We took a long walk from the restaurant to the Hauptbahnhof (main terminal) and to the adjacent Busbahnhof. We eventually caught the right bus to the Olympic Express stop. The bus was crammed to the max and I almost didn't get on. The bus ride was about 20 minutes long and went by the Bergisel and through the tiny towns of Igls and Lans. Igls is called “Olympic Innsbruck” because it was really the base camp for the alpine events in the 1964 and 1976 Olympic games. A lot of the lifts start in this area. Ahu and I got out at the Olympia and realized that there isn't much to do up there except for ski. In retrospect this should have been pretty obvious. Oh well. As it turns out, the coolest experience of the whole trip was to be had here.
Looking around, we found that the bobsledding track was next to the lift. Neither of us had ever seen a bobsledding track so that was pretty cool in itself. But then we saw the “Gastbob” sign, which translates to “Guest bob”. Apparently they allowed visitors to go down in the bobsled! We found the guy selling tickets and he said to come back in 50 minutes for our ride. We set out walking up the mountain taking pictures of various angles of the track along the way. I got a couple of shots of bobsleds coming down the track. Pretty tough to do considering the speed at which they are moving. The ticket guy said we would be going off of the women's start (the men's too fast and dangerous) and that the track was 746 meters long and would be covered in 44 seconds at a speed of approximately 90 kilometers per hour. Sounds good to me!!! At the appointed time we showed up, paid our 30 euros each, and were sent to the brake area to catch a ride in the “blue truck” which takes the bobsleds back up the mountain to the beginning of the track.
We met the blue truck and climbed in the back with a Swiss bobsled and its pilot and pusher. It was a bouncy ride up to the top. Unfortunately, it was to the “top” and we didn't realize until 30 minutes later that we were at the men's start. Here were a bunch of elite athlete types doing run after run while Ahu and I stand there wondering why no one is taking our pink guest bobsled tickets. Eventually, the loudspeaker solved it for us. My face flushed when I heard the following announcement, repeated about 5 times: “The two American people, go to the brake area or the ladies' start now.” Great. Of course everyone knows who the American idiots are standing in the wrong place. So we muster some self-respect and walk down to the other start area where we find people waiting for us to go. There were three other people waiting to go on the run. Each of these guys had multiple piercings, shaved heads or other weird adornments. I was starting to wonder what kind of extreme sport we had signed up for. The bobsled we get is modified to hold one driver and 5 guests. The driver sits in front, then Ahu, me, and the three stooges behind me. Somebody pushes us and all of a sudden we are off. It was hellishly rough, like driving a car down a backcountry dirt road, bumps all the way. Of course, this is happening at increasing speed until you feel like the guy who first tested out the wind tunnel. You know that picture where the guy's face gets more and more pulled back until his lips are blinding him and he looks like he belongs in the movie Alien? That's us when we get to full speed and hit the kreistle turn. That's the 360 degree turn where you are perpendicular to the ground and the blood is in your feet and hands. Crazy speed for the distance between turns. And to top it off, the turns have these tarps pulled across them to keep out the snow. It looks like each turn has its own roof. But when you come flying up to the turn, it feels as if you're about to lose your head. We are, of course, wearing helmets but I'm starting to feel that's just for show. Finally we are going up this hill, losing speed, until we stop. My eyes are completely watered from the wind and my hands and feet itch because of the blood rush. It was totally intense – a great and memorable experience.
We didn't want to wait around for the bus so we thought we would just walk to the next little town back towards Innsbruck. So here we are, walking on the side of a 2-lane highway in the Alps of Austria. After about a mile or so we end up in Lans. All we want at this point is a cafe or something to rest in and wait for the bus. No luck here. Lans is a town made up of barns and small, old houses. It's a rural town. The smell of manure is everywhere. So strange that this place is on the bus route from Innsbruck to the Olympia lift. So we keep walking. This time its more like 2 miles and we finally find a bus stop. There are no benches or places to sit so when the bus comes – going up to Olympia Express – we get on and ride all the way back up the way we came, then all the way back down, and then, finally, all the way back to our hotel. By this time we are completely tired and ready for dinner. As it turns out, that was not to be. Ahu finds out that there is an emergency going on back home in Istanbul and we decide she needs to be there. So we spend two hours booking flights and making arrangements and remembering little things like how I need the Long Term Parking ticket from her purse so I can get the car out of O'Hare when I get back home. It is decided that she will take the 6:15 Tyrolean Airlines flight to Frankfurt, Germany and then a Lufthansa flight to Istanbul. After all of this, we go to the Restaurant Goldenes Dachl and have dinner. Ahu has a disappointing cheese plate and a Zipfer. I have a large Zipfer and a strip steak with herb butter and potatoes. My food was excellent. We finished off by sharing a banana split. We then went back to the hotel and Ahu got packed up to leave. We went to sleep and then I went with her to the airport at 5 AM. I am now in a foreign country by myself for the first time in 4 years. I went back to the hotel and went back to sleep.