Innsbruck comes across as a city that should be amazingly beautiful, but isn`t. Everywhere you look, the background itself is amazing, but the city itself just looks like it could be Toledo. It`s basically an industrial town set in the heart of the Alps. Even the old town, for all it`s beautiful and historic buildings was marred by the electric lines strung from building to building in order to create a network for the electric bus system. I would say on the whole that they are much more environmentally conscious than us, though, for one, the electric busses everywhere are designed to keep the air polution in the city centers at a minimum, but it seems to come at a high cost in terms of the beauty of the city. All that being said, we had a great time in Innsbruck. The people here are very friendly, and there is a lot to do.
We decided after 2 weeks in Europe that cities, though they are usually more visually impressive than the ones in the US, pretty much look like cities so we are starting to look for the things that truly make them different from other cities. In Innsbruck, we started with the Swavorski Kristallen Welten (or Crystal Worlds). It is a museum/art exhibit in a manmade cave of crystals. It sounds kind of corny, but we had a great time wandering from cave to cave. From geodesic dome of mirrors (with lights and sound) to crystal artworks and installations. It aint classical culture, but it`s definitely something we couldn`t find anywhere else.
From there we hopped on a bus to the Bergisel tower, which was the ski jump tower for the 1964 and 1976 Winter Olympic games. The tower provided great views of the city and the Inn River valley. Innsbruck means bridge over the Inn river. We decided to have a snack at the restaurant on top of the tower. Becky got an apfelstrudel with a local riesling which she liked, and Gordon ordered something he didn`t recognize off the menu which turned out to be strawberries (ah well... language is learning too) and a local beer. Belgium and Germany have nothing to fear from Austria in terms of beer quality.
We tried to get up to top of the highest peak in the city by cable car, but got there just little too late. So we wandered down to the market and spent some time looking around the old city area. (found another Christmas tree ornament that we just had to have) And wandered back to the hostel to make dinner and get ready for Vienna!
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