In the morning Colin and Ashleigh came over and confirmed that the drive shaft was shafted. Adam called a local Schrottplatz and within a couple of hours a lovely German man had arrived to take the car away. He was a bit (a lot) surprised when Adam brought the car up from the underground carpark, airhorns blazing, but he was very polite, saying ‘Good!’ and ‘Special!’ about it.
I was very sad to see the car go. We were incredibly lucky not to be stranded in Frankfurt. Although everyone else had left the city at around 9am, Rob, Si, Colin and Ashleigh all waited with us until the Polo was gone. At about 11am we hopped in Rob and Si’s Saab with them and headed off to Wank (pronounced Vaank!)
When you are hitching a ride with two boys, you don’t get a say on what comedy named towns you stop off at!
The roads and scenery of Austria were fabulous, stunning and fabulous. We were in a bit of a rush because we needed to get to OlympiaWorld at Innsbruck, to meet up with other banger ralliers and have a go on the Bobsleigh… the BOBSLEIGH! Whaaaa hooooooo! The altitude was high, the air was thin, and I was giddy!
We all got in the back of a truck and tried to stand up straight without falling over, whilst we were driven up the hill at speed. It was like some kind of strange people-trafficking. At the top, right at the top (of the world!) there wasn’t much time for me to chicken-out before we were squished into a bobsleigh and launched down the run, the same run used in the 1976 Olympics! We were told to keep our backs and neck straight, but after about 3 seconds I turned into a floppy thing and spent the following minute smacking my head from side to side as we took 14 turns and reached 100km/hr! My running commentary went pretty much like this – ‘Jesus!‘ ‘Sorry!‘, mixed with some manic laughing.
It was absolutely bloomin’ amazing! We were soooooo lucky we got to do this. And we survived! This is Simon’s photo (above) he also found this cool footage on youtube of the 2013/14 World Cup held here.
Rob and Si dropped us off at our hotel. It was weird being chauffeur driven to the doors of the Hilton in a £350 banger, but I liked it!
Our room was on the 7th floor and gave us a stunning view across Innsbruck. What a beautiful place. (We definitely plan on going back there.) Although we definitely booked a double, we ended up with a twin room. We weren’t bothered, in fact, we were really pleased to have a mega bed each! I didn’t like they leave a bottle of water on the table, but want to charge you for it, or how they have all the mini bar snack items on a display shelf under the TV to tempt people all the time they are in the room. I brought my own Kitkat – In your face, Hilton!
We met up with our ever growing gang of banger buddies and went to The Orangerie for big meat dinners before heading back to the Hilton bar for a few hours, before a fairly early night (1.30am). I went to sleep feeling happy to have such lovely friends.