Mike and Shaun recently returned from their big European vacation, we were looking at their beautiful photos the other night and I just could not get over the Swarovski museum. Shaun graciously agreed to blog about his experiences:
OK, so Stermer and I recently went on a trip to Munich, Innsbruck and Venice and instead of writing on the typical beer halls of Munich or the Canals and decay of Venice, I'm writing a little on the city of Innsbruck and what might be the strangest tourist attraction I've ever been too.
Innsbruck is a small college town nestled high up in the alps in a region known as Tyrol and Innsbruck is it's capital. ?nnsbruck known for hosting the winter Olympic games in 1964 & 1976 and more famously as the helm of the Swarovski Crystal Empire. ?ince the Olympics have not come back to the Innsbruck area in quite some time the city had to turn to other resources to bring in Tourists and what was decided upon was building a museum to the Swarovski Crystal called
Swarovski Kristallwelten.
I had heard about this place on the Samantha Brown show
Passport to Europe on the Travel Channel and one look at it on her show and I had to go! ?irst off, the museum is about 20 minutes north of the City of Innsbruck set aside a hillside…The entrance is a head with water spitting out of it's mouth. ?s soon as you enter, you realize you are in a very special place, something that would never happen anywhere but Austria. ?he first room has a giant horse with a crystal saddle and bridle. ?nd room is this completely Beetlejuice robot sound installation, the 3rd room is right out of Superman. ?t goes on from room to room with sound installations done by Brian Eno, with art installations by Alexander McQueen, Tord Boontje, Andre Heller, Susanne Schmogner, Chris Levine, etc, then empties out into the largest Swarovski store on the planet where you can by everything from loose crystals to giant crystal parrots for thousands of Euros. ?ll in all it's quote magical and if you find yourself in the Tyrol area of Austria it is worth the stop.
Posted on June 8, 2009
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