Flying Power & number "0" buses

Breakfast at the hotel was the biggest luxury we have had so far: croissants, jam, nice bread, yoghurt, multivitamin juice, eggs for me and ham for John. We ate as much as we could manage, it was free after all, then set off to catch our train to Austria.

The first thing we came across on the train was a topless fat man with a tattoo on his huge upper arm saying simply, "SPACE BEER". This train terminated at Brenner, which is 45 minutes away from Innsbruck. All the signs in the station were in both Italian and German so we had no idea which country we were actually in. We had had no passport checks during the entire journey and everyone there looked bewildered when we attempted to speak Italian to them, so we assumed we were in Austria. The second train was more like a London bus than a train, it had bendy bits, handles coming from the ceiling and fold down seats, but unlike London buses it was full of people dressed in lederhosen! What more could I have asked for? It was like an Austrian dream come true.

The change in temperature hit us immediately, and we were helpfully notified by an LED display outside the station that it was 23 degrees. Walking through Innsbruck we noticed crowds of people wearing red and yellow, and were curious until we realised that the football was actually being played there that night. Our hostel (technically a B&B) was in the old part of the city, above a café. We dropped our bags, grabbed a map and made our way out for a wander. We had been told by the ladies at the hostel to help ourselves to anything we could find in the kitchen, and spying some chocolate milkshake powder we couldn't help but go out to get milk. In the supermarket queue ahead of us was a guy around our age wearing a t-shirt saying "Best of Pork".

As soon as we left the supermarket, milk in hand, the rain started. All the fans watching the big screens must have been drenched, it was a pretty big downpour. We didn't sit to watch either of the matches, but we walked past lots of people huddled under umbrellas watching it, including a large group of Spanish fans outside a café next door to our hostel. As we walked past we noticed two old ladies walk slowly between them and the screen, and they must have thought the funnily-dressed people with flags were waving at them because they stopped, laughed and waved back, staying there for a good minute or two before realising that they weren't waving but telling them to get out of the way of the screen! Old ladies are funny everywhere in Europe!

People in the streets were singing various chants and we felt a little left out, so we decided to join in, shouting and singing the word "milk" (for it was still in our hands) in as many tunes as we could think of. I think it made us fit in :)

As you'd expect there were scores of street vendors, all the usual suspects, but it was the first time I have ever seen a street stall serving champagne by the glass. Austria is so civilized, even the football fans who came into the hostel late that night were sure to be quiet, as they knew we were tucked up for the night.

Breakfast the next morning was yet another treat: bread rolls, delicious homemade jam, creamy hot chocolate, cereal and CAKE! The morning had started so well, until some Scousers came down for breakfast - even the brash American girls shut up when they boisterously entered the room. Listening to them grunting and snorting their food made me think I should pretend to be from Sweden in future. It was like they were speaking in another language, and as they belched their way through breakfast the café quickly emptied.

We did the usual tourist shop expedition, finding only ridiculously over-priced snowstorms. Again, my little heart fell until John suggested that we buy a tiny, kitsch little cuckoo clock instead! I love the man more every day, and I am now the very proud owner of possibly the tackiest, and yet somehow cutest, plastic cuckoo clock ever! It is so awful that it is actually, in fact, sans cuckoo. But I think that adds to the charm and I love it! After dropping it off at the hostel (I don't want it to get damaged now, do I?) we went for another wander, steering clear of the tourists as best we could. We saw yet more signs of how civilized a place this is: the youth spit not on the floor but into bins, and the silhouette men on the roadsigns are wearing hats!

Our nun count was a very disappointing 1, but we did see a fat priest chatting with some football fans and a priest dressed all in white who looked like the Angel Islington from "Neverwhere". We have also seen some Christmas themed graffiti so I think it makes up for it.

Remembering the demand to eat the food in the kitchen, we dutifully responded by eating almost our own weight in free pasta. Lacking any kind of sauce, we headed to the Aldi up the road (they call them 'Hofer' here) where we saw chess piece shaped biscuits and dragon shaped crisps and were served by an A. Unterberger, the fastest checkout girl I have ever seen. It was as though she was possessed - she ran through the items at crazy speed then, inevitably, had to wait ages for people to fiddle with their change, but she even predicted with which coins they would pay and had their change ready before they had even opened their purses. We fooled her by paying for something costing €1.99 with a €10 note.

We also bought some chocolate (the first for ages) and took it with us when we visited Schloss Ambras, the castle just outside the city. We had one of most fun days there: we watched a peacock eat an entire lawn of buttercups, saw a goose chalet, met a hyper-intelligent duck with an enormous head, cheered on a duck dance-off, saw a tiny woodpecker and fed a duckling. Not all of our fun was bird-related, but the majority was. After feeding the duckling and a couple of dancing geese we sat down on a nearby bench to have our chocolate. A squawking sound stopped us mid-bite and we looked around to see another peacock marching towards us. I think he must have been annoyed about not being given any seeds, as he came over and snatched the chocolate out of my hand with his beak! Luckily, it was only a couple of squares, but he swallowed it in one go and then ran off! We finished the remaining chocolate and on the last piece he came back and tried it on again, the cheeky scamp! We quickly hurried on, fearing he might come back and peck at us regardless of whether or not we had chocolate, and stumbled across a bloody great waterfall! Not the kind of thing you expect to run into, but there it was tucked behind the trees, hidden from view like a sneaky assassin. Looking at the map at the entrance when we left, we saw that we had barely walked a third of the actual grounds of the place.

After yet more pasta we walked to the Swarovski shop near our hostel, which was holding an exhibition called 'Winter Wonderland'. Ooh, it was so sparkly! The exhibition itself wasn't as interesting as just walking through the shop seeing all the pretty crystal sculptures, including a tiny purple pufferfish and a tiny green and red cactus.

Unfortunately, our hostel room has no window to the outside world so we are not able to sit and people-watch at our leisure, we have to actually leave the house. The whole city has embraced football fever, every shop has incorporated the theme into their window displays, my favourite being a ladies fashion shop whose mannequins are dressed in pretty floral dresses, shin pads, socks and football boots and made to stand in various football-y poses. Hung from nearly every window of every building in the centre of town are flags of all the participating nations, and fans walk around in their full regalia whether or not their country is playing that day. We decided to watch the Switzerland - Turkey match in a café in town, and found one with a horde of Swedes. We do like Swedes, so we knew we'd have fun. I think we must have watched them more than we watched the football to be honest, they were so entertaining! They were all singing and chanting and having a great time. They had one song in particular that we especially enjoyed: it was to the tune of 'Go West' and it sounded as though they were singing "Stand up, be a unicorn! Stand up, be a unicorn!" We couldn't help but join in the singing, and I wished Toby was with us.