Day 4 – Friday 24th June, 2005
Munich – Itta, Austrian Tyrol, Austria


We left after what would become the best breakfast on the tour (actually had cooked food and fruit!) and drove to the drop-off point for the white water rafting. Those going on the white water rafting trip had time to get wet suits, get changed, and put their stuff in a locker under the bus before they went off. The rest of us got back on the bus and we drove for 45mins-1hr to the end of the white water rafting place.

We had at least an hour to wait there, according to Amanda’s estimations, before they’d come by, so most of us checked our email at the little net café (4 computers, but only 3 that worked) and sat around eating ice cream, because it was really hot there, it got up to about 36 degrees that day. And most of us were stuck wearing jeans.

Around midday we all walked to the bridge to wait for the rafters to come under it so we could take photos of them as they came by. Only problem with that is that it’s hard to see if you actually know the people in the raft until they’re right below you, so everyone has lots of photos of tour groups that weren’t our own, but were just waving to us anyway. But finally our groups came through, about 3 rafts full in the end. So after they’d all come through we walked back towards the café/showers area. A few of us walked down to the ramp that leads to the water and took photos and sat there until it became too hot, when we walked back to the covered picnic benches they had out front of the café.

At which point we all learnt the story of what had happened that day. There was another Contiki group, an London-Athens tour, who had been driving along fine that day, until a car ran a red light and they t-boned them – the car was a write-off, but the main problem was that the front of their bus was damaged pretty badly. As they had a 7 hour drive to Venice to do that day, and we only had about 2 hours total to do, they took our bus. While we’d all been at the bridge taking photos, a couple of the guys who’d stayed at the café area helped Reuben and Amanda to move all suitcases and on board luggage onto the damaged bus, so the other group could leave. Which left us stuck with a bus whose front end was pretty much gone, in fact, parts of it were being propped up by a broom handle when I had a look at it. The plan at that point was to wait for a mechanic to turn up & certify it was road-worthy, we would continue on our short drives for the day, and tomorrow we would have a new bus. However, the mechanics kept saying they didn’t feel like leaving the office, it was too hot; they took long lunch breaks, a whole range of excuses.

So for a few hours that afternoon, we all sat around under the umbrellas at the picnic tables, talking, eating and admiring the scenery. Which included the hills and river and all that, but the funniest parts of the afternoon came while our driver, Reuben, was wandering around with his shirt off. I think I was sitting next to Silvia for most of the afternoon, and she would just drift off, staring at him, and we’d only notice when we tried to asked her something and found out she had no idea what we were all talking about. Although, to be fair, that happened a few times to all of us, I think. We had fun sitting there talking crap, anyway. I don’t think anyone got a photo of him that afternoon, which was a shame.

Anyway, when it became apparent that the mechanics weren’t going to show up before midnight, they hired us another bus for the rest of the afternoon, although we had just as many unreliable reports as to when the hire bus was going to show up as well, but eventually it came. While we were waiting to get on the hire bus, one of the groups that had gone through after our tour started playing volleyball, and as it was big group of guys we all started blowing kisses at them and waving, even though some of them were really old. We were bored. I think this was the first time we started to understand what Amanda said on the first day about a love/hate relationship with the bus – when the hire turned up, it had air conditioning, so we all loved it and were glad not to be sitting on wooden benches, wearing jeans, in 37 degree heat. Bloody weird weather – apparently Amanda had last been there about 2 weeks before this, and it was snowing while people were white water rafting that time.

So the hire bus drove us to the Swarovski Crystal museum (that’s the place with the face in the hillside) where those who had booked the museum tickets could go for a walk through it. I hadn’t booked a ticket, even though it was only about €6.50, because I just wasn’t fussed. Those of us who didn’t go through the museum were issued tickets so we could get into the gift shop. So I wandered around the gift shop for a while, but not all that long, because it’s all things that went into the tens of thousands of Euros each, so all I did was wander through, then went back outside, took a heap of photos of the face and the scenery, then went over to the outside café and bought myself some lunch. Sat around there for a while, then people started turning up from the museum. Kirsten & I started to teach Mitsu Aussie slang and other bad words we decided he needed to know – he is still learning English, so he always carried around a little notebook to write down new words in. His book is now a lot filthier, thanks to us.

From there the hire bus took us to the village that we’d be staying in for the night, Itta, near Hopfgarten. We had the usual time, around half an hour, to check in and freshen up before going downstairs for dinner. Dinner that night was probably the nicest of the included dinners – we had genuine Austrian schnitzel, so the chicken in it was actually real meat, not the mass-produced-swept-off-the-floor stuff you usually get in supermarkets. Most people had never heard of it before, but I don’t remember hearing any complaints when they’d tried it. Before desert, there were some free shots for those who had birthdays on the tour or just before/after it was on, along with a demonstration of the bartenders oldest son’s modeling calendar. It was a bit of a sales thing, but it wasn’t too bad, as Amanda did it, not the people who own the place. But the shots were good value there – you got 6 for €10, and they had the odd one that was about 60% alcohol.

So after dinner, about 12 of us went for a walk around the village. At first some of us tried to find the entrance to the castle we’d seen on the bus on the way in, but when we found the road to it, we found out it was private property, so that blew that plan. We ended up going for a walk down the main road of the village, and around the corner of the road you come in on, still trying to see if we could see the castle. We found the castle, then decided to take group photos of us by the roadside with the sunset in the background. It was quite funny, as it took ages to take photos on about 12 cameras, and cars came past every few minutes, but as it’s a little village, they didn’t seem to care and just drove around us each time.

When we’d finally finished posing for photos, we walked back to the beer garden of the hotels bar, where everyone else had been for that time. Most of us just sat around outside until the beer garden closed, after the sun had gone down, at about 10.30pm. After that, people started dancing, one of the waiters joined in occasionally, and most of us hung around there for a few hours. I got bored after a while, and went for a walk with those who were going to find the village ATM, which didn’t end up working, but oh well. I ended up going to bed sometime after midnight.



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