Innsbruck, Capital of the Alps

Today we took the train across the border to Austria and spent the day in Innsbruck, which calls itself 'the capital of the Alps'. In the Tirol region  and surrounded by mountains on all sides, it is in a very picturesque location and popular with tourists at any time of year.

Our first stop was the Tiroler Volkskunstmuseum (Tirol Folk Art Museum) where we enjoyed the displays of 18th and 19th century arts and crafts including household decorations for Christmas and other religious festivals, costumes and masks, and everyday items for the household and farm. There was a section on 'the parlour' where we walked through original livingrooms from various ages which had been reconstructed in the museum - all in dark wood panelling and with the windows of their age. There was also a wonderful display of Tyrolean costumes on amazingly life-like wooden models.

St Anne (mother of Mary) with Mary and Jesus

Milking stools

Part of a beautiful Nativity scene

Some artefacts in one of the reconstructed parlours

Next door to the museum is the Hofkirche (Court Church) whose centrepiece is the splendid tomb of Maximilian I (1459 - 1519), flanked on its sides by twenty-eight larger than life bronze statues representing the Emporer's ancestors. Maximilian had an imaginative idea of who his ancestors were and included King Arthur and some other unlikely people. Some of the statues were designed by Albrecht Durer and involved bronze casting processes that were ground-breaking for their time.

A tipsy king?

Maximilian's tomb

One of the most famous sights in Innsbruck is the Goldens Dachl (Golden Roof) and we walked through the narrow lanes of the Old City, with their shops selling Tirolean costumes and handicrafts, to join the crowd of tourist photographers.

Goldens Dachl

Window displays

It was then time for a break so we took the Nordkettenbahnen cable railway up above the city to the Alpine Zoo stop where we had lunch in the sunny courtyard of a restaurant. I had a delicious Caesar salad and Ian enjoyed a skewer with grilled pork, veal, chicken and beef.

The Alpine Zoo was interesting but it was rather run-down and reminded us too much of how zoos used to be. We spent some time trying to photograph wild boar, bison, lynx, 'wild cats' and Alpin Ibex who just would not stand still!

A lonely bear

Having earned another break after climbing all the hills at the zoo, we took the cable railway back to the town and visited a cafe we had noticed earlier which sold different types of strudel. Ian had cherry strudel and I had chocolate and raspberry - delicous!

It was a very hot day so we decided to spend the next hour before our train left having a read in the lovely shady Hofgarten.

We caught the 6.36pm train back to Munich but the trip did not go smoothly. After we crossed the Austrian border, we were delayed for over half an hour at Rosenheim while police moved through the train and gathered up a group of a couple of dozen 'African' people and removed them from the train. Presumably they did not have passports. We had experienced something similar on a train earlier this week where our train stopped at an unscheduled station and police alighted with a smaller group of 'Africans'.

Due to the delay, we missed the connecting train in Munich and arrived back in Augsburg after 9pm. We had a lovely walk back to our apartment in the cool evening, with a full  moon and a beautiful view of St Ulrich's church lit up against the night sky.