The Brucke over the Inn

Our next stop was Innsbruck in Austria. Ski-slopes and the Swarovski theme park (Kristallwelten), plus a couple of Winter Olympics – a must-not-miss destination for every Eurotripper worth his Eurorail pass.

The one thing for which I shall forever be thankful to Innsbruck - my first experience of snow. We took a cable car to the top of the Hafelekar (2,334 m) mountain range and the view during the climb and while on top, of the Innsbruck valley and town is etched in my memory. It was only October and hence the mountains had very little of snow, that too residual. That didn’t stop us making the most of it though. I was a snow-virgin no more.

The town was as pretty as any other European town. The city-center chock-full of tourists. Picture this – quaint cobblestone pavements, populated with artists drawing, sketching and painting everything in sight for a few euros; pedestrian roads full of people milling around – some who are trying to absorb all the history around them, with buildings to look at and guides in their sonorous tones to listen to; and some who have zipped up their digicams for the moment and picked up spoons instead – contributing to the top-lines of those many road-side cafes.

We contributed our bit and then bumped into one of the four boys I had originally come to France with (he was not with us on this particular trip, having had some other plans). It may seem like a coincidence conspired by the Gods to some, but it is not really so. Out of the 200-odd IIM-freaks crawling across the European subcontinent, most would have decided to head to Austria after doing the rounds of the Oktoberfest.

After the trip to the mountain and back, we decided to take it easy and spent the evening in a pub. It had a hot-hot-hot bartender, who was also extremely charmant. I feel it necessary to mention these lustful cravings, because they were rare. Another little factoid - at the beginning of the trip, Chandan and I had decided to flick a coaster from each of the pubs we went to, just to have a souvenir – unique and free-of-cost. Due to constraints like - not all pubs having coasters, and us not always being in a condition sober enough to flick one from the ones that did - this plan did not fulfill its true potential. Nevertheless, I do have some coasters lying around.

So that was Innsbruck – the bridge (brucke) over the Inn. I later came to know that the seed for A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy had been sown inside Douglas Adams’ psyche while he had been lying in one of the fields in Innsbruck, staring up at the stars. Had I know it then, I would have been tempted to try it too. When was the last time a multi-million-dollar-best-selling-award-winning idea struck me?