Day 3: Innsbruck [Hitler stamps]

Saturday, September 15

I woke up very warm at 2AM and then couldn’t fall asleep for several hours. Dan was also fighting with jet lag and never made it back to sleep.

At breakfast (o.j., 2 slices of ham, 2 slices of cheese, cucumber slices, Kaiser-like rolls, condiments—including something like Nutella, and our choice of coffee, tea, or chocolate—we always got chocolate), Alexandra said there was still no word on our luggage. She called again before we left, but no change.

Innsbruck is still a small European town in that many stores are only open for a few hours on Saturday (5 at the latest) and then not at all on Sunday. We got a replacement alarm clock and then checked out a small Saturday market where Austrians were selling their old stuff. One of the dealers, who hadn't yet discovered deodorant, had an impressive collection of stamps and old money. Dan and I were both tempted by the 1 Billion Mark note he had for 55Euros. He was seemingly overly eager to show us ALL of his Third Reich stamps. I never really thought about having Hitler on a stamp before, but there he was in all colors and several denominations. I was a little tempted by a set that had stamps from the Berlin Olympics of 1936, but there's just too much bad karma there.

After, we went to the train station to get info on taking a train to Greece. The first info place we tried, the guy kept giving us information on going to Gries, a nearby Austrian town, by bus. My recital of famous Greeks and such did nothing, and bringing up the Olympics didn’t help since Innsbruck hosted those back in the fifties or sixties. We tried the ticket area and were able to be understood. It was something like 280 Euros a person for the 35 hour train trip. A nice British bloke I’d started talking to because he had an actual map of Europe warned us of pickpockets and thieves on that line and suggested going down Italy and catching a ferry. I was concerned about the fires in Southern Greece making that an issue.

We found an Internet cafe that had wireless so Dan could use his laptop. I had a rum and Coke to try to better get into the vacation mood. We found flights to Athens from Munich for 99Euro, but were reluctant to book until we knew what was going on with our luggage.

Another afternoon nap was needed, so we headed back to Haus Georg where we were joyfully reunited with our luggage. It'd been delivered around noon. *whew*

We set the new alarm for a little before 6, which was when Jamie, Dan's partner for the workshop at the Ubiquitous Computing Conference, was due to arrive. The alarm was a little wonky in terms of when it went off, and we were just slow, so Jamie arrived while we were still getting dressed.

He settled in, we got ready, and all headed down to go back to the Internet Cafe so they could download what they needed . When we were walking through Allstadt, the old city, we ran into their professor, Gaitano, who'd sent out an e-mail asking them to meet him between 7 and 7:30 under the Golden Roof. We just randomly found him. He wound up taking us to dinner at a pizza place.

After dinner, the 3 of us continued our trek to the Internet Cafe, but it was crowded and loud. We tried a few spots, but Innsbruck's wireless network, which Dan bought time on, was hard to get. We wound up outside the Info Center and then heading back to Haus George. I watched t.v. and went to bed, Dan and Jamie worked on their presentation for the next day.

Haus Georg was only one of two places we stayed that had a television in the room. Austrian television was largely German television which was largely American movies from what little I saw. They did have a game show where, at one point, the contestants played Memory (the game where you match turned over cards)! Gripping stuff.