Day 15: 26/04/06 Innsbruck

Schloss Ambras

:)

Waiting for our overnight train to Vienna... Sleepy...

Innsbruck is not a big city, however, its importance in history is not to be underestimated. It used to be the seat for the Habsburgs; in the late 15th century Holy Roman Emperor Maximillian I moved his imperial court to Innsbruck. Earlier on it had been serving as the capital of Tyrol as it is now.

According to my plans there were 2 main places to visit for the day: the Altstadt or City Centre, and Schloss Ambras, a castle built by Archduke Ferdinand II. Tk suggested that we should visit the castle first to avoid the crowd and that's what we did.

Although we could take a tram or a bus there we decided to walk. The castle was about 2km from the city centre, and the walk was easy. On our way we kept pestering Yj to practise his navigation skills. Despite our repeated warnings about the consequences of getting lost in the desert with grand-junior he refused even to take the map from me. He did not want to assume responsibility as he was afraid that we might bash him if he got lost. On top of that, there was also an argument about who should be blamed if he brought us to the wrong way when he was instructed by me to navigate. He felt that since he was under my instruction I should bear total responsibility and he should be spared. That was so typical of Yj (nothing would be his fault..., no matter what nothing would be his fault); Tk and I never let him off easily whenever he made such comments.

Schloss Ambras was empty by the time we reached there. The castle was not very big, and it was actually quite inconspicuous from the outside. It looked like a castle only when viewed from the courtyard; the Upper Schloss, the main building, had windows painted with the Austrian colours which was a typical design for quite a lot of Austrian castles and fortresses. The Lower Schloss, however, was rather plain and looked like a school building.

The interesting thing about the castle was not its architecture or outlook; rather, it was the collection within the castle museum that was intriguing. As we enter the Lower Schloss, the first things that greeted us were rows of armours of all sorts: Infantry, Calvary, Darkriders, and some belonging to the rulers and the Archduke himself. They really caught our attention, especially some unique ones like the one meant for a giant kept by the court which was >2m tall.

As the Archduke lived in the 17th century the craze about exotic collections affected him too. The Kunst und Wunderkammer showed whatever exotic collection the Archduke had; the collection was not big but some items were indeed quite interesting. An example would be a portable altar which also served as a cabinet with 100+ drawers (and I couldn't even tell where they were located). There were some statuettes of Asian deities which, again, we were quite surprised to see.

The Upper Schloss used 3 levels of floor space to display portraits of the Habsburgs who lived before the Archduke in chronological order. It was very well organised with elaborate and clear English explanations of each portrait but we were still in the fog after we came out. The family structure of the Habsburgs was extremely complicated; their breeding habits were so perculiar to modern eyes that it just could not be accepted. There were instances where the father would marry the daughter and gave birth to children. Also, their titles were so very confusing: one would be Emperor of Germany, Austria and Hungary then the other Emperor of Spain and some other guy the Archduke of Tyrol etc etc and yet all of them belong to the same imperial family. It was even more confusing than China's Warring States as at least I am sure that the feudal lord of Zhao would not assume the throne of Yan unless one ate up the other and the biggest King just sat in his palace to wait for something to happen to him. Tk and me were saying, even if GCS came to this place he would still be as blur as sotong. The difference would just be the level of blurness only.

We ate at a place with a partial view of the city. After lunch, we walked back to the city centre with Yj finally was forced to hold the map. However, it was easy as we could remember our way there; despite that, at the ealiest possible chance he gave me back the map.

Our first stop at the city centre was the Hofkirche, the Imperial Church, where the cenopath of Maximillian I was located. In the centre of the church there was the empty tomb (Maximillian was buried not in Innsbruck but in Wiener Neustadt, as he was refused entry into Innsbruck just before his death), with a black kneeling statue of himself on top. The tomb was surrounded by larger-than-life (again black) statues of kings, including the legendary King Arthur and some Habsburg ancestors. When we were there there was nobody inside the church and the atmosphere inside was stern; however, after a while a school group (there were a lot of school groups in Innsbruck, I didn't know why) came in and started to make a lot of noise. It was then we went up to visit the Silver Chapel, where the tomb of Archduke Ferdinand II is. There the atmosphere was even more stern; he was buried near his commoner wife (if not because of his this beloved wife and the strange breeding habits of the Habsburgs he would have been Emperor), where there was a statue of him kneeling in front of Mary as if he was showing penitence for his sins.

After the church we did not visit anymore places which we needed to pay. We did not want to enter the Hofburg as there was nothing much to see inside and outside; whatever Hofburg we wanted we could get in Vienna anyway. We went back to the Golden Dachl with the travel guide and listened to the tour guides' explanation to their groups. We went back to Maria Theresian Strasse for the day view of the Nordkette. Somehow the night view was better as it was not blocked by clouds: it had already started raining. We walked past the Annasäule where we asked Yj to block the ugly roadsign the day before towards the triumphal arch, and then back to the city centre again.

By that time it was too late for us to enter any museum to pass time, and it was too early for dinner. Our plan for the night's accommadation was a night train, which departs at 0038hrs. Between 5pm and 12am there were 7 hours which we had nothing to do.

So, Tk went on his journey to look for his cow. We walked in the rain in circles around the Altstadt for at least 30mins before we found the cow. There, he almost immediately he found out that the cow was not actually a soft toy, which did not suit his collection and he did not buy it.

We went to the train station to have dinner. Tk and me had Wiener Schnizel with potato salad to preview Vienna's (guess what that was, ubiquitous throughout Austria), and that turned out to be very good and extremely filling. The raspberry sauce was especially yummy. Yj, the special, ordered carbonara spaghetti. In the restaurant, Yj suffered further bombing with details as follows: (Yj's story No.4)

The conversation started with us continuing our story about Yj's hopeless perception of direction, our worry for the safety of grand-junior in the desert and the fact that he should practise his navigation skills. Tk and me gave an analogy to illustrate the point: 'It is like when you are an industrial engineer, as you design the utility pipes for a building, because of your poor map-reading, i.e. plan-reading skills there would be a possibility that you might connect the water pipes to the air-con pipes and everything would be screwed up.'

That comment sparked strange responses from Yj. First, he kept insisting that, as an industrial engineer, there would be no need for him to design the water pipes and air-con pipes at the same time as that would be the job of 2 different people. This perception was not even a single bit weakened despite us putting a lot of effort to illustrate that it might actually happen. So, our logical conclusion was: when Yj finally graduates as an industrial engineer, he would only be designing WATER PIPES (or whatever speciality), and NONE OTHER. Or even if he had the ability to design more things, he would only do the WATER PIPES (or whatever speciality), and NONE OTHER. So if you are a government official trying to make a deal, don't waste your time and taxpayer's money.

Secondly, he kept asking us this question (it repeated several times), which we didn't know whether to laugh or to cry when we respond: 'In the first place, who will connect water pipes to the air-con pipes? Why is there a problem?' Well, friend, we used that as a ridiculous analogy to illustrate the importance of you practising your map-reading skills (and he did not see the connection between a map and a floorplan/building plan), and we were not making a serious statement!

In the end, he called for a change of topic. We were glad that he did that as people were already staring at these 3 stupid Chinese guys arguing over something trivial. Yj was so agitated at times that his voice rose without himself even noticing it.

Subsequently we went to this shop at the station where we bought the 'Happy Birthday' (as how we called it throughout the trip) for SK's birthday. It is a cute tiger holding a birthday cake and is supposed to sing (?) birthday song (?) in German (?) when the batteries are inserted. However, due to my negligence, I did not put in the battery even when I gave it to SK.... :( I had never heard it sing...

As we were waiting in the waiting room we met this old guy from America whom had been travelling in Italy and was on his way to Salzburg. He kept talking to us about all sorts of things from 'there would be another economic crisis in the US due to rising oil prices' to '3 Japs got misled by another Jap in Italy and they couldn't get to the hostel'. There was also another American couple who told us that their daughter-in-law is a Singaporean living in California. Well, the wait was quite long and the guy kept talking without stopping and Tk couldn't take it anymore; he kept going for 'walks' until the old guy commented to me 'Your friend is really restless, huh'. Haha :)

It was really cold on the platform at night and we couldn't wait to get up the train to sleep; however, to out dismay, our reserved cabin had already 2 person inside. So, I sat all the way to Vienna, for 7 hours, without actually getting any good sleep; I didn't know what happened to Tk and Yj, though after we arrived Tk kept saying that he was feeling shack.