Friday January 11^th

I woke up at a normal school time today but instead of getting off at my normal stop at the Dornbirn Kulturhaus I  continued on to the Bahnhof. I met upwith Mark, bought my ticket then got on my way to Innsbruck. A round trip ticket was only 20 Euro with our youth discount cards, plus we stayed with Juliet so there was no hotel costs. Upon arrival Juliet and Keegan greeted us at the Bahnhof. It is pretty much tradition now to immediately go to a McDonalds so we did just that (we had 40 minute to wait before Liam and Fabi arrived). By 11 we were all there so we went into the city to check out the sights. Pretty much right away we ended up in the Altstadt and saw “Das Goldeness Dache” (The Gold Roof). It is literally a roof made of gold. I asked if there was any security, seeing as it was pretty much unprotected, and it turns out the people of Tyrol trust each other enough to keep it open and unguarded. At one point they were doing maintenance and there was scaffolding up to the gold and someone stole 2 pieces, but over time they felt so bad they returned them with an apology note. That’s Austria for ya. One the other side of the wall was a massive Dome church. With that typical baroque style and grandeur it was astounding. Although at this point I am numb to it. We walked back through the Altstadt and past Juliets school. When we reached the Rathaus we took the elevator up to the top floor and got a nice view of the roof tops of Innsbruck. There was a cool bar up there, but we weren’t allowed to stay without buying something. All of the main shopping streets in the big Ausrian cities are called Maria Theresien Straße for some reason. So we went down that ,perused the shops, and admired the sculpture in the middle. A large shopping center call the Tyrol Kaufhaus caught our eye so we got something to eat at the grocery store inside. Shortly after we met Juliet's first host sister at a cafe and sat to chat for a while. Afterward we took the bus to Juliets house (about 20 minutes away by bus). Her host family lived in a cool and very modern house that looked out across a snowy field and to the mountains. Very appealing. Her host mom supplied us with pads, air matresses, and pillows and we set up our sleeping area. After a great dinner we went back into town to go to the discos and check out the scene.