We left Innsbruck this morning caught the 9.54 train to Sargans arriving at 12.20 and then the 12.33 train to Chur. The first journey was on the Railjet and then the one to Chur was an intercity train only 20 mins. Then a cab to our hotel. We have only come here because we are catching The Bernina Express to Tirano (back in Italy) originally we were only to be here one night but TheBernina Express was booked so we had to stay an extra night which I think in hindsight is a great idea because we are both pretty tired. Sam said there is nothing in Chur but we have been for a wander and it is quite lovely, visited the Kathedral (their spelling) of St Maria in the Episcopal Courtyard it makes it look like a miniature town. It is a Romanesque Catherral completed in 1272 after a construction period of nearly a century. The gold winged altar was made in 1472. There is a crypt and all manner of high profile religious people are entombed here. Then we visited another church St Martins built around 1091 they were actually playing the organ just got to be in the right place at right time. All these amazing churches are within spitting distance of one another.
Chur is the oldest town in Switzerland. We wandered through the old town beautiful shops etc we had a late lunch/dinner and came back and had a sleep. We have some very hectic travelling days in the next few days. Lots of trains etc. We most likely will not do a blog for about a week or be able to check our emails as I do not think we will get the chance.
My ankle is on the improve and I have a brace type bandage on it. I have recognised what happens when I get off the train, I am disoriented and quite dizzy so of course I just black out, so we are managing it better now I wait until the dizziness goes and then we go on our way. I will endeavour to answer all our emails tonight and tomorrow having a night in tonight.
Poor Sam said he is happy to go to churches but he needs a break from museums with audios he said heaven forbid he needs to be saved from audios.
While I am typing away here I will tell you a little about Innsbruck’s beginnings. The name of the town was first mentioned in 1167 “Innsprucke” it actually became a proper town in 1200 and in 1239 received its municipal rights. All these things took many years. Graeme you will be interested in this when someone committed a crime they were only tried by a judge, there were no defence lawyers and only a prosecutor, they could not convict them without a confession so used all manner of brutal methods to get them to confess dismemberment etc etc. Unbelievable cruelty. It was not until 1499 that they had a proper judicial system.
On a lighter note when we were doing our Sound of Music tour in Salzburg our guide told us that the movie was popular all over the world but is vitually unknown in Austria. Two incidents showed this, one was on the local version of Who wants to be a Millionaire, there was a question worth 75,000 euros and the question was which Austrian flower was also the name of a song from the movie (Edelweiss) and the contestant even with phone a friend could not get it right. The other was when a delegation from Salzburg was in China and all the Chinese there started singing Edelweiss and none of the Salzburg delegation had a clue about the song.
Bye for now Sam and Sabine
No comments:
Post a Comment