My Great Austrian Adventure: Conquering My Fears

Now, to refresh some memories: I went to Innsbruck back in March and I described it as “the most beautiful place I have ever seen” so of course I was quite happy to go there again with Gwen who hadn’t been yet. It turned out to be quite the adventure for me too. I had seen it in winter when everything was covered in snow and snow sports were the go. Now when I went back, the snow was melted and things looked completely different. For those interested (and it is very interesting!) look at the landscape pictures from this blog entry, then click on march and scroll down to ‘Four countries in one three day weekend’ to see the pictures of the same place in winter. It is amazing how one place can change so much and yet still be so beautiful.

On day two (Saturday) Gwen and I went to Innsbruck. Even though we were staying in a hotel in Salzburg, we decided to go to Innsbruck in the hope of escaping terrible weather. Our plan was so daring that it worked and we enjoyed a sunny day in Innsbruck. Our fear of the weather changing meant that as soon as we arrived we went up the mountain because it’s the most important outdoor thing to do there. So once again I boarded three different cable cars to go to the top of the main tourist mountain in Innsbruck. I was amazed to see how different the landscape was. What was once white with snow was now green or rock. It was beautiful. I still maintain that Innsbruck is one of the most beautiful places.

I really feel like I achieved something special on this trip and I am really proud of myself. After having done all of these cable car rides before, I was no longer scared. I still like to find a solid railing to hold on to but this time around I was more relaxed, able to walk around and take photos and enjoy the view instead of just hold on for dear life. Last time, I would stand several metres from the edge of the mountain at each stop and then turn to the side and urge people to take the photo quickly, as if turning my back to the view would somehow make me fall! But this time I went a lot closer and posed and in one photo I’m even leaning back arms outstretched. What progress!

Finally, and this is the biggest news and I am so proud of myself I climbed to the very summit of the mountain. Last time Steph and Isabelle climbed to the top but I was too scared and waited for them. But this time, with solid ground under my feet (instead of snow), I climbed all the way to the top. Sure, I was scared. At one point I was swearing because we took a short cut, which did cut out a lot of climbing, but also meant I was RIGHT next to the edge. I was practically crawling up, but I went up! And the best part is once I reached the top, I was walking around fairly freely, instead of being stuck in one spot and too scared to move. (Though for some reason, I was still reluctant to turn my back to the edge!) Admittedly, the fog probably helped. In fact, once we reached the summit, we could not see anything but white, so I didn’t know how high up we were. Maybe this helped me realise that I was indeed standing on solid ground before the clouds dispersed and we were blessed with the view of a life time. It was absolutely stunning. Words cannot describe it.

Anyway I haven’t been to any high places since then, but I feel like this was a life changing moment for me. I’m sure I will always be a little uneasy around heights but I don’t think I will be petrified in one spot anymore. I think I have learned to move past the fear and make the most of the experience. It may not sound like much to you, but I just overcame one of my worst fears (2nd to spiders) and I am very, very proud of that. Elissa: conqueror of two Alpine mountains.

Such positive emotions led to some poor decision making on my part. Although I maintain that misleading Austrian signs are partly to blame. We were half way back down the mountain, hoping to see the Alpine Zoo before we had to catch a bus, and there was a sign that pointed to the Alpine Zoo. I knew the zoo was only one stop lower on this cable car/train thing so I figured, ‘how far can it be? Let’s walk! Why would they put the sign there if it was far? It doesn’t even have a distance on there. It can’t be very far.’ Famous last words! At first, we were enjoying a stroll down marked roads but we became suspicious when the track turned into a path in the forest. As if to mock us the ‘Alpine Zoo 20 min walk’ sign came up AFTER we had been walking for 20 mins. At which point, we basically had no choice but to continue because the zoo was downhill. It sucked because we didn’t have much time and this walk basically cost us the time to go to the zoo and to have lunch. Thank goodness we were still carrying snacks and water! On the bright side, we did get to walk through a beautiful green forest on a mountain side. We did find a beautiful creek flowing with freshly melted snow water and we did entertain ourselves with great conversational topics such as British voice over documentary on what the humans will do next and measuring the distance to the zoo by the smell of animal waste.

The good news is we still made the bus to the Swarovski factory or what I’m calling ‘crystal world’. Swarovski is an expensive brand of jewellery and for some reason that I never really understood one of the top guys at Swarovski decided to make a magical crystal world for people to come and see. I had not heard of this before, but Gwen wanted to go there and I was happy to see something new in Innsbruck. Crystal world was crazy and stunning at the same time. For starters, there are crystals everywhere. There’s an awesome hill head with a waterfall mouth and crystal eyes (see the photos). There were weird exhibits where manikins danced, a room that looks like you are inside a crystal, an awesome maze in the shape of a hand and just random exhibits with crystal in them. It was really cool to look at. The only problem was we finished looking around in 1 hour and the buses only come every 2 hours so not wanting to spend a fortune on a crystal lunch we once again survived on our pre packed snacks.

Stay tuned for part three of my Great Austrian Adventure!

My Great Austrian Adventure: Ice Caves

The weekend after I went to Dresden was a long weekend in Austria so my friend, Gwen, and I decided to explore Austria. This trip was first discussed back in February during the Orientation program, so I had been looking forward to it and researching it for a while. Basically, we wanted to check out the natural beauty of Austria. So we wanted to go and see ice caves, the tallest waterfall in Europe and a town on a lake surrounded by mountains. I also wanted to go to a salt mine because it was in my year 9 German textbook! However, not all of these things eventuated. The waterfall is too difficult to get to without a car and Gwen wasn’t really interested in the salt mine (which was nice because it turned out to be really hard to get to). So instead the weekend was full of unexpected turns which led me to conquer my fear of heights!

Gwen and I had a lot of things we wanted to squeeze into this one weekend so we decided to do lots of travelling on the first day to get it out of the way. So we left reasonably early Friday morning taking a train to Salzburg (about 3 hours). From there, the trip to the ice caves turned out to be an extremely tough, scary and awe inspiring journey. In fact, getting to the ice caves turned out to be more memorable than the ice caves. From Salzburg we boarded a regional train to the small town of Werfen (about 1 hour). Once we arrived we had to find our way from the train station to the bus stop where the bus would take us to the caves. This proved difficult. We faced (in my opinion) gale force winds crossing the bridge across the river, were unsure which path to take and I was nearly hit by a car because I looked the wrong way before crossing the street. Despite the hick ups we had a great time. Werfen is absolutely stunning. It is surrounded by green mountains and on the top of one is a huge castle. The river was beautiful with the freshest water I have ever seen as it was coming down from the mountains as the snow was still melting. Plus there was a sign for a ‘schwimmbad’, or swimming pool, which pointed into the river! Even in the freezing cold, I was tempted to jump into that crystal clear water. Anyway, we took the scenic route but we found the bus stop a whole 15 minutes before another group of people who got off the same train as us found it!

Then we took a minibus up the mountain. We went up extremely narrow and windy roads so it was a reasonably long but beautiful journey. We bought our entrance tickets and then had to walk 20 minutes. It was a reasonably tough walk though and it felt like longer than 20 minutes. Before long we were both huffing and puffing. Luckily, the views just got better and better which kept us going.

At the end of this hike we reached a cable car, except it wasn’t like the other cable cars I’d been on on this trip. The others seemed reasonably stable. This one was a box which swayed significantly and as we watched a cable car come down we realised the design was less than ideal. As the car approached the platform, it hit two pieces of wood which were erected on either side and got progressively closer together. As the car hit from side to side it stopped swaying and came to a stop. I was not prepared for this. I am scared of heights and this looked like a less than ideal situation. The people exited and the guy who works there ushered for us to get in. So I jumped on. And started looking for what looked like the sturdiest rail to hold onto. I never got that far. I thought we would wait there for a while for more people to get on, we did not. Gwen was asking me to take a photo of her and before I knew it, the guy closed the door (it was externally operated so he wasn’t even in there with us) and we were moving. It didn’t go slowly either, we were racing up the mountain, the car was swaying from side to side and I was freaking out. Gwen was trying to pass me her camera but I was hanging on for dear life, yelling, ‘I can’t! I can’t!’ I finally got into a more stable position and took her picture. Then suddenly we were slowing down and we were at the other end. The car hit the piece of wood and I let out some kind of half scream. Gwen was laughing and running around the cable car all excited, while I was rooted to the spot petrified. Then I hear laughter from behind me as the people waiting to come back down the mountain are watching us and had heard me scream. It was so embarrassing but I was more traumatised than embarrassed. I got off of that thing thinking ‘Oh my goodness, I nearly died!’ It was so scary!

After my near death experience we were faced with another ’20 minute walk’ which was more like a 40 min hike. It was very steep and very tough and looked dangerous. The paths were wide enough, but if you fell, well, it’s a long way down. We worked up one hell of a sweat and had to stop for a couple breaks but we made it to the ice caves…absolutely exhausted! There was a tour leaving when we got there but instead we waited half an hour for the next one in order to reenergise. Thank goodness we brought snacks and drinks with us. We would have really struggled without it. I’ve got to say that the ice caves have got to be the most inaccessible tourist attraction I’ve ever been to. Disabled people, old people, unfit people and lazy people stand no chance! Even if you have a car, you can only drive up to where the mini bus dropped us off.

Within a matter of minutes we went from overheating to freezing cold in the entrance of this cave and waiting 30 mins in the cold turned out to be less than ideal. I had all of my layers including gloves on before we even saw any ice! Everyone else there was clearly European and dressed very warmly and in hiking gear, so we felt very unprepared for the elements. On the website for the ice caves it just tells you to dress warmly, but as Gwen and I then realised, dressing warmly to a girl from Australia and a girl from Texas is VERY different to dressing warmly to an Austrian. The good news is I wasn’t cold inside the cave. The bad news is I wasn’t cold because the 1 hour tour consisted of 35 mins walking upstairs and 25 mins walking downstairs. The tour guide did not speak any English and when we asked if he could translate some things into English, he walked away and came back with a sheet of paper. We later realised it was basically word for word of what he said on the tour but in English. However, this piece of paper proved useless because there was no electricity in the caves. Instead, we were each given a lantern to carry around (which was really heavy) which had an exposed flame on it. So we tried to shine light on the piece of paper without burning it, but we didn’t know what part of the text we were up to and it was just too hard. I decided to give up and I would read about it later.

So there we were walking in the dark up icy slippery stairs holding a lantern trying not to fall or burn anyone else. Gwen only had to tell me, ‘my leg is getting really hot!’ once. Add to that, that there are no lights in the caves. Every now and then the tour guide just lights some kind of sparkler type thing, you barely see any ice on this tour. All of your energy is focused on the stairs, balancing and the lantern. When you stop to look at a spectacular piece of ice, the extra ‘sparkler’ light only lasts 30 seconds so you barely get a good look at it. It was one of the biggest let downs ever. On the website the ice looks really cool. But in real life, it’s a fail. The only bit I liked was at the end you walk through a tunnel of ice. But once again you are walking down steps the entire time and there is no stopping so you don’t get to appreciate it. Most of the time I was looking down trying not to fall over and trying not to burn anyone with the lantern. It was a real bummer. After all that, we then realised that the English sheet asks you to give it back at the end. So at the last minute we hid it, so that we could read it later. I read it on the train back and it was really boring: just plain factual sentences, no emotion. Gwen and I agreed that this tourist attraction needs to become more touristy. It could have been a lot better with an enthusiastic funny tourist guide.

Luckily, the journey back down the mountain was just as crazy as the journey there, so we didn’t feel like our day was wasted. On the contrary we felt like we had one of the most productive days ever! We exited the cave and once again sat down for more well earned snacks (remember we just spent an entire hour climbing stairs) when it started snowing! This was the weekend of the 1st June so officially summer and it was snowing! Just 90 minutes after we were sweating in the hot sun. I was in awe. You just don’t get those kinds of weather changes in Adelaide. We started our hike back down the mountain, seeing other people struggling with the uphill hike there. Normally in such situations, I would give them an encouragement like ‘not much further now!’ but not on this occasion because it was a really long and tough hike and I didn’t want to lie to them! We did, however, stop and chat to one lady. I don’t remember exactly what she said but she mentioned the Alps, to which I replied, ‘we’re in the Alps?!’ I had not realised. Elissa: Alpine Mountain Climber!

As we got closer to the cable car, the weather continued to change and it started to get quite windy. I was not convinced it was safe to take the cable car in such conditions but I also didn’t want to live in an ice cave so I got back on the cable car. Having time to mentally prepare, it wasn’t so bad going down. Though I definitely wouldn’t say I enjoyed it. On our last stretch of hiking down the mountain it started to rain, lightly at first, and then we got out the umbrella. Luckily, we reached the ticket office when we did because it started pouring down. I mean, really bucketing down, the kind of rain where you think it’s going to hurt if it hits you. We made it just in time; everyone else who came down the mountain after us was completely drenched. Instead we watched out of the window until the mini bus arrived, which came during a break in the weather and we did not get rained on at all! I was in awe at the day we had had. In a matter of 2 hours we had had hot sunshine, snow, strong winds and pouring rain. The views were amazing and I had conquered a mountain in the Alps. A Friday doesn’t get much better than that! (Stay tuned for my entries on Saturday, Sunday and Monday as the Great Austrian Adventure continues.)