Kathleen
Garmish-Partenkirchen
August 14th and 15th, 2013.
Yes, the name of this town really is Garmish-Partenkirchen. If you have been reading my Germany blogs already, you have probably guessed that there is a river here and the town on one side is called Garmish, while the other bank is Partenkirchen. Whew! What a mouthful! But an absolutely beautiful place, probably deserving of such a complex name. GP is in the Bavarian Alps and it is tucked in a little valley surrounded by beautiful hills and mountains. You could probably spend a year here and never even exhaust all of the hiking trails available within walking distance of your accommodation. Since we arrived in the afternoon, we decided to locate the trail closest to our hotel and climb up to the viewpoint. We were certainly not disappointed. An A climb of a bit more than an hour brought us to fantastic views and, unexpectedly, a little restaurant, where we could sit and cool off and have a cold drink before heading back into town for dinner. We actually had a fantastic Indian meal at a restaurant on the next block from our hotel, and the next day we headed over to The Zugspitze, which is the largest mountain in Germany and has a truly amazing cable car which transports visitors 1,725 meters to the peak at 2,950 meters. When you get to the top, you can walk across to the top of the OTHER cable car, which is actually in Austria. The views are sublime. Although this is a very touristy area in the summer (we had to wait about 1.5 hours to go up), it is definitely worth the crowds to experience it. While we were in line we met a US couple who were travelling from the UK, where he was stationed. They had hoped that he would be stationed in Germany, but alas, he was being sent to the pentagon for his next tour…doesn’t sound like a bad gig, but it is curious that they would send someone back to the states who actually wanted to be abroad. Anyway, they were very nice and helped us pass the time while waiting for our chance on the cable car.
We had a 2,900 foot wiener at the top (hee hee) and opted to come down via the train which holds a lot more people so no wait, but it is underground so no views. The train tunnel itself did seem like quite a feat of engineering though. When we got back to GP, we decided to run back up the hill for some exercise, had a beer at our favorite little bar in the sky, and then hiked up even further above the town. The hiking trail was fantastic and we turned around only because it was getting late and we had a couple of hours to walk to get back down. That day was a holiday in Bavaria, the feast of the Ascension, and while most groceries and many restaurants were closed, the little family place right across the street from our hotel was open and we had a delightful dinner of a brotsalat (really, this is a salad that consists mostly of sausage, it is actually pretty yummy, with onions and tomatoes in a vinaigrette) and pizza –yumm…healthy dinner! The waiter brought us the local liqueur to try and explained to us (by drawing a picture, he didn’t know the translation) that it was made from pears). It seemed like a very local place and we greatly enjoyed our meal and the folks there. The next day we headed for Munich.
