Day 19 - Innsbruck

We got up for the usual European hostel breakfast of buns, meats, and cheese where we'd planned to meet upwith the Western boys and from there we met up with this guy, Zed, from London, England who knows the area (knows it just well enough to get us into trouble anyways) and he agreed to take us hiking. We took the city bus from the front of the hostel that took us to Igls, a place just south of town (i think). From Igls we took the Patscher Kofelbahn cable car that took us from 870m above sea level up to 2246m. The hike up the moutain was beautiful, but not too rugged as there was a service road heading up to a weather station on top. The hike up took maybe an hour and a half. We sat up top for a bit and had a drink and snack while looking straight down over Innsbruck. From there we headed onto a very rugged trail around the mountain that brought us to a little shack on the back of the mountain where this Austrian guy lives and sold us coffee and struddles. From there we kept hiking around, allt he while stopping often to tkae tons of pictures. The trail continued around the mountain eventually bringing us back to the cable car, taking us back to the hostel. The two trails we took were called the Jochleitensteig, which tooks us to the guys shack at Boschenben, and the Zirbenweg, which brought us back to the cable car.

The boys we went with were two brothers, Shawn and Brent, and Shawn's buddy Adam. The Western boys were cool and we're going to try to meet up in Rome in 5 or 6 days.

While up on the mountain, I told them i was from IF, which blew Shawn's mind because they know a bunch of people from town. Turns out that Shawn's girlfriend Daniella is best friends with Sheri Denault and she's actually been to IF and played on my sis' baseball team. Crazy small world.

We also shared a room with 2 brothers from Bowmanville. Turns out that when i played in the Chimo hockey tourney in Cochrane when i was in Bantam hockey, I played against him. He was the goalie for the other team. I specifically remember playing against them because they were a bunch of dirty bastards.

Anyways, we were pretty tired after hiking, so we just hung around the hostel all night and played some darts, then to bed by midnight. Off to Zurich tomorrow.