Munich and Innsbruck

After Amsterdam, our plan was to stay with Leah's great aunt and uncle (Jerry and Rita) in Rutzhofen for a week, which meant we were traveling through Munich to get to their very small town in southern Germany. Unfortunately, Rita ended up coming down with a serious case of pneumonia about a week before we arrived in Germany, and was still very ill once we were in Munich. 

We lit a candle for Rita in a church we found (pictured below)

 Even after a lot of thinking and trying to figure out how to make it work, we weren't able to stay with them. Instead, after a few fast decisions and a lot of generosity on the part of Jerry and Rita, we ended up with tickets to Innsbruck, a small city just barely inside Austria in the foothills of the Austrian Alps.

We did spend a full day in Munich though while all this was being figured out. Having time to explore was the silver lining of missing Rutzhofen, since we weren't planning on spending much time there at all. We knew things were good because on our first night we were greeted with a mysterious fireworks display that went on forEVER, which we stood in the middle of a road to watch. The next day we went on a long and excellent walking tour of the city, on which we learned about beer, maypoles, nazis, beer, rebuilding of churches, the Glockenspiel,  beer, etc.

We also saw this guy play. Munich has the BEST buskers.

And we went into a church that was all white inside - quite a relief after all the gold leaf and crazy marble. This is where we lit Rita's candle.

That evening we headed for a Biergarten that we'd heard good things about on the tour. It was a confusing place but we ended up with absolutely delicious food (Leah's favorite so far!!) and some weirdly disappointing beer. It was a relief to be in a place where food was affordable again (Amsterdam was wonderful but pricey).

Heading to Innsbruck, we had a really beautiful train ride through the mountains of southern Germany- we passed through bundles of little adorable villages, between cloud-topped peaks, and above grassy countryside. After that double-shot of charm and beauty, we were a little disappointed by Innsbruck itself- it was fairly industrial and not very interesting or cute (from what we could tell on our walk away from the train station). We found nicer bits later, but the real appeal was the mountains. On our first full day, Leah ended up feeling pretty sick, but by the afternoon was in shape for a hike to a cable-car trip that took us to the top of the peak behind our hostel.

Leah is (almost) on the top of a 3300m tall mountain in the Alps!

It was absolutely awesome, even though we only got to be up there for 10 minutes because we'd made it just in time for the last car up and down. Feeling the temperature change from the bottom to the top was surreal.

The next day, we were set on doing a real hike, but had to figure out where such a thing was and how to get to it. After some searching and whining, we decided to follow a path through the alps described by some guy on the Internet 30 years ago. It worked out great!

Before it started raining.

We cable-carred up, walked through beautiful beautiful mountains, got rained on, saw cows with bells (they sounded like windchimes) went down horrible steep wet hills, got chair-lifted the rest of the way down, saw a little bit of the cute city/village of Hall-in-Turin (not much to see), and then caught a bus back into Innsbruck.

These are some of the cows we saw. They were scary. And big. And one was a bull (on the left). We were like a foot from them. Eeeeeeee!

Leah's 'hiking picture' pose. The path was crossed by a couple rocky creeks falling down the mountainside.

It was an adventure, especially finding the buses and lifts we needed, but everyone there was soooo helpful and friendly! If they didn't speak English, they were happy to find someone who did, and if they spoke English at all, they were thrilled to practice with us.

After Innsbruck it was back on to Munich and straight through to Vienna to find Ellie!