The Shadow over Innsbruck
Ahh, Austria. Little did we know that this peaceful little country would be the site of an event that would rend our very souls.
So, between the 15th and the 18th of November, Huw and I made our way around Austria. Salzburg was pretty much as I expected; we got a stunningly clear day and could see for miles from the castle atop Salzburg. I'd say more stuff about Salzburg, but I pretty much covered it like two years ago, so the only thing that's changed is the scenery. See my older update and compare photos, if you want!
They were setting up Christmas stalls in Salzburg, and were selling Mozartskugeln everywhere (rough translation is Mozart's Balls, and they are far tastier than they sound). We went up to the top of Salzburg Castle, and could see for, like, ever. I have just checked my watch, and it appears to be Photo Time!
Here's the ol' castle. Looks quite a bit different not covered in snow.
And here's the scenery. These photos were taken from the top of the castle. Stunning.
We went and checked out a few museumy exhibits in the castle, then travelled down and made our way back to the train station.
So yeah. Salzburg rocked. We only really made it a day trip, because I didn't deem it worthy of more than that, and we headed straight for Vienna, or as the locals call it, Wien. That's, like, with a V sound, not a W sound. And the people are called Wieners! Hee hee. Ok, I'm done now.
Vienna was pretty quiet, compared to Munich at least, but I suppose anything would seem quiet after that. We'd planned to stay until we got bored, and it turned out that was only 2 nights, but we spent a good day there where we went around taking photos of the awesome architecture. I'm going to subject y'all to another photo barrage now, if you have any objections, the time to voice them is now. No? Good!
Please note that the photos above and below are two buildings that face each other, not just the same building from a different angle.
Hey, you got your Ancient Greece in my Vienna!
Now that is a classy opera house. Perhaps the classiest.
You might not see it at first, but this one's actually a giant Advent Calendar! Each of those little windows is closed and has a number on it. But I don't think they distribute little chocolates, which takes away the only fun an advent calendar would have offered me anyway.
Also in Vienna we did some cool stuff that wasn't taking photos of architecture. For example, when we arrived, we got kinda lost. After walking around the streets a while, we came back to in front of the main station, and a friendly neighbourhood prostitute (one of the "large black girl in pink fluffy clothes" variety) pointed us in the right direction. Hurrah! Thank you, kind prostitute! After that we met some cool Aussie girls in the bar and proceeded to play drinking games all night long. We were playing Presidents and Assholes, and I ended up cheating pretty bad with the girl next to me, because we were both losing horribly. Here we are TOTALLY NOT COLLABORATING BY SHARING EACH OTHER'S HANDS. Nope, not at all.
Another thing that happened was that I had the privilege of consuming what is probably the most incredible breakfast idea I've ever seen. Gentlemen, BEHOLD!
I am totally bringing this one back.
We also found something that didn't look quite as delicious.
The only thing I'm bringing back from this is a crazy new euphemism for going to the toilet.
We also found this statue of a supervillain. Who knew they came from Austria? Well... don't answer that.
Anyway, we cut our expedition in Vienna short after finding out there wasn't much going on, and set forth to ski around Innsbruck! Little did we know that Melbourne had viciously stolen all our snow, presumably with the help of Theodor Körner, Austrian Mastermind. It was an unseasonably warm 16 Degrees (compared to -7 of the previous year), apparently all skiing was of the dangerously-icy variety and our youth hostel was the single most appalling example of accommodation I've ever had to put up with. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I've slept on more hospitable park benches.
The hostel in question, St Nikolaus Jugendherberge or something like that, was in the process of being torn down. It was 15 Euros a night. It had no locks. I think the beds had fleas; either that or they just made me horribly itchy. The owner was creepy. There was no breakfast. The lights were dim. The roof was way too low and the top bunk too high. The beds creaked so much when you tried to get down from them that you'd invariably wake someone up in the process. It was, simply put, terrible. On top of that, Huw's ankle started acting up, which made us just decide that it wasn't meant to be, and so we high-tailed it to Berlin, making it there after about 8 hours in the train. Still, totally worth it, because we are no longer anywhere near Austria.
Speaking of which, Huw and I have decided to become racist against Austrians. Not just for the horrible hostel, but also because they're similar to Germany, but they don't get any of the stuff right that the Germans do. The streets were dirty, the trains were late and full of ridiculously expensive food, no night life, the people weren't as accommodating and generally it just wasn't as cool. Huw wants to say his part on the stay at the hostel, so here he goes!
Ok, brace yourself for bad grammar, as it is early and I am angry at University for "being shit" as it were. Curse them and their red tape that I drown in. Like some kind of red tacky plasticy sea.. or something. In any case on with the story of "Our Night in Innsbruck". It was very funny because at this ultra crappy hostel we met some pretty cool people. There were two 18 year old canadian guys who were backpacking around ultra cheap because their uncle was a travel agent, another Aussie guy who was an explosives tester, a weird old german man, nicknamed "rambo", who told us the owner of the place used to be a nazi and myself and tim. So after trading backstories over a few beers we all laughed about cold showers, no locks, run down establishment and hit the sack. As we were preparing this guy walks up to the window and starts flashing his light at us. This was a little weird and it turns out he was mute or something and his little flashlight was his way of communicating. Unfortunately, at least for the Aussie/Canadian part of the group I suddenly realised just how similar this cast was to a B-Grade horror film. This wasn't helped by one of the guys mentioning a movie called the hostel. It was really funny, we all got ourselves thoroughly freaked out in this dim dingy creaky half demolished place with no locks, having traded backstories and established our characters. Hell just looking at the characters you can see the plot devices. The mute guy tries to warn someone, or cry for help and cannot because hit torch runs out of batteries, the beefy german guy with tatts gets outfought, the explosives expert has to do some crazy thing. Probably one of the Canadian guys or maybe Tim would be the main character, which leaves the other canadian guy or me as the sidekick. Plus in the other room there was also a Greek and Aussie love interest. Hell, I could make this film and probably do a pretty good job of it.
It was very very funny in retrospect how paranoid we all got. I didn't put in my earplugs because I wanted to be able to hear, and the other Aussie guy, who was sleeping right next to the door, changed beds and we all gave serious consideration to moving a bunk in front of the door. However in our hearts we knew that if we did end up in a horror movie it wouldn't do us any good, our only hope would be to gun for A: Main Character (100% Chance of Survival), B: Love Interest (98% Chance of Survival), C: Best Friend (40% Chance of Survival "With Serious But Not Deadly Injury" TM), D: Comic Relief (1% Chance of Survival, If only because of Deep Blue Sea (Every Scene I swear that chef was going to die! How the hell did he survive???)). Otherwise we were E: Establishing Brutality of Killer/Ghost/Clown/Mutated Rock/Especially Bad Case of Athletes foot (0% Chance of Survival, But might at least be getting lucky with the non-love interest female character when we bite it, or even make a reprise as a newly converted bad guy to be defeated by Mr. Main Character, curse his striking features and charms!). The night was almost disappointingly uneventful, but hey, I guess that is real life. I mean if everything were like the movies nobody would ever need to use the toilet unless they were about to be killed (think about it, Bond, Jurassic Park, Snakes on a Plane (and he was getting lucky too!)), certainly would do serious damage to the Toilet paper industry. I mean they would be like Death Thrones, kind of like a suicide chair. Anyways, enough rambling, I will let Tim get back to his real livejournaling, rather than spending more than probably a day's worth of words on crappy horror films and about a 2 hour period in a crappy hotel in a crappy city in a crappy country called Austria. "No Kangaroos in Austria" as the T-shirt tells us, know why? Because Even Fucking Kangaroos Know Better! That is right, those stupid ugly stinky honking things know better than to go to Austria.
Anyway, back to being concise. After a spectacular automobile and plane chase, we escaped from the clutches of the vile Theodor Körner, as he waved his fist in impotent rage. Safe at last!
OR ARE WE???
CURSE YOU, KÖRNER!