Our group of Will, John, Sam, Rock and I left for our six
hour train ride from Vienna to the beautiful city of Innsbruck at around 13:30 on
last Friday. The Innsbruck area may be one of the most gorgeous places I have seen
with my own eyes. We arrived late afternoon at the Innsbruck hauptbahnhof and
the first thing you see when you step outside is that you are completely
surrounded by massive mountains. Innsbruck and the smaller towns in the area
are directly in the middle of the Alps. As we had read before our trip to
Innsbruck, it was the host for the 1964 and 1976 winter Olympic Games. This
makes our first two weekend trips, Munich and Innsbruck, to cities that have
hosted a total of three different Olympic Games. We then made our way via
public transportation to Hotel Dollinger, where we spent our next two nights. Our
hotel was fantastic, it had a very modern style but the most important aspect
is that it had a complimentary breakfast in the mornings! After we checked in,
we asked for suggestions for places in the area that were great to grab some
dinner at and we found a traditional Austrian restaurant. After dinner we were
going to just go out into the city to find a place to chill for the rest of the
night, but we ended up getting on a tram that was heading to the garage and had
to walk from a faraway distance back to the hauptbahnhof. This still turned out
well, because like always I think it is fun to go out into unknown place, get
lost and then try to find your way around. You tend to see different parts of
places that you normally wouldn’t get to see. We eventually made it back to the
hotel and got some rest for our “planned” hiking trip in the morning.
We woke up at around 7:30 to get an early start on the day.
We grabbed some breakfast and then packed our backpacks with swimsuits, large
water bottles and lunch from the local super market by the hauptbahnhof. We
made our way to the popular hiking area and befriended an Austrian woman who
happened to like Americans and especially Texans. She told us about a popular
swimming area that would be a great way to cap off the long day of hiking up
the mountain. On our hike, we basically free lanced everything! Every trail we
saw is a trail we took, which made the trip much more exciting. At points
during the hike, we ended up in the middle of a golf course, hopping over
fences to get to other sides of the mountain, finding horses twice, walking on
the bobsled course from the 1964 and 1976 Olympics, and finally walking through
someone’s ranch (we think). Needless to say, our hiking trip was a fantastic
adventure that won’t be forgotten! When we finally made it back to actual
trails, we could use our maps to find our way to the lunch destination. It was
an area dedicated to the Olympic Games with some benches, a huge cross and a
water pump to fill up our water bottles. We stayed there for a good hour and
made nice conversation with an Austrian woman who was 82 years old and still
very active and in excellent shape. From there, we hiked back down towards the
Lanser See which is basically a fairly large pond or very small lake. This was
a very popular destination for many Austrians from the area, and we had a great
time for about two and a half hours. We jumped in the cool water for a while
and then watched people feed the fish that were in the pond. I swear that one
of the fish was probably four feet long and weighed 50-60 pounds, it was
gigantic! We then sat out on the one of the many docks and relaxed after our
long day of strenuous hiking. We decided to leave the Lanser See at around
17:30 because there was a pretty big weather system starting to come over the
mountains. We made it back to the bus that took us back to the hauptbahnhof.
From there we left and went to grab dinner again at the same restaurant again.
It was so nice we had to have it twice! From there we went back to the hotel to
get ready to go out again. This time we had a plan, and it ended up turning
into a great night! Our train left from Innsbruck at 10:36, and we had a
connection in Munich for our train back to Bonn for the first time in 9 days!
We have a Haribo factory visit and the AIB soccer tournament next week that
should be very interesting!
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