Innsbruck

We got up around 9am this morning and packed up our little cabin, ate breakfast and hit the road for our 7 hour drive to Innsbruck, Austria. I actually slept last night because the chatty Cathy’s apparently had checked out yesterday and new (quieter) people were next door to us last night.

It rained pretty much the ENTIRE way to Innsbruck, but it was neat driving through the Alps because most of the tops of the mountains were covered in clouds. The Alps were very high and usually very steep. There are lots of crazy cliffs and you can almost always see church steeples at higher points in the towns that are nestled on and between the mountains. We also saw quite a few waterfalls, which was really neat.

We’ve decided that European drivers are pretty much nuts and we’re both pretty sick of them. Today we were driving on “Bitch Ditch Road” as Mark likes to call it (the long road we saw all the prostitutes along) and we’re going around this long curve and here comes some idiot the opposite way PASSING another car going the opposite way so when we all passed each other we were 3 cars wide across the road. I mean seriously, who does that?? The damn Italians couldn’t care less and don’t have any regard for anyone except themselves, especially when it comes to driving. As has been happening the ENTIRE time we’ve been here, if cars want to pass you, they tailgate you like crazy, swerve back and forth and flash their lights at you until you get over. Really, it’s nuts. I would just love to drive a big Dodge Ram 3500 around here and see how many people mess with you then, since 9/10’s of the car here are about the size of a Geo Metro.

We were also really disappointed with the Italian food. I thought it was going to be really hearty, cheesy food with lots of sauces and meat. Nope… It’s not like that at all. There’s usually slim to no cheese on most pasta dishes and the sauce is usually really watered down and runny. You can seriously get a LOT more for you money at Olive Garden. They also don’t have pepperoni here either, and the sausage is much different from what we call sausage. We had pizza yesterday and they have these big rectangular pizzas and they literally cut (with scissors) off a slice the size you indicate and then they weigh it and charge you by the ounce. I thought that was interesting. Pepsi is pretty much non-existent over here, along with any fountain drink. I miss my fountain Pepsi with lots of ice very much.

We got to Innsbruck around 6:45pm. I thought I would like Italy best of all, but I soon changed my mind. I LOVE Innsbruck. It’s a fairly good sized city at the foot of quite a few mountains. Our hotel is right along the river. It seems to be very peaceful here. The German/Austrian architecture is beautiful. Lots of pretty square, usually brightly colored buildings with the big, dark shutters on either sides of all the windows. This town especially, has a quaint-ness that is different from any other town we’ve been in so far. And I think the Germans/ Austrians are much more like us compared to the French or Italians. Our hotel, oddly enough, is the same exact hotel Mark and Dave stayed in during their travels when they were studying in Germany. How ironic is that? Not the same room, but Mark said it was the same hotel. Our room is nice. Pretty big with a comfortable bed and a little table with 2 chairs and a sink. It doesn’t have an attached bathroom, but the toilets and shower room are right down the hall. We’ll see how that works.

We’re excited to explore Innsbruck more tomorrow and take lots of pictures. (I have about 850 left to take on my last SD card.) Hopefully it won’t be rainy so we can get some decent pictures and video. We’re still trying to figure out when we’ll be able to fly out of Ramstein to the states. We’re going to try to fly to BWI again because then we’ll get to fly on the Patriot Express back to the states too. If we fly anywhere else, we’ll be flying in the back of a cargo plane most likely, which would be interesting, but probably cold and uncomfortable too. I’ve been in touch with my co-workers at Hammer Williams and they’ve been keeping me in the loop of what’s going on there. I’ve pretty much decided that I’m not going to work there when we get back. I might just take a few months off work until we move to Phoenix and work on losing weight and my scrapbooking and learning to sew. We’d also like to take my sisters boys for a week or two if possible. We’ll see what happens though. It’s kind of a relief to know that I don’t have to go back to work there when I get back. I enjoyed working there a lot, but the new boss is not at all anything to brag about and I’m looking forward to not having to deal with him ever again.