Austria

There is no city in the United States like Innsbruck. Salt Lake City is probably the closest, but in Salt Lake City the cabbies don’t drive Audi A4s. 118,000 people live in Innsbruck, which is surrounded on all sides by soaring Alps. Innsbruck has hosted the Winter Olympics twice, in 1964 and 1976. Olympic facilities, including a large, modern stadium that will host games of the UEFA Euro 2008, and a gigantic ski jump that looks like an amusement park ride on the moon, circa 2100, can be seen all over the area.

I did not stay in Innsbruck, though I spent quite a bit of time there. I went to the Alpenzoo, touted as “the highest zoo in Europe.” I’m sure this is true but loses its luster when one considers a) altitude has no bearing on the quality of the animals in the zoo and b) the zoo is located at an elevation of about 700 meters, not really a notably high elevation. The coolest animal I saw in the Alpenzoo was probably the elch – what we in America call the moose – an animal that I have grown increasingly fond of in recent times. There were many birds my parents would have appreciated, wild boars and bison in the same pen, and the half amusing, half mystically aweing Ibex. I don’t know why you don’t see more Ibex used as poker screennames – there are plenty of wolves, tigers, and hawks. Perhaps because there are only 25,000 remaining on Earth.

I stayed in the village of Patsch, about five miles and 500 vertical meters above Innsbruck. In Patsch there are three hotels, two of them doubling as restaurants, one bar, a church, an adjacent cemetery, and zero grocery stores. Patsch was a perfect location for me to rest, recuperate, and pwn noobs.

One day I took a cable car up near the top of the Patscherkofel, then hiked to its rounded summit. Here I stared at the Alps in earnest. The peaks surrounding Innsbruck rise 8,000 feet above the valley, but the truly mindbogglingly awesome Alps went unseen by me on this trip. That’s okay – I’m sure I will return. Perhaps to defend my EPT Championship in Baden next year.

After eight peaceful days in Patsch, I took a train to Vienna. Vienna is filled with stupefyingly ornate buildings. Imagine the most spectacular building in Denver and multiply its “spectacularity” by about three times – Vienna has about five to ten of those buildings. Then again imagine the most spectacular building in Denver – Vienna has about fifty of those. They just go on and on down the streets.

The Stephansdom is the crown jewel. The outside is not quite as stunning as the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, but unlike the Sagrada Familia, the inside is finished. I walked around and sat in the cathedral for more than an hour. While I did think about poker, and fantasy football, I also thought a little about Bigger Things.

Today, I took a visit to Freud’s home, which is now an unspectacular museum. Tomorrow, I will psychoanalyze my opponents at the poker table in the EPT Baden Championship.