Five Go Mad

We’re becoming tram and train savvy finally.  I’m pretty sure up till now our wide eyed searching accompanied with beseeching expressions in any public transport location has been giving us away as not being confident in our actions. The massive luggage completes picture to the casual observer of us being Americans. However the trip to Inns’bruck (bridge over the river Inns) went smoothly. I may even have relaxed enough to have a wee nap.  So smooth and comfortable was the wifi-enabled high speed train that I wouldn’t have even known I’d dropped off but for the photos that appeared on facebook while in transit; another hazard for the modern family traveller to take account of.

Innsbruck, and the Tyrol region, has the feel of a different country to Vienna.  It’s very Alpy, being hemmed in quite closely by crags and pinnacles with accompanying glimpses of snow and early sunsets. It’s hard to tell but I suspect it’s been a pretty warm winter so far as the countryside has got that look of being set up to deal with metres of snow but it’s all currently quite grassy or rocky with naked orange poles sticking up here and there out of the shrubbery. We took a precipitous cable car ride up to a crag at 2200m to stamp about in some snow.  By ‘we’ I mean all of us except Robyn who is afflicted with an embarrassing form of vertigo which makes her cling to the floor and tremble regardless of the company. I did my best to transport some snow down for her via the back of my neck care of Nicole but wasn’t up to the task as it turned out.

One of the spots on the local tourist trail is Swarovski World or Crystal Land or something. The visitors’ centre (sadly no factory tour) is half and half quite decent (though angular and facetted) contemporary art gallery and exit through the gift shop (which even has a VIP room for the high rollers). Whether that’s your cup of tea or not, the in-between spaces i.e. where it’s not art gallery or gift shop, make an impression as well. The reception area, ticket booth, utility buildings, toilets, even the bit set aside for queuing are all super sleek, smoothly minimalistic, exquisitely modern. They reminded me of American sci-fi tv shows from the sixties but set in the near future, often with marionettes as actors aka Joe 90 or early starship Enterprise. I became aware that my personal style and grooming was at odds with the encompassing design philosophy.  The dangly button on my three seasons old jacket was suddenly being blatantly rustic, not to mention my country-mouse haircut and I’m pretty sure my knuckles were much closer to the floor than before.  The most embarrassing thing though came when navigating the highly stylised loos (there’s a theme developing here) where, feeling confident that I’d correctly interpreted the gender diagrams of the future, I stood before the handle-less door of blessed relief immobile, waiting for my distracted brain to figure out what button, hand gesture or incantation would swoosh the thing aside.  I had just about given up hope of a risk-free indoors pee when I ventured an old-fashioned approach, gave it a push and entered with a laugh and a backward glance to see if anyone apart from the CCTV watchers had seen me.

Pictures later- crap internet on account of all the crags or something.