Return of the Alps.

It's official: I love Austria.

Everyone is nice, the tortes are delicious, and it's all mountains and rivers and lakes and farming again. I think also I might be homesick for Schweiz.

I arrived in Innsbruck at about 18:30 last night. The Austrian team kicked off its first match of the 2008 Euro Cup at about 18:00 in Wien. The 2008 Euro Cup is being held in Austria and Schweiz this year. Needless to say, the whole town was a swirl of red and white: facepaint, flag capes, t-shirts, crazy hats, and various banners and scarves. I had meant to get a Hopp Schweiz scarf before I left; perhaps I will pick one up right before I fly home. Innsbruck's main street is the official Fan Meile for the whole month. (Ha ha, take that, metric system! Fan Kilometre sounds stupid and isn't as long.) The whole street is swarming in tent pubs, pretzel stands, and young men. The Croat supporters held their own parade in the middle of all the Austrian pride, and were fairly well tolerated. I tried to check out the major touristy sights for a few minutes, then gave up, donned all my red clothing, and watched some of the game from one of the ubiquitous street monitors.

I Skyped home during the Germany-Poland game, but I stayed long enough beforehand to witness a flurry of Deutschland supporters jumping around to the blasting pre-game music. On my dusk wander through town, there were still enough fans out to elicit chants as they passed each other on the streets. My favorite starts "Ohne Deutschland!" as bold as can be, but I lost the rest in a garble of drunken Austrian-flavored German.

I found a great hostel/bed and breakfast, above a fancy cafe. Yep, that means the included breakfast was superb, which was especially welcome after Italy. The swirly, creamy bread delighted me, but then the owner came by to drop off my torte and it was all over between me and that roll. Breakfast dessert! What a great country. I chatted with the owner a bit over the pastry case afterwards. You get something different each morning, if you stay a while, and it can be anything they make. That case had dark and milk chocolate, hazelnut, strawberry, passionfruit, vanilla creme, orange, raspberry, and all sorts of Austrian wafer cookies combined in various ways. They had Sachertorte, of course, but I am holding out for the time being. Besides, the cheese torte I had at breakfast had filled me up.

I saw Frederick IV's Goldenes Dachl, a fancy, gold-roofed balcony he built to watch his people dance in the square, climbed the Stadtturm (town tower) for a better view of the Olympic ski jump and city, looked at the column and arch along main street, strolled along the Inn river and through the town park, and visited three churches. The Jesuit one has Leopold V's and some of the Medicis' tombs. The Hofkirche held a huge monument to Maximillian I, complete with oversized bronze statues of all his most important relatives (mostly also royalty). The Dom zu St. Jakob pealed out its daily carillon just as I arrived, the bells somehow both jangling as well as light and wistful. This one had mostly stucco, thank goodness. The Jesuits were big on gold, and I'm sick of looking at it all after the Basilica and Ca' d'Oro in Venice and the Goldenes Dachl this morning.

I need to come back to Innsbruck again. I want to ski and hike, I want to try the bobsled and luge runs, and I want to see the folk museums. There are a lot of castles not too far from here, in very southern Germany, Bavaria really, that are probably best reached from this area. I also want to see the archeological and especially anatomical and apothecary museums. I could do with some more Tirolean history as well. A number of last night's revelers had flags proclaiming their love of Tirol or t-shirts and stickers insisting that Südtirol ist NICHT Italian. I faintly remember Austria regaining some of this region from Germany, then losing some to Italy.