Innsbruck

I got a camera again!!! Thank you, Innsbruck. Walking around I found several little shops that had piles of electronics in the window, used DVDs and games lining the walls, and different stereos stacked all over the place, and I knew this would be the place to find a good deal on a camera. I'm the new owner of a Kodak EasyShare 4.1megapixel camera. It's decent, but I can't change the size of the pictures it takes until I download them to the laptop. Other than that, it's nice to have a camera with a zoom on it. And I talked the guy down to a decent price for the camera. He just didn't include the wall charger with it, so I'll have to figure something out.

Rachel, I know you'll get a kick out of this. I found a store with this statue on the top of it. I'm assuming they meant for that to be Michael Jordan, but I wonder if they know that they screwed up the number on his jersey. The cool thing about this, though, is that it's nice to be in a place that is far enough removed from American culture to make such a mistake. I laughed a little at their mixup, but at the same time I say, "good for them."

Anyway, Innsbruck is kind of boring but has amazing scenery. I don't know how this small little city hosted the olympics... twice. Maybe outlying areas are more developed, but the city center seems small and quiet. Every direction in which I look there is a view of the moutains in the distance. It's beautiful. While I was walking around, I came to this pedestrain square, which didn't seem all that special, but there were a bunch of Asian tourists taking pictures of it. I didn't know what was pictureworthy at first, but it turned out to be this:

It's called the Goldenes Dachl (Golden Roof), which I expected to be more impressive than just a tiled facade.

I had wanted to spend two nights here because (a) I've been burning through the Swiss towns, (b) it'd be nice to just take an easy day, and (c) it's cheaper than the towns I've just come from (the reason why I burned through them). I wanted to take today to go hiking in some of the nearby mountains (a guided hike is free), but I screwed up making reservations for my stay in Munich, making them a day too early. I consequently made my reservation for Salzburg based on that too. I generally don't make reservations, but both Munich and Salzburg have a "famous" hostel that I want to check out (they are fun places to stay). And I never know if the day I'm saving now is going to come to good use later (it probably will).