Tag 1-5 - 'Respect' for Gretchen

Dear Bernadette,

(because I can't really imagine that anyone other than you is seriously reading this), as fickle as we are, we changed our travel plans before the actual departure and made an additional stop in Innsbruck. But let's start from the beginning: the past few months have been busy, but the last week topped it all in terms of chaos and last-minute errands. Somehow, we managed to squeeze in between 111 to-do lists, a farewell party, a little panic attack because we exceeded our permitted weight with a full load (who could have known that?), and picking up some important documents that we had wisely applied for well in advance so that we didn't stress out just before leaving, only to depart Germany three days later than planned.

The journey to Innsbruck was not a very long leg, and after a bit of searching, we found a nice spot to park in a small town nearby. Except for the cows perhaps, who stared at us reproachfully with tinkling bells when we went into the bushes. But all in all, we've had more exhausting neighbors before.

The next day, we started calmly and acted cultured. We dutifully visited the main sights and the city center of Innsbruck. But the evening program was much cooler. Three days ago, we were watching the live broadcast of the climbing World Championship in Innsbruck, and on Friday, we were live at the women's bouldering finale. Can a climbing trip start any better? Even though it was incredibly impressive and thrilling to observe professional climbers like Akiyo Noguchi and Janja Garnbret up close, our hearts belonged to the finalists in Paraclimbing that evening. Fortunately, we were there early enough to witness it by chance. You can only be a truly world-class climber when you climb a 9a route with just one leg. We still have a long way to go until then. But it helps to see that even someone like Stasa Gejo, at the end of a long day of climbing, grins into the camera with fingertips bleeding.

There was only one logical conclusion for the next few days: off to the rocks! Before our planned stop in Vienna, we spent two surprise climbing days in the Zillertal, where we met up with Timo and Franzi. To welcome us to country life, a strange procession crossed our path on the way to the cliffs. Several men paraded solemnly with shepherd's staffs, along with a herd of cows adorned with headgear and huge bells, causing all traffic to come to a standstill as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Fortunately, we weren't in a hurry!

Even just from a landscape perspective, this detour to the Zillertal was really worth it, and the rock and the routes are just mega beautiful. As long as you can camp by the river for free and even bathe in the (icy cold) water by moonlight, things could be worse. We can definitely recommend the "Ewige Jagdgründe" area. We enjoyed it so much that we decided to extend our stay for a third day, and it was worth it! Jan climbed his first 7b+ onsight with "Mr. Krebbs" and I ticked off my project "Midclimb Crisis" (6c+).

Because we urgently needed to regenerate the skin on our fingertips after that, we headed to Vienna, our last stop in Austria, before we continue to Slovenia. On the way there, we encountered our first police control. Even though we put on our most charming smiles, our Gretchen seemed to arouse a lot of suspicion. After the routine check of our IDs and driver's licenses, we had to repeat the inspection of Gretchen, which had been conducted every half hour at our farewell party, before the highest authority. But after the, admittedly very amiable, officers looked into all compartments and expressed their "Respect" for the modifications several times, we were allowed to continue our journey. However, not without the officers asking Jan if he had had contact with narcotics recently. Gretchen almost got inspected by a drug-sniffing dog. It's a shame that Rex didn't pay us a visit - that would have made a great party story!

With Gretchen, it will never be boring. For our next rest day, we are planning to check our charging booster, which apparently is not doing its job, and as a result, we can barely charge our second battery. Let's see if we can solve this problem before the next blog entry.

Until then, smoke on!