Austria - Wels, Innsbruck & Jenbach

I was on my way to Wels, a small town in Austria where my friends Guenther and Clemens study. Unfortunately, the journey was a bit of a nightmare. Due to engineering work, the announcements of which I obviously could not understand, instead of taking an already-complicated 3 trains to get there, it ended up as 5 trains and a bus.

Tasty wheatbeer!

I eventually arrived at Wels station and was met by my friends, who took me back to Clemens' place where we enjoyed a wheat beer, which is quite a novel idea to me, involving a specific way of pouring it upside-down into a special glass. Needless to say, I made quite a mess on my first attempt but thanks to plenty of practise that night am now quite adept at it! My timing in Wels was very lucky, it was their last night in the town before moving back to their family homes for the summer. That night we went to a barbecue party at a friend of theirs' house, which was really more of a mansion and had its own swimming pool and sauna, which was great fun.

Inside Innsbruck Cathedral

The next day I tagged along with Clemens back to his hometown of Innsbruck, in the Austria Alps, which again was excellent timing as it was a place I was going to visit anyway. This time I stayed in a hostel where I met my first Icelandic person (which is quite rare, there's only 300,000 of them!). He mentioned how much he wanted to go hiking in the Alps, so I invited him out with me and Clemens.

Climbing to the summit. Not pictured: terrifyingly long drop below

Together we took 2 cable cars up to the top of the large mountain that dominates the view from the town. We climbed on foot a bit further to the summit, then gradually hiked back down the mountain.

The view was spectacular

At times it was quite scary, as Clemens, being a native of the Alps, is not particular used to staying on paths and instead seems to prefer ridiculously steep routes, which managed to bring us down the mountain rather quickly indeed. It was a lot of fun, if a bit exhausting in the heat.

The Achenseebahn Steam Mountain Railway

That night we embarked on an epic tour of the bars in Innsbruck and randomly ended up at the only all-night waiter-style restaurant I've ever seen, at about 4am. In the morning, I said my goodbyes and began heading toward Munich, but first stopped at the town of Jenbach for a nice little side trip. Clemens had recommended to me the steam train up to a lake in the mountains, where I took a boat across and then hiked back along the rather precarious cliff-edges surrounding it.

Lake Achensee

The lake was beautiful and the steam train journey very impressive, being of the rare cog variety, allowing it to climb at a very steep angle. I wish I had more time there to enjoy the scenery further, but Munich was calling!

Austria - Vienna

Austria was another place near the top of my wish list, although I'll admit it was more the Alps I was looking forward to. Still, it was really nice to spend a couple of days in the capital. Now let's see if I can do this update without mentioning the name of that certain childhood composer that is the only thing most people know about Vienna before arriving...

The imperial architecture is fantastic

I didn't find that many actual 'sights' to see in the city, but just walking around and soaking in the elaborate architecture was fascinating.

This really is quite a breathtaking sight

The Museum Quarter, a large modern arts centre prominently located in the historic centre was a great place to hang around in, with lots of different exhibitions and these great (and very popular) sofa-bed type things for lying in the sun.

Counting down the days to Euro 2008...

On my second day, the weather took a turn for the worse and so I spent it back in the Museum Quarter, and also at the Freud museum, located in his former apartment, which is well worth a visit.

One of the flak towers

Being a bit of a history geek, I was quite excited to discover a WW2 flak tower, just like the ones in Berlin. Bristling with anti-aircraft guns, containing air raid shelters and massively well protected, the towers proved impossible to demolish following the war and still remain, covered in advertising and in the case of the one above, the tallest artificial climbing wall I've ever seen. They really do stick out like sore thumbs, but I find they do add character to the city, looking just so out of place, almost as if they've fallen from space.

It's not THAT bad, really

I had a great time in the hostel, meeting a group of Scots who appeared to have had the same experience in Bratislava as me. We went out at night, only to find that there were no bars of clubs open anywhere nearby, except for a solitary Irish pub, so we had to resort to that. Not exactly the Austrian experience, but it's ok as I had to get up early for my next train. As you can probably tell I was quite impressed with Vienna overall, and see, I didn't even mention Mozart! Oh....bugger.