Observations from the drive to Innsbruck

At the ‘Sky of Innsbruck’ train station

Don’t use the yellow marked toll roads.

The long drive to Innsbruck acts as a sort of conveyor belt of castles, churches, saints and cyclists emerging then dissipating into thick mist. Cloud churns, hair pin bends, stomach churns. Perhaps I ate too much breakfast or perhaps it’s being a passenger on the wrong side of the road. The closeness makes me feel like I’m going to get scraped along the roadside embankments. Gradually filed down against the rock like keratin under a nail file. You wouldn’t know it from any observations so far but I’m really really enjoying the drive.

We visit an old church first and near the front is a wooden crucifix with the words ‘Regina, please forgive me’ roughly carved beneath the numbers 1992.

I always light a candle for my mum, this time my late Grandma Pam too - matches, “lichte lichte lichte!” A Small sign proclaims. Light the way for your loved ones."

Innsbruck is mist and drizzle and heady spring-floral closeness, delicious and beautiful - I love this weather, and being able to see the atmosphere.

We walk through a heaving city centre square down a few narrow streets and eventually cross to the other side of the river. THIS IS THE SIDE, I decide. Suddenly feeling a real affinity with being on this quiet and interesting side of the river and not the side with the crowds where we just came from. This is the good side, I bore and irritate Adam by telling him so a few times in a row.

I have been triumphant with my lunch gamble, a ramen restaurant open for a duration of 1.5 hours over the midday rush serving a set menu for £14.95. The meal was deceptively simple but incredibly tasty. The vegetarian option was hand pulled noodles finished with a savoury soy mince and a boiled egg. On the side was a dish of thinly sliced raw cabbage dressed in mustard seed and to wash it all down, a bitter iced black tea.

After lunch a small and evidently old oil painting of a man skiing down a mountain with a white emptiness for a face catches my eye and lingers there.

Another observation: Everyone in Innsbruck seems to be a man in his early twenties, walking a bike around by the handle bars with very messy sandy coloured hair.

We keep waking further out of the city and up past the iron railings of zoo enclosures. Up further still into the tree tops where heavy raindrops are starting to form and fall.

We overtake an old man with a patchwork flat cap, the footpath is almost comically steep and the air is hot - he wants to collectively acknowledge the uphill slog while side stepping any language barriers so he just sticks his tongue out and rolls his eyes like a mad man. I laugh back.

We’re walking to a train station which has been coined the ‘sky of Innsbruck’. An architectural feat of interest that finally materialises after another 45 minutes or so. It’s a beautiful building with a roof like two thick translucent glass wings protruding through the thick clouds. Surveying the green glass river and neat cobbled streets below.

Clocks and bells and more wayside saints and the smell of damp pine at the back of my throat.

We pay a steep one-way fare to take an equally steep journey back into the city centre. I’m disappointed to find most of the trainline is actually in a concrete tunnel so the views are short lived - what a scam.

We need a new soap dish, cities like this always have good soap dishes, the thought ends there.

Now for the long drive back across the border into Italy.

The constant reminders to Adam: give way to the left, give way to the left. Part of me wishes I was allowed to do some of the driving, probably a bigger part is relieved I’m not.

The roads are hemmed in by crumbling mountains and ancient firs and I can't help but to drift in and out of sleep. Scenery moving past a car window like that makes for lovely, drowsy, hypnotic watching. There’s a slight pressure in my skull from being at altitude all day but it eases if I push the back of my head into the headrest.

Heavy, cloying white skies darken to a cool grey.

The snow line has been dropping back below 1500 metres, in May! A current and on-going European weather phenomena so we’ve been informed.

An empty monastery, a fortress on a far-away hill, a garish pink and white pizzeria, stone masons… all disappearing one by one into roadside drizzle.

Fatboy Slim comes on shuffle and we both sing together at the top of our lungs.

Later, back in the little town just down the road from our hotel we go and look out at the church square. It’s dusk now and the rows of wrought iron crucifixes are glittering in the rain. Someone has lit a candle under every single grave stone and the flowers, metal and candlelight merge to create shimmering polytunnels of  colour. A herd of goats bleat back and forth somewhere in a nearby meadow.

Dinner, then dessert

A pistachio ice-cream that had an earthy slightly savoury taste.

A drink by the fire watching the couple across from us who are both always simultaneously on their phones, him taking work calls and her scrolling with the soft tap of beautifully manicured nail tips.

Ads reaches over the ginormous armchair and grabs my hand. Tomorrow has been planned and for now bed awaits.