Innsbruck! (May 22.)

Looking at my pictures, it's hard to admit now and probably hard to believe, but I really was not fond on Innsbruck. It is a beautiful town, but there really isn't much to do, and especially if you are on a budget!
 It didn't help that my travel mates were running late in the morning so that we missed the train we had planned to take to Innsbruck from Salzburg. THEN we got to the hauptbahnhof Salzburg and found out that if we bought the cheap group tickets we had planned on (12 Euro per person) then it would take 4 hours to get to Innsbruck! That was just ridiculous considering we were only staying there one night, everything closes around 6pm, and we wouldn't be able to get there until 3:30. Instead we paid 40 Euro per person to get there before noon on the express (2 hour) train.

The first couple hours were well spent and adventurous. We found the Grassmayer Glockenmuseum. Aka, the Grassmayer Bell Museum (and foundary). It sounded odd and unique to Innsbruck, so we had to check it out. It was a small place, but had basically everything you could ever want to know about bell making, and with a glass wall that let you see into the factory. We watched for about 15 minutes while 2 guys worked on making a sand cast for a bell. (At least I think that's what they were doing)

This is the arch of triumph or something like that. I have no idea how old it is or who built it or why. I was honestly no in a great mood when we arrived to Innsbruck, and we found this within a half hour of getting there.

The Grassmayer museum!

Steps 1- 3 of how bells are made: bricks, then clay, then clay with wax decorations

 

steps 4 and 5- molding/unmolding

Left: a finished bell. The side is cut out to show you how the inside looks and I think also so you can see the shape that the metal actually takes. Right: Something really cool! An old bomb shell turned into a harmless, very special bell

 
 Testing out some bells:

 

 

 This is the old factory where they would make bells

 

 Display bells, again to show how bells are cast

 A big pit where they would actually pour the metal in to cast the bells

 

 

 Modern workshop! Guys working with sand!

This building was really cool to me because the writing says "Alt Insprvgg" which tells you how old the name is! v =u. So somewhere along the line, the name pronunciation changed from In-sprug to Ins-brook

The only other thing I knew about Innsbruck was that the Goldenes Dachl in there in the middle somewhere. (aka the Gold Roof). There was always a question about it in German Quizbowl, so I had to see it. The problem was that I couldn't remember really anything about why it was built or even if it is real gold, and the museum about it cost 4 Euro to get in (which I didn't think was worth it, after just spending 40 Euro on a train. You know how frugal I am) so we never found out. I did take a few cool pictures though, and all of the surrounding buildings were also very pretty.

                                                       
                                           The Goldenes Dachl

 Stadtturm

Speck = bacon, therefore Speckeria = store of bacon!!!

 The disappointment was within the fact that the only kinds of shops in the alt stadt area around the goldenes Dachl were all SUPER touristy! I mean I don't mind if there are 2 little souvineer shops or something, but in Innsbruck every other store was like that! What made it even more terrible is that most of the souvineers said "Austria," not even "Oesterreich" !

So I really felt as if there was nothing to do.

And then somehow we found out that there was a free garden. We wandered over, and I was extremely pleasantly surprised.  You could see the mountains through the trees, and there was a pond with ducks, and even a Grandmother-Willow-Awesome Weeping Willow tree (see Pochahontas) draped over the pond, that you could walk underneath <3 

 Are you allowed to do anything in this park? No playing, no fires, no teepees, no bikes, no hammocks (?!), no tightrope walking (?!) and no....? walking on chain links???

Well, I guess walking dogs is totally cool as is throwing stuff away.

This was awesome: Giant chess sets, with a bunch of old men surrounding it playing chess together

Ducks hiding underneath the grandmother willow tree in the pond

  Sitting by the ducks in the park!

EEEE 3 little ducklings!!!

Just chillin with the mallard

 

 

From the garden, we realized we were near the river, and so we decided to walk to the river. I'm glad we did, because we had some really great views of the mountains:

Titanic pose over the river

There is this really sweet looking restaurant across from the river, but it was pretty expensive. I would have lovely to go there just for a drink or something, though. It was so old and adorable looking.

 Ottoburg restaurant.

 A bakery!

Wein haus

 And then I happened to see a record store, which turned out to be run by a couple of british guys!

 

 

The record store happened to be next door to a violin maker!

 

And now we get to the part about old Germany region being rascist. There's an Austrian dessert specialty called Mohr im Hemd, which is chocolate cake, usually a little bunt cake or gugglehupf shape, topped with vanilla ice cream, with of course minor variations (such as chocolate sauce, whipped cream, etc).  Hemd is the word for shirt (specifically a button up ) but I didn't know what Mohr was. Turns out, simple enough, it's the word for "Moor" in this case referring to the people, like Othello. Right, so chocolate cake = Mohr and the vanilla ice cream = Hemd.

Apparently for this reason, the name of the dessert is often changed to Shokoladehupf or something similar (schokolade = chocolate).

But in any case, it was a very yummy dessert, especially at the end of a cold, cloudy and not necessarily great day.