A fun filled day. We
have another great breakfast and a rehearsal right afterward.
Some
lunch around the town then up to see the Hoff Weinstein castle (the one that
Disney based his castle off of). The
tour area is quaint, with a lake, ring of Alps, farmland country side, running
river, two castles and a lot of grass.
We take the mini bus up to the drop off point. The trail is steady as we head up to a bridge
on the map. On the bridge, there is a
fantastic view of the castle, but a thick mass of people each pushing their way
around. I got about 5 ft. onto the
bridge before calling it quits. On top
of the hill there sat a man playing a zither and singing, I enjoyed his music
and tipped him a euro.
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| Still cool, despite the plasticwrap. |
The
outside of the castle was undergoing renovations on one side. We made our way inside the castle and heard
the story about its origins. King Ludwig
II was a little silly about fantasy tales.
He had one castle as a kid made so he could pretend to be fighting
dragons. Then as an adult he made a
second castle. This castle’s outward
appearance was so expensive that he couldn’t afford to finish the inside in
quite such a nice fashion. Most of the
rooms were decorated by paintings, carvings, tapestries, all of which were
based off of Wagnerian plays. I wasn’t
too terribly impressed by the 150 year old castle, but then again, I had just
see buildings predating Christ, so that was a high bar to begin with.
The
walk out through was tricky, because you have one souvenir shop following down
to a café. Then we headed down a spiral
staircase to another souvenir shop, to another couple flights of stairs. Finally an underground tunnel let us out
halfway up the hill.
Outside
the exit there is another souvenir shop- one with all the same stuff as the
other shops, but at a quarter of the price.
Here I buy another beer and a pretzel- pretzels are a German food, and
delicious.
We
mosey on down the hill to where the horse carriages pick up people to give them
a ride down to the bus lot. As we
arrive, the last horse carriage was just starting its journey with a full
carriage. We weren’t the only ones to
have such bad timing, a couple of people from one of the other choirs also had
to walk down the hill. They made good conversation,
and the walk was delightful, so no loss.
We
spend a little bit of time hanging out in a souvenir shop and barely make it
back to the bus on time. We headed back
to Innsbruck proper, where we had dinner with a show of the local folk song and
dance.
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| Great show! Great workout... |
The
dinner was yet again fantastic- a French onion soup, followed by turkey in a
teriyaki type sauce, potatoes, and fried zucchini. The show, well, that was a great
spectacle. They wove the traditional
liedenhosen and had the local yodeling (sounding exactly like Goofy from the
Disney cartoons). Their music was
polka-ish, and they were always working hard with a lot of energy. It was quite the show At one point they got one of our choir lady
folks to go up and sweep after a log cutting competition-it was great.
Another
night passing around a wine bottle, and a deep sleep to follow.
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