We'll start out where we unsuccessfully left off the previous day, at the Hungerburgbahn.
Unfortunately, it was rather packed this morning.
It's so weird to ride a funicular that's basically flat like this!
It's only flat for the first two stations, though, before joining the historic funicular route and becoming a typical inclined funicular. To handle this, each funicular car is made up of multiple separate pods that rotate throughout the trip to keep the floor level.
I hadn't really wanted to head up the mountain this morning because I knew we had a very long day ahead of us, heading all the way back to Frankfurt... but it was absolutely beautiful weather, much better than the night before.
The modern funicular takes you partway up, where there's a short walk to the vintage cable car station.
A series of two cable cars (the second of which was absolutely packed) takes you to what the owners call the "Top of Innsbruck".
The name seems fitting, I think.
This is on a ridge with views into the Alps on the side away from the city too.
Even with the better weather, I don't think this is as pretty as the Swiss Alps. Sorry, Austria. Though that might just be because we were here in the fall with hardly any snow in sight. (I'm jealous of all of you who are getting snow as I write this -- Seattle seems to have skipped straight to Spring, sadly.)
Sadly, my parents were getting anxious about heading to the train (they run every hour or so, but we didn't want to get to Frankfurt too late), so it was soon time to join another packed cable car down. Both directions on this top cable car, we were some of the last people through the faregates before they hit the capacity limit. Not fun.
Fortunately, most of the people on the cable car got off to spend some time at the middle station, while we headed straight for the less-crowded lower run.
Interestingly, there's a ski lift that parallels the cable car partway down the mountain. (If you're wondering why I didn't blur the person obviously taking a picture in the second picture -- well, that's not me! I guess someone else was taking a similar picture at the same time.)
I took this picture because I was wondering what the structure sticking out of the hillside was. Turns out it's a viewing platform that you can walk out to.
From this angle, you can just about see the top station (between the two tall trees). The two cable cars run at roughly right angles to one another.
Nearing the bottom, you can barely see both stations way off in the distance.
Just as we got to the funicular station, a train pulled in. From this angle you can see the structure that suspends each individual pod of the funicular car.
At some point on the way down, we abruptly stopped in one of the tunnels, outside of a station. Never something I want to have happen! Luckily it was only for a short time, which means I don't get to add this to my tracker of "unusual modes of transportation to break down on me". 🙂
Eventually we made it back to the hotel, just in time to get on a German train for the first leg of our ride to Frankfurt. (The beige building in the background is the hotel we stayed at, showing just how close to the station it is -- if this train had been on the track to the right we wouldn't have even had to walk into the station building!) The trip from Innsbruck to Frankfurt Airport only takes two trains, but you're on each one for around three hours. And what's worse, the first class compartment on this train was completely graffitied over! I thought Germany was supposed to be better than this -- this looks like something from Rome! 😉
So we sat in second class to be able to enjoy the amazing views on the climb out of Innsbruck. This is on the same side of the valley as the cable car, so you're not going to be able to see that in the background.
This is far from the fastest route between Innsbruck and Munich, but the scenery is definitely worth it! Unfortunately, as we got into Munich, the train became absolutely packed with people heading to a soccer game... maybe we should have sat in the vandalized first class compartment after all.
At a stop on the outskirts of Munich, we switched to another boring modern ICE train for the long haul to Frankfurt. I suppose it's impressive to be able to get all the way from Munich to Frankfurt in what turned out to be a bit over four hours after all of the typical DB delays (including a reroute to an extremely slow single-track line that definitely isn't supposed to have these high-speed trains running along it!) since that's still faster than driving, but I was just tired and wanted to get there and get some food since I hadn't eaten all day. (Which turned out to be even more difficult than expected -- we were staying in a hotel with a kitchenette so I had hoped to just get food from the grocery store, but it was a holiday and apparently German grocery stores close on holidays, which was a big surprise coming from the US where stores don't even close for thanksgiving and christmas anymore! Thankfully there was a generic chain Italian restaurant open near the hotel.) I actually bought some food on the train (just some snacks -- fries and a piece of apple cake) which was a first for me! I should have taken pictures, but I was absolutely drained by that point, emotionally and physically.
Just one more post left to come, then I'll finally have this series wrapped up -- just in time for the end of the month, hopefully!
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