Innsbruck, Tirol

While I was dealing with backing up our recent photos (methods that Noah deems extreme – with the combination of external hard drives, burning onto CDs, and uploading to the cloud with my various accounts), I realized that our trip to Innsbruck last November was left off of the blog.  Sure this wasn’t that big of a trip, but the main point of our blog is for us to be able to look back and remember all our excursions, big and small, we take while we are here.  The second reason – to let our moms/grandma share in our adventures from 3,000 miles away.  So with that precursor, I will write about Innsbruck, almost three months later, and cheat and change this date for the blog so that this falls in the right chronology – between ‘Our First Snow of the Year’ and Istanbul.

What sets this trip apart from our others this year, is that we took our dogs with us out of the country.  Yes – the pups ‘used’ their pet passports we got them.  And ‘used’ is in the most loose sense – since Germany and Austria are both members of the Schengen ‘borderless’ area – essentially removing borders between the member countries – there is no border check to verify our passports.  But that didn’t matter – we wanted to make sure we were still following the rules like good pseudo-Germans! 

First, a cute dog story:  Our dogs have always loved riding in cars, and since living in Munich they have fallen in love with Aunt Ellen’s little blue Twingo car (important detail) – it means a trip somewhere fun.  We decided to use our new car-sharing program and rent a car for the trip to Austria.  Noah went to pick up the car and parked it outside the apartment.  When it was time to leave, the dogs were beyond energetic, as they knew a road trip was in order by the fact that we packed their food and leashes in our luggage.  When we opened the front door, amongst all the cars parked on our street, there was one small blue car.  They both darted straight to that blue car and looked at us to let them in.  The problem – we rented a silver car that was parked further down the street.  I am no scientist (I will leave that to Noah), but to me it shows that dogs have both memory and proves they aren’t as colorblind as people tend to assume.

And we were off!  With Noah working to re-learn how to drive a manual transmission, we headed south to Austria.  We did have to make a quick stop at a gas station to purchase a vignette – required for driving on the Austrian highways.  Think EZ Tag for you Houstonians, except for a much steeper fine – over 100EUR.  After a few hours, and finagling the small city of Innsbruck by car, we found a parking spot and headed to our hotel – the Hotel Weisses Kreuz.  Any idea why we might have favored this place when we saw it on the internet??? 

 It was a very cute, historic hotel, dating back to the 15^th century.  It had many levels and various corridors, connecting the different sections of the hotel that were probably purchased at different times, as the place expanded.  Plus the location was perfect – right in the center of things, and just a few yards/meters away from the Goldenes Dachl & the Helblinghaus.

We saddled up the dogs and took off towards the Nordkette mountain.  We took a series of funiculars and cable cars to reach the top, where we stopped to take some family photos.  

Dog's unsure about riding a cable car

We then took the last cable car up to the very tip-top – though this was in the clouds and a bit creepy.  It felt like stepping out onto another planet.  There were all these crows that were just flying, but not moving, because the wind was so extreme.  We only spent about 15 minutes at this level before heading back down below the clouds for some hot chocolate at the restaurant.

One level below, while we were waiting on the funicular, my eagle eyes spotted the tiny yellow and blue markings of an Ikea across the city.  I love Ikea.  But the one in Munich is rather hard to get to, and there was a picture frame I wanted that the Munich one didn’t have.  The next morning we found ourselves in the Innsbruck Ikea, surprisingly leaving with more than just that one picture frame. 

After our morning shopping excursion, we picked the dogs up from the hotel and headed off to explore the city.  We stopped in Dom zu St. Jakob – a baroque church that the Asam Brothers helped decorate.  For those of you who have visited us, we probably took you to our favorite church in Munich – Asamkirche, built by these brothers a decade+ later.  It made the church a bit more interesting for us.  We then walked along the main pedestrian zone located around the Annasäule column.  This was established in 1706 as a remembrance that Bavarian invaders were defeated in the region three years earlier.

The next day it was time to head back to Munich, but we had a small side trip planned to visit Achensee – a small alpine lake on the Austrian side, somewhat on the way home.  We figured the dogs could use some hiking around before the long drive back.  To reach the lake we had to head up some steep roads – which really tested Noah’s manual driving expertise (or lack of it).  We had our first stall-out on a steep hill (versus our stall-outs on flat ground) – which resulted in the car quickly rolling downhill backwards.  Luckily we were the only ones on the road, or we would have definitely hit a few cars on our way down.  After a few scary moments, Noah was able to kick the car back in gear and drive off.  Only later did we learn of the ‘commonly known’ hand-brake trick.  It is only common knowledge when everyone drives manual – which is just not the case in the States!! 

A little while longer we all made it to the lake, the car in one piece.  This is where I will give Noah a shout out for his amazing driving abilities – I know if it were me, I would pay 10x the price to get an automatic car, and then because of that not go anywhere.  The weather was very windy, which made it rather chilly.  That didn’t matter – the dogs were happy, the lake was pretty, and we all enjoyed the fresh air.

Sadie so worn out she fell asleep sitting up in the car

All in all it was a great weekend getaway, and it is always a bonus when we get to take the dogs with us on vacation.

We Bought a Car….

…sharing service!!

Ok, we kind of sort of bought a car.  The only difference is that we share our car(s) with 10,000 other people in Munich, but essentially we feel like proud automobile owners again.  We signed up for a car sharing service called StattAuto, akin to ZipCar in the States.  And what exactly made us decide to do this?  There is this amazing steak restaurant that requires a car for convenient access, and I decided I have to take Julie there.  And why is this place so special?  Well you will have to wait for the next blog, because today is all about our new car!  But trust me- this steak place is worth reading about.

So after living without a car for almost a year, we have started to miss the sense of freedom that having a car lends.  My amazing Aunt Ellen has always been kind enough to take us (and the doggies!) when we want in her car, but it’s nice to have our own independence and not stretch our invitation too far.  But we don’t really want the extra responsibility and costs that come with owning a car.  After doing some research, it seemed pretty clear that car-sharing was the way to go.  So I put together my best sales pitch and sold the idea to my other (better) half.   However, I discovered later that she was wanted to reject my proposal immediately when I first suggested the idea, and had decided to listen to my pitch only to make me feel better.  I guess those years of salesmanship training selling Cutco knives paid off…I can still close the deal!

The program works like this: 

• Users pay a 250€ deposit (refundable at the end), a 25€ one-time processing fee, and 7€ per month to participate. 
• Once these payments are fulfilled, you have the ability to make an online reservation for one of the several hundred cars which are parked around the city. 
• There is a 2€ per hour rental fee (max of 19€ per day) and you pay 0.20€ per km driven (for the mini-class... add roughly 15 % for each increase of car size).  This fee includes the cost of gas which you would pay using the company’s credit card located in every car.  Therefore, this is very cheap since gas would normally cost around 0.10€ per km given average fuel prices and fuel economy. 
• To rent a city car for one day would cost about 20€ and a weekend getaway to Austria would cost about 120€ (including the cost of gas!).  This is very comparable, and in some instances cheaper, than traveling by train. 
• And also the cars are all insured with a 500€ deductible. 

All in all, this car sharing program is more economical compared to buying a car for someone driving less than 5,000 km per year- for people like us!

I went to the introductory class last week to learn the rules and sign the contract. The best part about the 1.5 hour lecture was that I impressed myself by being able to follow along pretty comfortably in German.  Normally, I would just pretend I understand, but this time I actually did understand it!  Now, all we have to do is wait until I get my PIN card and then we can start driving some cars.  Then we will find out how quickly I can re-learn how to drive manual transmission.  It’s only been about 10 years since my last time….I’m sure it will be fine.  ;)

The other really cool thing about this program is that they have about 100 different parking stations and there is one right down our street (3 cars, just 2 minutes walking)!  We have walked by this parking station about a million times and never noticed it before.  It’s in the back of an Opel dealership which maybe explains why the three rentals there are made by Opel (one Agila and two Astra for anyone up-to-date on Euro car styles).  Basically, they are amazing and we are really excited to have cars parked nearby!

It’s looking like an Ikea and steak dinner kind of weekend!  Stay tuned….

Oh and Aunt Ellen - don’t worry.  We (including the dogs) are still counting on you for our local getaways… your car (with your company) is still our preferred method of transportation!