Munich to Innsbruck

I woke up this morning around 8:00 am, showered (the light worked this time) and packed my things. I rented a locker for my luggage in the hostel after I checked out, and then went to the train station at 9:00 am to take back the bike I rented. I then took the S-Bahn into Marienplatz to buy a bathing suit.While waiting for the clothing stores to open, I went in the Apple store. I’m planning on buying a 15” Macbook Pro later in July, and wanted to check out the difference between the high resolution and matte/glossy displays. I eventually got two laptops, put them side by side, and played the opening sequence to The Dark Knight in HD to see if I could tell a difference. As everyone was staring at me, I decided the colors were pretty much identical, but the matte display looked a lot better without the reflection. I’ll probably end up getting that one.Anyways, I went into a department store and eventually found a bathing suit that fit and wasn’t too short. I then took the S-Bahn back to my hostel and while walking through the station, I noticed that a train was leaving for Innsbruck at 11:31 am in about 45 minutes, rather than the 12:30 pm train I was planning on taking. So I hurried back to the hostel, got my backpack out of the locker, and then walked the two blocks back to the train station. I got on the train around 11:20 am, and eventually found a seat that didn’t have a reservation posted above it.

The train slowly started going into the mountains. Acting like a little kid again, I took a good amount of pictures through the window of my train, but I must have sat on the wrong side of the train because most of the mountains were on the other side. The train finally arrived in Innsbruck at 1:27 pm. I remembered to save a screenshot of a map of Innsbruck onto my phone, so I didn’t have too much trouble finding my hotel after a 15 minute walk.

I checked into my hotel, the Hotel Weisses Kreuz, which was founded in 1465, which is pretty weird – staying in a hotel that is older than the country I’m from. It’s pretty famous because Mozart spent a couple nights here, and you can hear the classical music playing in the reception. It wasn’t too terribly expensive even though it is located right in the middle of the main plaza, near the Goldenes Dachl, or Golden Roof; I got a small single room for 37 Euros a night. It really is refreshing to have my own room – I don’t think I’ve slept in a room by myself since May 15th.

After checking in, I wandered around the city but didn’t go very far because it was raining. I saw the Golden Roof, as mentioned earlier, which was built in the 1490s to ‘cover an oriel window from which the court of Emperor Maximilian could observe the square below’. I took a few pictures of the alpine scenery and a river flowing through town, but didn’t see too many mountains. Most of the good views are northwest of the city, just over the closest mountain. You can take a cable car to the highest point in the region for around 15 Euros, and then there are plenty of trails to hike from there.

I plan on waking up around 7:00 am tomorrow morning, getting some breakfast at the hotel, and then doing my laundry down the street. The weather tomorrow calls for a 30% chance of rain, so looks like I probably won’t go hiking – not too sure what I will do yet. The weather on Wednesday is supposed to be better, with ‘mostly sunny’ skies, so I will probably spend the whole day on the mountains.
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I wasn’t originally too excited about seeing Munich (I actually thought about skipping it, and spending more time in Switzerland), but I think Munich turned out to be one of my favorite cites so far. The English Garden was really good, and the people seemed friendlier than in a lot of the cities I’ve been to. I didn’t get to see as much as I wanted (They have the largest science and technology museum in the world. So big that if you spent 10 seconds at every exhibit, you would be there for 12 days), but it gives me things to do next time. When I come back, I definitely won’t stay in a hostel, and hopefully I’ll be able to stay longer than just a couple days.