Drei Madels

This past weekend's trip to Innsbruck, Austria provided me with some of the best hiking I have ever experienced. Thanks to my parents' enthusiasm for the outdoors, our vacations camping across the country, and summers spend outdoors with my siblings, I have a strong love for being outside. Warning, this post will be a long one, but mostly because there are so many beautiful pictures I want to share!

On Friday Hilary and I met up with Leah in the Munich Hauptbahnhof; she'd taken a night train from Berlin so we all hopped aboard an early train out and were in Innsbruck by 9:30am. Instead of taking a bus we walked to our hostel, a pretty house with a garden and courtyard that had been turned into a hostel, to help us start to get a feel of the city.

The view out our window. Behind the clouds on the right are MOUNTAINS!

After we checked in we didn't waste any time. For Friday we had decided to take the mountain train and then the gondola all the way to the top, and then hike the Goetheweg (Weg means trail). The stretch of the Alps we were in this weekend is called the Nordkette. The top of the gondola is the Hafelekarspitze at 2444m, which gave us an amazing view of the city and surrounding mountains. But really, I could say that about every moment of our hike that day.

Hi, Innsbruck!

The Goetheweg took us along the ridge of a few peaks. My favorite peak was the Mühlkarspitze, 2243 m, where we found a patch of snow and a drop that made me feel as though I could fall off the mountain.We encountered a surprising (to me) number of goats along the way. For the most part they ignored us, but they were an adorable addition to the landscape.

You know it's a real mountain when you're hiking with the mountain goats.

On the edge of the Mühlkarspitze

We hiked through patches of snow along the mountainside, and if there had been fewer clouds we could have seen the Zugspitze, the tallest peak in Germany (yep, we could see all the way to Germany!). We took lunch at our turn-around point in a bowl, watching the clock so that we didn't miss the last Bahn down. On the way back we tried out a new trail that took us one gondola station lower and allowed us to increase our time on the mountain.

Ski lifts look so out of place in the summer.

After returning to our room we showered and headed into the city for dinner. We came across a track meet in the middle of the streets of Innsbruck, which was interesting. Then we enjoyed a delicious Austrian dinner at the Stiftskeller in the Innenstadt, before heading home (through a surprise rain shower, which thankfully was the only rain of the weekend) and going to bed at a ridiculously early hour. Hey, we were exhausted!

On Saturday we woke up early to stop by the tourist information center before beginning our hike. We were following the suggestion of my friend Phil, who studied in Innsbruck last spring, so we started at a trail head by the Planötzenhof Gasthaus with Höttinger Alm, a mountain hut, as our Ziel (goal). It was a very tough climb. A serious chunk of the trail up was a steep vertical, with the sun bright and beating on our backs. My quads were burning but every time I stopped to look around I knew it was worth it.

Just part of the way up. Pictures can't show it, but it was a lot steeper

We all made it to the Alm, where we paused for a minute before deciding to continue a little further before stopping for lunch. We hiked to the Bodensteineralm, another hut about 45 minutes away. It was an easier trail, though the very last minute was a little bit of a steeper vertical than I wanted. Hilary kept me going though. After another brief rest we were heading back to Höttinger Alm.

Looking back at the Alm. You can see the trail!

For lunch we thought we would do the German/Austrian thing, and have some beer with our food. After receiving our half liters (I ordered a Weisse which was very good) we actually looked around and realize that most of the hikers were sipping Drittels (third of a liter) and often Radlers (part beer, part lemonade or Sprite). Apparently half liters are not as common, but it appeared that being a group of young females on the mountain was also uncommon, so we just embraced it. My beer was accompanied by a delicious and reasonably priced skillet of bacon and eggs. Hey, you gotta refuel!

The Alm

Delicious.

Our hike down was a little unconventional, in that we sort of missed a sign or two and kind of made up our own trail at the end. Everything had been excellently marked until about halfway down. We didn't take the same path as we did on the way up, because we had a different end destination and we didn't want something that steep. I was a little discouraged by the lack of signs at the end, but it all worked out and since we were in the Alps it was hard to be too upset. We were just thoroughly exhausted and my legs were about ready to give out. The usual for a day of hard hiking!

Saturday night was a lot like Friday, minus the track meet and the rain: shower, dinner in the city, and a wonderfully early bedtime. Our Sunday train to Salzburg was another early one, 8:09am. I'm sure you're wondering how early our bedtime was. I'll just say that despite getting up before 7, we managed to fit in over nine hours of sleep that night.

The church by our hostel. If you look closely you can see a few white specks in the triangle of open grass to the right and a little below the clock on the church. That's where we hiked to!

We had scheduled our trains so that we had about three hours in Salzburg, Austria on Sunday. It was a fun break in the train riding. We didn't get to spend a lot of time in any one place, but we saw one of the fountains featured in "Sound of Music" (Salzburg is where part of "Sound of Music" was filmed), we saw a marching band in traditional Austrian dress, we walked by Mozart's Wohnhaus and Geburtshaus (where he lived and where he was born), saw the cathedral where he was baptized, and walked up to the Festung Salzburg. It's a huge castle on the cliff overlooking Salzburg, very impressive.

The castle on the hill is the Festung Hohensalzburg

The marching band, seated now, in traditional Austrian dress

Overall my experience in Austria was an extremely pleasant one. Again, the atmosphere is very different than that of Berlin. The people really did seem to be more openly friendly. Almost every hiker and biker we met on the path greeted us with a "Grüß Gott" which means God bless you but is used just like Hello. And interestingly enough, we didn't seem get attention because we looked American, we got attention because we were drei Madels--three girls--hiking alone. Our server at the Höttinger Alm knew we weren't Austrian but didn't think we were American until we told him. I view that as a success. As far as understanding the southern dialect, we had a little trouble understanding some words here and there, because we spoke with a few people with very thick Austrian accents, but for the most part we were able to get our thoughts across.

On a bridge over the Inn River in Innsbruck

I'd like to end with something I wrote Friday night, after our first hike, before I went to sleep. It's from my personal journal, and I just thought this excerpt might help explain why this trip had such an impact on me.

I just have this wonderful feeling in my chest, still. It's the swelling of my heart, and I feel it whenever I'm up high, especially high in the mountains, and overlooking something beautiful. I kind of got it in the dome of the Reichstag, overlooking a foreign city that was starting to feel like home. But it's strongest when I'm out, in nature, away from the world. I feel it often at the top of a ski run, overlooking the snow-covered pines and a ski town way below, and this feeling coupled with the excitement and anticipated adrenaline of the run before me is intoxicating, and it's what makes skiing so addicting. There's a bit of longing in this feeling, a longing to be as close to the mountain and scenery as possible. I love looking out and just breathing in, deep breaths, because I feel like I'm breathing in the pure, wild beauty of the mountains. It's invigorating, and makes my whole body feel cleaner, stronger, and ready to tackle the next challenge, overcome gravity's pull towards a lower elevation and oxygen-rich air, and to scramble on my hands and knees if I must to the tippy-top of the tallest peak I can see.