Blogs from Innsbruck, Tyrol, Austria, Europe - page 2

Finally Swarovski World. Purchased a 24 hour pass with the Innsbruck Card to go out to Swarovski World at Wattens. Next bus due to leave at 10.20 am and we had an hour and twenty minutes to fill in so walked into city centre for a look around. When we had booked to come here I was having a look at pictures on the internet and the buildings reminded me of the song "Little Boxes". As we were walking along the street the lyrics hit me again: "There's a green one and a pink one, and a blue one and a yellow one" (see picture below). OK, I know they are not exactly little boxes, nor are they made of ticky tacky, but you get what I mean... Pretty place with so much detail on the ... read more

I confess, today was a very lazy day for us. Our last day in Innsbruck and Austria altogether, and there wasn't much we desperately wanted to do. All that remained on our list was visiting Ambras Castle and Olympiaworld, and do a little bit of shopping. Like yesterday, we were in no hurry to leave the hotel. We had breakfast down in the restaurant again, which is expensive, but we came with a lot of money here (well, not a lot, but more than we needed) so we were able to afford the breakfast here everyday. After that, we rested up in our hotel and finished off getting ready before heading out for the bus that would take us up to Ambras Castle On our very first day in Innsbruck, I had seen a sign pointing ... read more

We have made it to Innsbruck, but not without a few mishaps on the way. This will probably be a rather short blog due to two things: we spent most of the day at the airport and it seems that the better the hotel you stay at the more difficult accessing and using the Wifi is. Well, where shall I begin? We woke to a very white Vienna today. It seemed that overnight the snow had continued to fall, leaving the ground a good 2-3 centimetres thick as you walked. After enjoying our last breakfast at the Zeitgeist Hotel we made our way to the hop on hop off bus. Our flight wasn't until the afternoon, so we had a few hours to kill and the zoo was the last thing on our list before we ... read more

I'm sitting at home and finally got my blog running. The decision was made to write it in english in order to make it available for everybody. My Parents have a capable translator at home and for the parents in law it is a challenge i like to pose. They try to improve their english at the moment, so this should be good practice. Tomorrow we head to Japan. My girlfriend will stay for 3 and I for 5 weeks. Why is she leaving earlier? She has to attend university classes and I'm going to engage in lots of kendo for the last two weeks in Fukuoka, which were organised by Shinsuke Murakami, who helps me very patiently to improve my kendo. Our emotions switch between pleasant anticipation and nervousness. This time I'm the only ... read more

Heute habe ich mir als Innsbruck im Detail angesehen. Zuerst bin ich zur Hofkirche mit dem Grab Andreas Hofers und dem Sarkophag von Kaiser Maximilian I.. Dann bin ich mit der modernen Drahtseilbahn, welche vom Iraker Zaha Hamid entworfen wurde und einer weiteren Bahn zum Hafelekar auf etwa 2200m gefahren. Dieser Architekt hat auch die Bergisel, die Sprungschanze Innsbrucks, entworfen (die habe ich mir aber heute nicht angesehen). Die Aussicht von diesem Berg war phantastisch. Dann bin ich wieder hinuntergefahren und habe dem Sightseeing-Bus zum Schloss Ambras genommen. Dort habe ich auch bei einem Eiskaffee eine Pause gemacht. Dann bin ich wieder in die Innenstadt. Dort war ich im Innenhof der Hofburg, welche da leider schon geschlossen hatte. Anschliessend habe ich mir den St. Jakobs-Dom angesehen und bin natürlich zum Goldenen Dachl. Gleich daneben ist das ... read more