Day 20 - Innsbruck to Zurich

WE go tup and met the Western boys for breakfast at 8:30. The night before I'd told them how my friend Russ and Colleen had recommended for me to bring a jar of peanut butter, so i have a kilogram with me. I promised the boys a bit of the Kraft Canadian Paradise in the morning and brought it down with me. They were willing to give up their sister's and girlfriends they were so thankful. We made plans to email each other and hopefully meet up in Rome for next weekend.

Me and Rob packed up and got to the train station one minute before the next train heading towards Switzerland left, so we ran to the trakc, but the train was a few minutes later, so we had lots of time.

There was flooding recently in western Austria and parts of Switzerland and it turns out that it destroyed part of the tracks between Zurich and Innsbruck, so we could only take the train as far as somewhere around Bludeny, Austria, where they had a bunch of buses waiting for us to Bregenz where we then jumped onto another train that took us to Zurich.

The bus ride was pretty cool because it took us threw these super long tunnels. Some of them must have been at least 10km because i saw the speed limit was 50km/hr and I timed one tunnel at 17 minutes. It was nuts.

We got to Zurich at 4ish. Another gorgeous city. Supposedly its one of the richest cities in the world, so it might be peanut butter and jam for the next two days. We're staying at the City Backpacker's Inn located right in the middle of the old part of the city near the river. We're in a 6 person dorm, so far with just me and Rob, one guy we still haven't seen, adn an 80 year old man who looks like he's been here for weeks and speaks zero english or french.

At 6ish, we went out for a walk on teh town and to find somewhere to eventually eat. We're staying in the old part of town, so we wandered aroudn the narrow, cobble stone streets, adn then headed across one fo the many bridges to the newer, financial and shopping district. It was incredibly nice (again). WE felt pretty outta place even just walking around. The stores were incredible adn the banks all had guards outside adn the entraces looked like the foyer's of super high class hotels. We saw a thousand dollar zippo in one window. The Swiss Franc (they don't use the Euro) is about the same value as the Canadian dollar, but most things, especially food and booze, is WAY more expensive. WE had a hard time finding ANYTHING under 20 Francs for dinner. We ended up getting Gnocchi adn a beer at one place for 23 Francs, but the girl felt so bad for us that she knocked 5 Francs off that. Pretty sweet.

We walked back to the hostel after hitting a grocery store then spent the rest of the night in the hostel common room with 3 Canadian girls (2 from Winnipeg and 1 from Vancouver), one Kiwi girl, and an Aussie guy. We sat around, had a few beer, and shot the shit. They loved our train story. Me and Rob were a two man comedy crew all night...haha.

Just hanging out tomorrow, walking around the city.