I am in the city of Lienz, Austria.

Not Linz, Austria, which is a fairly big town near the German border. This is Lienz, a skiing village of about 10,000 people here in the Tyrol region of the country. Just north of the border with Italy, actually.

I am here to do some stories on the UAE Olympic soccer team, which is in its final two weeks of training for the London 2012 Games.

Soccer teams always stay at the nicest places. Like the five-star Grandhotel Lienz, for instance. (The photo, above, is from my balcony.)

First, getting here. Yes, I have stipulated that travel plans are boring to everyone except the person who executed them, but I feel obliged.

Abu Dhabi to Munich nonstop on Etihad, the Abu Dhabi government carrier. The plane was packed with Emiratis, many of them in family groups, presumably fleeing the brutal UAE summer for a respite in green, cool central Europe.

Plane was an hour late, and the flight was six hours, and then I was in Munchen. Picked up a rental car, and began the hard part of the journey, the nearly five-hour drive from Munich south into Austria.

The highways were pretty good all the way, two lanes at the least in each direction, lots of tunnels to negotiate after I got into the “serious Alps” area south of Salzburg. (One went under a mountain 16,000 feet high.)

The turnoff for Lienz finally appeared, but then it was another 60 kilometers or so before I finally made it to the hotel. By then, I was beat, and I hadn’t really been able to enjoy the scenery. Not while driving.

Moments after I checked in, the UAE team came back from a practice. (Much of their schedule is meant to replicate what they will be doing in England in a few weeks. Playing games at 5:45 or 8.)

The hotel is on the banks of a rushing stream/river, the Isel (below) which has to be cold and almost certainly is clean. The city of Leinz is bordered on two sides by the Isel and the Drau rivers, and north and south of town are towering mountains with cable systems (from a distance they look like phone lines) for pulling skiers up the hills.

(I don’t ski, and as I was driving deeper into Austria I noticed several steep areas absolutely denuded of trees, surrounded by areas thick with trees, and I finally figured out that the areas without tress are for skiing. And no wonder Austria produces so many downhillers. Some seriously steep slopes.)

The UAE team started their training camp in Switzerland about three weeks ago, and then they moved over to Lienz a week ago, and here we are.

They travel to Manchester on July 21, five days ahead of their first Olympic game, against Uruguay on July 26 — one day before Opening Ceremonies.

Austria is like Germany, except more quaint. I can understand their German at about the same level I understand most Germans’ German (which is to say, not like I could 30 years ago), but their English is oddly accented.

The woman who works at reception here at the hotel … has the same accent as does Arnold Schwarzenegger, former governor of California  and an Austrian. I told the woman she reminded me of Arnold — in the way she speaks. She didn’t seem to mind.

I have been in Austria once before, in 1990, ahead of the World Cup, when the U.S. team was training at a Swiss spa near the Austria border. After a game against Leichtenstein (yes, Leichtenstein; 4-1) I drove a few miles out of my way to cross the frontier into Austria.

So I had been in Austria. Though only by about 100 yards.

It seems odd to me that 8 million people live in this country. It seems too hilly to support life. I know the area to the east, near Vienna, is much flatter, but still …

Picturesque as all get out, though.

Now, to see what sort of access I can get to the UAE team. The country does not have much history of media following a team to its training site, and we may have some interesting issues with access.

And the photo below … is the Isel River, which runs right past the patio of the hotel.