Austria

So picking up where my 1/24/13 blog entry ‘Switzerland’ left off, my girlfriend Lona and I escaped from Zurich, Switzerland early on the morning of August 24^thin 1990. We had only been in Zurich for two days, but that was plenty as we were a little creeped out after walking with the zombies in Needle Park. Using our Eurail passes we boarded a train for Innsbruck, Austria, the next stop in our 5-month journey that had started 4 months earlier in Greece with stops in Italy and then Switzerland. It was about a 4-hour train ride so we settled in to our seats and read through our ‘Let’s Go Europe’ book for ideas on what to do in Austria.

We got to Innsbruck at noon, found a bank and cashed in one of our $100 travelers checks for Austrian Schillings, and then checked into a youth hostel. As with most of the hostels in Europe we had to sleep in separate male/female rooms. We were exhausted from almost no sleep the night before so we decided to nap for a couple hours. We got up still sleepy and disorientated so the only touristy thing we did that day was go to the top of the 167 foot Innsbruck City Tower (Stadtturm). This cool old tower was built between 1442 and 1450 and is in the very center of the city’s historic Old Town. It was a hot day but the medieval tower was nice and cool inside. We were so tired that it was a struggle to climb the 148 steps up to the viewing platform, but the awesome 360 degree view of this beautiful city and the surrounding mountains made it worthwhile. In addition to the great pictures we took from up there, it also gave us a good idea of the city’s layout so it was a great first-stop thing to do.

When we got back down to ground we found a pretty cool café and sat outside trying various sausages, bread, wine and other local cuisine. Then for more wine we were directed to a wine-bar that looked extremely old. We descended down the stone-brick steps into a dark, musky underground room, found a table and tried various wines. Then we went to bed fairly early for a change.

We were well rested the next day and ready for some sights. We toyed with the idea of spending the day skiing. The brother/sister couple who gave us their ‘Let’s Go Europe’ book in Zurich had told us how awesome the skiing was there and not too expensive. Innsbruck…home of the 1976 Winter Olympics…Franz Klammer’s crazy gold-medal run…this was the chance of a lifetime to go skiing in the Austrian Alps! We decided against it though because it was an activity that would take up pretty much the whole day and neither of us were big skiers, plus we did not have winter coats. Just jeans, tee-shirts and light jean-jackets. Instead we took a cable car to the top of a mountain and hiked around in the woods for several hours. Then we came back down to town for sightseeing and another great meal with lots of German beer. We got pretty drunk, but not too drunk to check out of our youth hostel and head to the train station.

We decided to get back to our normal routine of taking overnight trains. We travelled at night in order to save money on hotels and to maximize our limited daylight hours to sightseeing instead of sitting on trains. With that in mind, we left that night on an overnight train for Vienna, Austria. We slept better than usual on that train because as soon as we got on we found an empty private room in a 2^ndclass car, quickly closed the door, turned off the light and nobody disturbed us all night. We got to Vienna early on the morning of August 26^th, and armed with recommendations from our travel book we headed out to see the sights.

We spent a few hours in the huge Kunsthistorisches Museum and only saw maybe 1/1000^th of all the things they had to see there. After awhile it was too much so we left and walked around looking at the cool old buildings and architecture. Then we found Beethoven’s statue that was erected in 1880 in a public square called Beethovenplatz. After a full day of sightseeing we decided to take a nap in Stadtpark, a large city park not far from the Beethoven statue.

After awhile we got up and went to a market to buy some beer. It would be cheaper than a bar. I made beer in college and as a beer-lover was extremely excited to try some of the local brews they had to offer. We bought a bag-full of various bottles and went back to the park. We settled on a park bench with our bag o’ beers and soaked up the sun and marveled at how awesome life is. Sitting in a beautiful park on a warm sunny day in freaking Austria drinking local beers. We thought about our friends back home in Minneapolis and wondered what they were doing at the moment. Then we heard a commotion near a large water fountain a couple hundred feet away across the grass. There were 3 homeless people hanging out laughing about something. We decided to head over and say hi.

They were visibly drunk and eyed us with suspicion as we approached. But after being on the road for over 4 months wearing the same 5 sets of clothes the entire time we looked almost as raggedy as they did and we did not appear to be much of a threat. Then when we pulled beers out of our bag and offered them each one, their faces lit up and we were one of them. We sat in the grass next to the fountain drinking beer and smoking cigarettes for the rest of the afternoon with our new Austrian friends.

They spoke very little broken English and we of course spoke no German so communication was a bit difficult. They were extremely friendly however and tried as hard as they could to talk to us in the little bit of English that they knew. We had a great time trading stories, with them asking us about America and us in turn listening to their stories about how they had become homeless. After awhile we did feel like one of them, as we were in effect homeless too. Back in April we had moved out of our apartment in Minneapolis, packed up all of our belongings and stored them in Lona’s parent’s basement, and bought a one-way ticket to Greece. The only difference between our new friends and us was that we had some money to fall back on.

It was fun hanging out with them, but it was also a little sad. One of them told us how he had a good job, but got laid off, lost his home, one thing led to another and here he was – a homeless man living in the park. They each had similar sad stories. We bonded though and felt close to them. As we all got drunker however, things started getting sloppy. One guy got angry about something and gestured wildly, but we did not know what about. And then the girl accidentally fell back into the fountain and came out dripping wet and crying. We all hugged her and told her it was going to be okay but she just accepted her wet fate as a fitting punishment to her already desperate situation of being a homeless drunk. It was very sad, but it was time for us to go. It was getting dark and we had not eaten any lunch or dinner, so we all hugged, said our goodbyes and gave them the rest of our beer.

We found another café near the train station and had a nice meal, but the mood was a little somber as we thought about our friends in the park with no food or money. Why do some people sleep in mansions and other people have to sleep in parks? It seemed so unfair to a couple of young hippies on the road. After finishing up our food and spending the rest of our Austrian money, we decided our next stop would be Munich, Germany. We headed to the train station for the overnight train to Munich, and ‘Munich, Germany’ will be the subject of a future blog.