so we decided to head up to the top of the mountain, taking first a bus, then two separate cable cars to a height of over 2000m. Unfortunately, we didn't have much time due to the lateness of the hour and our reluctance to face a very long walk down the mountain had we missed the last cable car down. It was very beautiful, with patches of snow everywhere, mountain goats roaming, and amazing views of the town below. We took great lungsfull of the mountain air, snapped a few photos and threw a few snowballs before rushing back to the cable car, wishing we had had the forethought to come here earlier.

On Monday, we spent time wandering round the old town, taking in the lovely half-timbered and painted houses and popping into a few shops here and there. The mian attractions of the day were the Museum of Tyrolean Folk Art and Life, and the Glockenspiel (Bell) Museum. Both were quite fascinitating, the former housing all sorts of things to convey what life was like for the farmers of the region back in the days (Tyrol includes the western part of Austria of which Innsbruck is part, and the top part of Italy) : models of different types of farmhouses, complete with explanations of the different regions where they dominated; displays of items from kitchens and living rooms, and relating to farming and other industries; rooms decked out as they would have been with beautifully carved wooden beams and walls and lovely wooden furniture; and traditional clothing worn by remarkably lifelike wooden models with very detailed and individual faces. Time limitations meant we had to rush through parts of it, but we thoroughly enjoyed what we saw. The Grassmayr Glockenspiel Museum was similarly fascinating as it showed just how a bell is cast. It is an industry I knew little of but was most interesting to learn about. The bells are made according to precise measurements to ensure they sound at the correct pitch, and a number of stages are needed to ensure this. The large bells are cast in the ground and a video showed us the amazing spectacle of the molten brass running along the channels into the pit. They had lots of different bells you could dong yourself to gain an appreciation for the different sounds produced - rather fun and noisy :-)

The following morning we planned to dump our luggage at the train station and pay a visit to the Swarovski Crystal World. This was not quite as simple as it seemed. The station only had the narrowest lockers available for hire that really wouldn't fit any sort of luggage of a decent size, and some rather harrowing moments were spent trying to ascertain if any other storage was available while Minnie went to beg the unwilling shuttle bus driver to please wait for Robyn to sort things out - we had to resort to dumping some bags and taking the suitcases with us. Fortunately, the kind lady at the desk when we arrived was willing to store our suitcases in the staff room once we assured her they wouldn't fit in the miniscule lockers provided. The entrance, through the mouth of "the giant's" head which was formed from the hillside, was rather stunning. The 'body' of the giant consisted of about 10 rooms of different themes and displays, some more crystal-related than others, but all designed by famous people, and very shiny. The world's largest cut crystal took pride of place in the first room, and it was enormous. Some of our favourite displays were: the crystal-mirror dome with its cool ever-changing lighting effects, a giant crystal jellyfish complete with long pretty tentacles, and a room devoted to the history of the company and Swarovski family. The shop was huge, with every item imaginable decorated with or made from crystals - very blingy. We were most offended by a crystal globe which depicted New Zealand as a streak of no form. After the shuttle back to Interlaken, we had time for a leisurely lunch before departing Austria, hopefully to return again someday.