Austria17.01.98 - Leave Laverone, Arrive in InnsbrukWe had to wake up reasonably early today because we had to catch the early bus out of Laverone to make the train connection we needed to get out of there. Unfortunately, Brad left his alarm in the room with Joe and Maria so it didn't wake us up. Joe heard the alarm but decided he needed a few more minutes so he went back to sleep. As a result we left Laverone in a big hurry.We had to get our passports back from the office where we had left them as a deposit, but the office wasn't open yet, so we had to get the manager out of bed so we could leave (travelling without our passports would have been interesting). We made it to our train respective trains (Maria left us here since our next stop would be Austria and she only wanted to visit Italy) on time and travelled up to Innsbruk. The train to Innsbruk left at around 9:30am which got us there at 2pm. We dropped our bags off at the hostel and headed off for a wander around the city. Innsbruk is not all that exciting, it's a nice town but on our first day the weather was pretty bad so we couldn't even see the mountains around us. We headed up to the Olympic ski jump which was only a short walk from the city and some idiot was skiing up and down the landing zone. He'd ski down, take off his skis, walk up, ski down again... very strange.
We met lots of nice people at the hostel and we went out with them later that night for schnapps after eating a dinner cooked on Joe's camping cooker.
18.01.98 - Day Two in Innsbruk, Arrive in MunichManaged to get out of bed early enough today to wander around for a few hours before catching the ski-bus out to the mountains to check it out. We figured out the bus timetable and headed up to one of the resorts and it took me forever to get enough money out to buy a ticket up in the lift since there wasn't any ATM's on the mountain that would take my cards.
Eventually we got to the top and it was perfect weather - clear and sunny with no wind. We sat around at the top for a while, had lunch and took some photos - definitely have to come back here some time! We all jumped off a ledge at the top to make it look like we were jumping off the mountain, I jumped off three times in the end so I was rather cold since I wasn't wearing ski-clothes!
We had to head out of Innsbruk to Munich that afternoon, so we had already packed our bags and left them at the train station ready to leave when we returned from the mountain. As we were preparing to get on the train we noticed our Bible* was missing!! Me and Joe ran all the way back to the Hostel to look for it but the Hostel was locked up so we had to return to the station to catch our train out and cut our losses.
* also known as The Lonely Planet Guide. The train took three hours - the ride was very scenic but, without the Lonely Planet, we knew we were screwed once we got to Munich. We got to Munich at 6:05pm, 5 minutes after the tourist office closed. We had no map or any of the names of the hostels so basically we had no plan whatsoever. We went back to the international bookshop in the train-station and found a copy of the Lets Go! backpackers guide where we looked up a few HI hostels. We headed out to the cheapest of the ones we found, unfortunately it turned out to be way outside the city in Munich suburbia and, although it was a totally huge hostel, it was completely empty! To top it off, because it was out of peak season, all the dorms were closed and we had to get, the more expensive, beds in a four-bed room. :-( We have to get out of here.
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