Day trip to Innsbruck–gem in the Tyrolean Alps
I preplanned a trip to Innsbruck, an Olympic-class city about two hours away from Zell am See. I got up bright and early for the morning train, and here it is arriving in the station.
The next few photos were taken from an open window on the journey to Innsbruck.
I dramatized this next a bit.
The schedule I chose wasn’t nonstop, and halfway I switched from the regional train to a “Railjet” high speed train. It was crowded as fuq. An older British couple sat across from me, and had mistakenly only purchased reduced price tickets only good for the slow regionals.
The conductor explained that their tickets were invalid for Railjet, but they pulled the highly effective “we’re tourists” defense and he walked away defeated.
It had been hot and sunny every day of my vacation thus far, and I was already sunburned badly. It never crossed my mind to check the weather beforehand so I showed up in shorts and a tshirt, cursing my ill-preparedness for the dreary weather that rained off and on all day.
This really sucked because the only way to protect my camera was to put it in my backpack and not take any pictures. And if I can’t take pictures, I might as well not be there. Luckily I found a shop selling umbrellas pretty quick, and ended up buying a cheap one I managed to drag with me for the next few weeks (and then subsequently lost in Prague 🙁 ).
Anyway, I found myself walking through the old pedestrian district off Maria-Theresien-Straße.
One feature that immediately stuck out to me in Innsbruck was the colorful murals and decorations adoring many buildings, more often than not religiously themed. If you hover over the above image you can see what I’m talking about with the green building.
I think the only reason I took this next picture was because I found the McDonalds sign amusing. It’s funny how no matter what city you find yourself in with ornate centuries old architecture or whatever, there’s always a McDonalds which manages to locate itself on prime real-estate in a building that fits right in.
With my new fangled umbrella powers, I didn’t need to hide from the rain like all these people here.
This next panorama is of the town square. The upside to the rainy weather was that it pretty much drained the streets, allowing me to stand in the middle and facilitate my photo making. I wish our cities in America looked like this ;_;
I started walking down random backstreets away from the square, and came upon this house with beautiful Christmas-themed murals adorning the walls.
I continued haphazardly making my way to the main river bisecting Innsbruck. Here is a retro looking tour bus I found interesting.
Reaching the river banks, I took this awesome shot of the colorful buildings fronting Mariahilfstraße street on the other side.
I walked towards the bridge to cross the river, and found myself in this reflection 🙂 . You can see I’m carrying both my tripod and umbrella in the same hand, which is actually quite difficult and tiring.
Just across the bridge, I noticed this old building with battle scars in the side. I think it adds a certain rustic authenticity to the scene, and hope they don’t fix it. Also note the Jesus figure on the building’s corner.
After crossing the bridge I turned right, and this picture faces east down Innstraße. I just love how multicolored and vibrant the architecture is here, and it reminds me a lot about the famous Bryggen in Bergen. Unlike a lot of my excursions I didn’t have a map or a preplanned route this time, so I was basically just wandering around aimlessly.
Park by the river.
I’m not sure what really captivated me in this next photo here. I think it was just the novelty of seeing fire extinguishers prominently showcased in a storefront window in the same way that a store like Pottery Barn would display furniture.
I knew that Innsbruck–like most all cities I went to situated in the mountains–had an aerial tramway. I didn’t know what side of the river it was on or where it was geographically, but I made it my mission to try and find the entrance to it.
To that end, at every intersection and opportunity I favored the direction that led me higher. I don’t really keep track of street names or anything so to write about and name these photos I had to do a lot of sleuthing on Google Maps afterwards to retrace my steps. Here is a statue on the corner of St. Nicholas cathedral.
I found myself walking up a winding road called Höhenstraße, which later turned out to be the exact way of reaching the Hungerburg neighborhood where the tramway terminal is located. I really have a terrific fucking sense of direction and luck, let me tell you.
Here is a colourful religious site on the side of the road. I was really taken aback by how prolifically religious symbols are ingrained in Austrian architecture and culture, compared to the zero traces of religion I see here in the Bay Area.
I walked on and on. I was confident this road made a good choice of direction because a city bus passed me; it had to go somewhere significant and if not I could always ride the bus back down.
As I rounded this bend, the pedestrian sidewalk ended for some reason. I didn’t want to keep walking up this winding road with no sidewalk, so I took a detour down the driveway to the right.
First though I turned around and snapped this photo showing the altitude I had reached so far. Definitely a ways outside of the city center, I had been walking about an hour and twenty minutes since I arrived. When I like to go on an adventure, I really do like to go on an adventure and try my best to go off the beaten path and stay away from tourist traps.
Back to the detour. I came to this beautiful house situated next to a small stream on the edge of a nature area. There was a footpath leading up into the trees, and I just hoped it wasn’t private property and ended up taking me somewhere useful.
These people have one hell of a front yard.
I thought this picture was cool because of how the trees made almost a tunnel over the path.
Near the top of the path where it rejoined the road, I found this interesting bunker-like entrance. The sign says something about wasserwerk or waterworks, so I’m guessing it has something to do with the municipal water supply. The area above ground that they cleared trees for was massive too, so there must be a huge facility underground here.
Just one of many Jesus shrines I came across.
When the trail opened back up onto the road, I found another bunker entrance. There was also some big fenced off area across the street with ventilation shafts coming out of the ground. I really wish I could go inside and see what was going on. The coordinates for this location area are 11.38930768712401, 47.280091080675845.
I continued walking up the road and reached the altitude where a mist started to roll in. Here I faced a junction where I could continue on without a sidewalk on the left, or explore the closed road to the right. The choice was obvious.
It turned out to lead to a rock climbing area, and there were people doing just that.
I walked around the cliff and found a trail that continued behind it, and here is looking back towards the road.
I’m not sure what the signs say but that font face doesn’t look very inviting. After walking so far out of the city center and up this mountain, I was hoping for a payoff in the form of a grand vista point.
Bits and pieces of Innsbruck peaked through the trees, but the view was always obscured.
Here I’m capitalizing on a panorama opportunity 😀 .
As I kept walking the sun suddenly came out and made everything bright, but then quickly fell behind the clouds again. My small trail ended up merging with a much larger hiking trail, and from there I found an exit onto residential streets.
Here is another random Jesus shrine.
I finally found myself back on Höhenstraße, the main road I was on before taking the nature detour. Here is a rather beautiful building.
And alas, the grand vista point I had been trekking many hours for.
Unbeknownst to myself hitherto that moment, there is a funicular railway that goes from Innsbruck centrum to that very lookout spot. The building below marks the upper terminal for the Hungerburgbahn.
The mere existence of this thing infuriated me; while I hiked for hours up random roads and trails in search of a view and just miraculously ended up in a place such designated, they built a fucking train to haul clueless tourists up there with no effort on their part.
I took one more panorama as the train pulled into the station. Then I had a beer or two at a nearby restaurant, before buying tickets for the aerial tram.
Here is a picture of a map I took to giving a sense of the area.
Here’s the tram arriving now.
Unfortunately, the weather quickly started returning to shit.
To get to the top of the mountain there are two cable cars, and at the middle station everyone just walks down a hallway onto the next one. I decided that continuing on to the summit was futile because it was already beneath the cloud ceiling, so I could walked outside and took pictures from there.
Here is a big panorama of Innsbruck right as the rain starts to roll in.
And then it started. Luckily I had my umbrella!
It got dark and wet really fast, so I walked back inside to wait for a ride down. I was basically only up there for five minutes, and the ticket probably cost something like 40 euros. But at least I made it up there which I set out to do in the beginning, so I still felt accomplished despite the weather not cooperating.
I spotted bikers riding down the mountain below us.
Dreary.
Once back at the bottom, I decided to walk back to the city center and head home. It was still a good hour or so away, and I wasn’t about to take the bus or walk down the road again. This time a found a new wider trail leading down, and set upon it with my umbrella. Here is another random shrine in the middle of nowhere.
Here I wanted to get a shot of me in front of this river, and after setting the timer I had ten seconds to hop around the water and stand in a precarious place. I took this shot like five different times, and on this last shot I started losing my balance.
I tried holding it until the shutter snapped, and as soon as it did I ended up standing in the water with my shoes soaking wet.
As I walked down the trail I came to another station for the Bergbahn, with the same futuristic building design. This stop was for Alpenzoo or Alpine Zoo. Knowing that the train terminated in the town center, I more or less followed the nature paths in that direction.
Here the train disappears into a tunnel. I’m glad I decided to walk down and enjoy the nature instead.
As I got lower and as the sky cleared again, I got another shot of the city.
Here is my second favorite photo of the day: a covered bridge suspended in the trees. I just love how you can live in this big city, and just moments away you’re deep in the forest with little gems like this.
I came to a river crossing via another covered bridge, this one much longer.
This is an awesome pano that took me a long time to take, setting up my tripod and bracketing for HDR. Except I didn’t end up using HDR, because HDR+pano is a nightmare and photoshop sucks at HDR anyways and everything ends up looking flat and unrealistic. Luckily, I was able to push the raw files enough so that the highlights aren’t totally blown out.
I was told that a square crop worked well with this scene, so here’s the square crop.
After crossing the river, I realized I was much further east from where I crossed originally. I walked west along the banks until I made it to more familiar territory. This next photo features a much less awesome, much less covered bridge.
And here is a traffic signal. I’m not sure why I took this photo or how it made the shortlist out of 500, but here it is anyway.
Walking back through the town square in search of Innsbruck Hbf.
Yay back on the warm cozy train.
Ok this one is awesome. By happenstance we passed a building with a thin row of windows at the exact same height as the train’s. It was the coolest thing, and I’m even visible in the reflection.
More generic bla bla training-through-Austria shots.
Here is a fun-sized locomotive on a siding of a station we passed through. Its also picture number 70, and I was bored enough at this point to mess around with this one and add some fake blurring which I think accentuates the miniaturality.
This video shows the last moments of pulling into Zell am See station.
And here is by far my favorite photo of the day. I must have been panning the camera as the train passed through the crossing because it yielded the coolest effect whereby the people in the middle have focus, but everything on the sides does not. This is a new technique I should try more when shooting from a moving vehicle.
It too me over a month to get this out since the last post, but I will try to be more on top of things hopefully.
The end!
