When it all comes crashing down (Europe 2025 part 12)

A few days earlier, the cathedral roof issue was my first sign that my mental health wasn't really up to this whole travel thing... unfortunately, a couple days later, it all really fell apart. 

We had a generous half hour connection in Verona, the system assigned us good seats on the Italian train, and we left right on time. What could go wrong? Well, unfortunately, the high speed line currently runs only about halfway from Milan to Verona, and as soon as we got to the low-speed section of the line, we pulled into a random station (where I don't think we were even supposed to stop), and sat. For 40 minutes. Exactly long enough to miss our next train and have to wait two hours for the one after it.  

I've been in this situation before, and know that sometimes they will hold trains for late arrivals if they expect a lot of people to transfer. And it seemed a lot of people were planning on making this transfer, so for once I indulged my dad and got up to stand by the doors quite a while in advance of the station. Sure enough, when we pulled into Verona, I spotted a dark red Railjet a couple platforms over, and told my parents to run for it. And thankfully, we just barely made it on maybe a minute before they closed the doors and left. Five countries, five high speed rail systems: complete! It appeared that a lot of people didn't make the connection (from whatever trains they were coming from), as there were quite a few reserved seats starting at Verona that went empty. 

Side note, when the Italian train network gets messed up like this, Italians refer to it as "in tilt", a phrase borrowed from pinball. As the story goes, pinball machines imported from English-speaking countries would still show the "tilt" error in English, and the word ended up making its way into Italian as generally meaning "messed up". 

 I specifically wanted to take this route because, like the route from France to Italy, it is planned to be replaced by a tunnel in the near future. As I said that time, sure, there are practical benefits to that... but it's a lot less interesting, and being in a 34-mile tunnel seems incredibly unappealing to me. 

Goodbye Italy (a country that I would return to any day), and hello Austria (another country I don't see myself returning too anytime soon). It seems like I just don't get along with German-speaking parts of the world (apart from Switzerland, which annoys me more than perhaps any other from a cultural standpoint but is simply too beautiful to skip!). 

OK fine, Austria's pretty too. I guess I just like mountains! 

In Innsbruck, we stayed at a hotel right next to the train station. I was hoping to get a room on the station side to be able to watch the trains come and go, but that didn't happen -- not that I can complain about this view! As always, my parents got a much nicer room (despite us booking the same room type this time), a corner room with two full window walls -- though up on the 11th floor, the floor-to-ceiling windows definitely triggered my fear of heights! I keep thinking I want to live in a high-floor apartment in a tower downtown, but apparently I need to find one that doesn't have floor-to-ceiling windows. (My office building doesn't, and I don't have the same problem there despite being on a much higher floor.)

Our plan for the afternoon was to take the funicular and cable car up the mountain, but when we got to the station, they refused to sell us tickets despite it being an hour before the advertised closing time. That really ticked me off, and was the final straw that made me realize I really was not having a good time here. I was also a bit annoyed with my parents for insisting on walking here instead of taking the bus even though they walk very slowly (which I had warned them about before heading over), and with myself for not pressing them to actually get going and leave the hotel (we all kind of got absorbed in the amazing views from their room). 

So I decided that instead of us continuing to gripe at each other about who exactly was ruining who's vacation (yeah, there's a reason I left Innsbruck vowing to never travel again), I decided it was time for me to finally have some time to myself. This is the current funicular bridge -- yes, it's rather flat for a funicular... more on that later. 

 Further down the river is the old funicular bridge and station, in a much more logical location right across the street from a tram stop. Frustratingly, when they rebuilt the funicular in the 00s, they moved the terminal to the convention center, which is not well served by transit (hence why my parents insisted on the long slow walk -- they don't like buses). 

 

  

Whenever I'm in a town with a tram or metro system, I have to check it out. Adding to my frustration, the tram line connecting to the old funicular wasn't running the day I was here, meaning I had to walk all the way back into town to find another one. At least there was a Eurospar to check out on the way -- not particularly exciting, but the bakery/deli section does look pretty nice. As much as us retail fans like to gripe about modern American decor, most European grocery stores are somehow even more boring. (Though they do tend to have much nicer floors, with real tile being a common sight!) Also, I'm pretty sure I've seen the exact same mochi ice cream ad as in the last picture in Safeway...  

Finally, I managed to make it to somewhere where the trams were running, and buy a (surprisingly expensive) ticket. In pretty much any European city, you have to buy a ticket offboard for pretty much any mode of transit (unlike in the US where onboard fare payment is the default for most bus and even some rail systems), and much of the time that's a pain in the neck as a tourist, but Innsbruck does something pretty cool -- you can buy transit tickets at any parking meter/pay station! This is the only place I've ever been that does that. 

At some point I ended up on a tram-only section of street, enforced by automated bollards that open whenever a tram approaches. Somehow these things are all over Europe and always seem to work, yet whenever anyone tries them in the US they seem to fail almost immediately. I really don't get it. (Same thing with self-cleaning restrooms, which were an infamous disaster in Seattle!) 

And to wrap up a pretty blah day, here's a not-so-great sunset picture.