Earlier I talked about how Innsbruck just doesn’t like me and whenever it hears I am coming it turns on the crappy weather to keep me away. Well, I had had enough and I tried to take the city by surprise by means of a last minute decision and an overnight train.

I had originally intended to move to Stuttgart and stay in a hostel for 5 days until I could move in to my new place, but it didn’t occur to me until the day before I was supposed to leave that I should travel all around Austria instead of staying in a hostel in Stuttgart. Why pay extra money to stay in a city that I will be in for 11 more months. So I finished my classes, packed up my stuff, left it with friends in Vienna and headed to the other side of the country.

Poop on a stick, what the frith, and skibidy skat, as I have heard it said by others…of course it was going to rain. You can’t take Austria by surprise…it is birthplace of wiener schnitzel, red bull, and the Governator, and those are the secret ingredients for omniscience. Therefore, Innsbruck knew all along that I was on night train 405 heading west from Vienna. It was rainy when I got to Innsbruck and I decided to stay on the train and go all the way to the far west of the country for that day (I had an unlimited travel ticket).

Innsbruck was angry and my defiance and a day later when I tried to revisit the city, it not only turned on the rain switch but it made the bus to the campground invisible. So after 2 hours of rainy sightseeing and looking for Bus Q, I decided Innsbruck just couldn’t handle me and I got on a train to see a city that would appreciate me.

I bought an unlimited student travel ticket for 49 euros and my travel plans were really just to go to the west end of the country and make my way back to Vienna over a period of about 4 days, stopping in whatever citys seemed interesting. With that said, here is the Top 3 for The-Seven-Rainy-Austrian-Towns-in-4-Days-tour.

1. 7 oclock on a rainy sunday morning in a small Austrian town is kind of like being in the middle of the ocean; there is absolutely no one there and it is very wet…especially without an umbrella. So after a while I decided to go to another city. Problem was I left my camera on the train platform for whoever might have been in need of a digital slr. By the time I realized this I had arrived at another city. Immediately I got on a train back to the first city…nothing…so perhaps I only imagined that I forgot it and it was actually in the 2nd city, yeah that’s it, I will go back to the 2nd city… nothing…ok, maybe I didn’t look hard enough in the first city, I’ll go back there…nothing…there is supposed to be a lost and found in the 2nd city, I don’t know why it would be there but I have to check…nothing…I suppose I could ask another service desk but they have already said they don’t have my camera…hey, that looks like an official door, maybe if I go in it someone will help me…door opens…there’s a lot of Austrian men in funny conductors hats looking at me…stop staring, say something, “ich habe mein Kamera verloren, konnen sie mir helfen?” This is when things started to get good. One of the men, decided to patronize me and make a call, I love that man. He called the 1st city, more specifically, he called the other room with men in funny conductor hats. You can see where this is going. They had a big Canon camera, so I sprinted to get the next train back to the 1st city. I got off the train and entered the other room with men in funny hats. I guess one of them picked it up from the platform because it was sitting there in the room. Once they handed it over to me, I proclaimed my sincere and undying love for them in German. All of a sudden the rainy, wet, and empty streets seemed like a mountain sunset taken to the 5th power plus 4. I had a new vigor for traveling and crappy weather.

2. I found a wonderful pension in Kitzbuhl run by an old Austrian lady. However, I realized the next day when I came back from hiking that their American flag was upside down. I felt like I had to say something so I did. Of course she said that she didn’t know, and she actually might not have known because I saw that the German flag was also upside down, but then again Austrians are not famous for their love of Germany. Nevertheless she said that she would change it at the end of the season since it is a bit complicated…right…so I said in poor german that I felt a bit unwelcome staying at a place that has my flag upside down and I would be happy to fix it for her. So we fixed it together.

That night I was coming home from dinner and I saw a car drive by and it looked like they threw something out the window onto the rainy street. I walked over and picked it up and it was a big bouquet of flowers; I mean real nice flowers. How perfect was that. I could definitely give them to the lady with whom I spoke to earlier that day in case she didn’t like me for being the American who was insistent on having his flag hung the right way. She was surprised and extremely excited to have fresh flowers to display in the kitchen where breakfast was served.

3. I also met a guy at the bar where I ate dinner who actually wore one of those leather hats with a feather. That has to make the top 3. And to top it off, at the end of just about every sentence he said, “Ohh Santaaa Marrrria” Which I don’t think is German.