007 Travelogue: Obertilliach & Innsbruck (AUSTRIA) 2024

Obertilliach

We arrived in Obertilliach, Austria, the night before after driving for an hour and a half from the Italian border via Passo di Pramollo. The rather interesting evening drive included good weather, heavy rain and thunderstorms, but we arrived at our accommodation, Der Oswalderhof, at around eight in the evening and managed to run to the restaurant opposite for pizza, even in the pouring rain, just when the kitchen was about to close.

Accommodation: Der Oswalderhof

Address: Dorf 11, Obertilliach, Austria

Room type: Family Room with Balcony and Mountain View Golzentipp

Price: 170,60 EUR / 1 night / 3 persons, including breakfast

Booking: via booking.com

The next morning dawned beautifully sunny and Obertilliach was at its most stunning. We visited the local tourist information office and got good instructions on how to find the filming location of the “SPECTRE” (2015) movie in the village. This is the place where Bond (Daniel Craig) crashes his plane, destroying the barn built for the movie. The excitement on the set was brought by a herd of cows that suddenly appeared on the scene and surrounded Mika, but luckily the cows understood Finnish and kindly moved away 🙂 A week earlier, a cow had unfortunately killed a woman in this area.

You can explore the wreckage of the plane in more detail at the interactive “007 Elements” exhibition in Sölden. We will arrive in Sölden in a few days, but you can already find pictures from the exhibition here.

Dances with Wolves

There is also a filming location on the outskirts of Obertilliach, where Bond tries to stop Mr. Hinx’s (Dave Bautista) troops from his plane before the plane crashes after they have kidnapped Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux). The filming location is a steep slope that has changed quite a bit since filming. The place has become more and more forested, and you can only get to the lower part of the slope by car. The path up was quite narrow, and it was difficult to recognize the filming locations anymore. The animals brought excitement to the day for the second time. Pirita noticed movement on the slope after Mika went deeper into the forest. Two wolves had caught the scent of him and started following him down the slope. Pirita tried to call him about what to do if he encountered a wolf. The Junior Agent Traveler had looked this up while they were monitoring the situation from the car. However, there was no contact on the slope. Apparently, the pair of wolves were only investigating, they had given up on the hunt for Mika, likely because of his height which they found threatening. That’s what we thought. We heard that same evening that wolves were coming from the Italian side, and some of them were distressed or sick, and had bitten people but not killed them. The theme was going to be “Dancing with The Wolves”, but the wolves weren’t interested in dancing and instead wandered off. 🙂

Is there snow in Innsbruck?

We continued our journey towards Innsbruck, a city that Bond has not visited in the films, but in the film “For Your Eyes Only” (1981) the city is referred to in the agents’ code words to each other: Luigi Ferrara (John Moreno): “The snow this year is better at Innsbruck”, Bond (Roger Moore): “But not at St. Moritz”. We immediately went to check the situation but did not find any snow in Innsbruck 🙂

In Innsbruck we checked into our accommodation at Hotel Rumer Hof.

Accommodation: Hotel Rumer Hof

Address: Bundesstrasse 11, Innsbruck, Austria

Room type: Comfort Triple Room

Price: 195 EUR / 1 night / 3 persons, including breakfast

Booking: via hotel’s own pages

In the evening we met up with our local family friends, had a great dinner and took a tour of the beautiful city center of Innsbruck. To end the evening we went to the city’s Hard Rock Cafe for refreshing drinks and ice cream.

The next morning we had the Swarovski Crystal Worlds exhibition as our remaining destination. Swarovski is remembered as a sponsor, among other things, in the movie “Casino Royale” (2006), where Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) wears the Algerian Love Knot necklace created by Sophie Harley. In addition, in the movie “Skyfall” (2012) Bond girl Sévérine (Bérénice Marlohe) wears a Swarovski necklace, earrings and ring.

Our journey continued towards Italy, stay tuned!

See more 007 TRAVELOGUES here