Innsbruck with Sarah!!!

Just a little info on Sarah for those of you who don't know her: Sarah is my "wild" friend who has chosen to move to Austria with her lover Flo because she could not bear to be without him or the Austrian Alps.  Therefore I am staying in their sweet digs which happens to be within easy driving distance of Italy and Switzerland.  I will be adding those to my destinations for this trip!!!

Sarah and I rode the train to Innsbruck today and she was impressed with my Eurail competency (thank you two days of practice).  We made it into the town and proceeded to walk almost as much as I did in Prague (not really, in Prague I walked for 11 hours, in Innsbruck I only walked for 8 hours).  We made it to the mountain "home" (more like castle/mansion) of the Kaiser.  The Kaiser's Kaiserin Maria-Theresa was a prolific woman and had about 16 children.  Three of them did not make it past 4 years of age and in the portrait room there is a sad painting of the three of them floating up to Heaven.  Maria-Theresa also believed that if your child died you should name your next child by that name until it stuck on a child who did live to a reasonable age.  Thus: Maria-Karoline, Maria-Karoline and Maria-Karoline (who lived to be about 50).  Oh, and Maria-Theresa named all thirteen of her girls Maria-Something.  Maria-Theresa's husband died at the early age of 43 during the wedding of his oldest son and Maria-Theresa mourned him in black until her own death decades later.  Apparently their wedding was one of the few love matches in the Austrian dynasty.  Anyway, that is enough history for now.

Sarah and I ate tons of delicious food!!!  The pretzel bread here is amazing and they stuff it with cream cheese and chives.  Gelato is great until you accidentally lick your scoop off the cone and onto the ground only three licks in.  Sad day.  We also had amazing Italian food.  My American-ness was showing since my complete lack of European geography did not make me aware of the fact that we were only minutes from the Italian border thus delicious Italian food is sometimes easier to find that traditional Austrian food.  I tried proscuitto and marscapone pizza for the first time and almost died from the tastiness.  That paired with fresh bruschetta and tortellini ragu made for my best meal so far (although I still stand by the fact that Czech hotdogs are amazing and I am craving one right now).

I have decided to stay with Sarah for a while longer and up on the agenda is a castle trip, Italian pizza in Italy, maybe Switzerland, and snowboarding.  I talked with Sarah about how much cooler I will be as a person if I can say I have gone snowboarding in the Austrian Alps.  In reality I will be spending most of my time falling on my bum, but it sounds exciting!!  And for my critics out there, I know that I hate snow, but I am in a foreign land where I am pretending that public transportation, not speaking the language, and snow does not terrify me.

Miss you all!!!!!!!!!!!!