Three High Places

Chausson is on the right, the dark one

Garmisch-Partenkirchen, marked on the German Alpine Road as a highlight was up for our inspection. We parked on a 110 place aire, which was adjacent to a cable car operation. It was a glorious day and we paid our money, chose our carriage and ascended about 1000m up to high alpine pastures, where we alighted to a wrap-around view of jagged rocky mountains. Cows were grazing, their clanking bells the only noise in the still air, lucky with the weather, we could see for miles. The name of the experience was unfortunate – Wank, described as being suitable for families and senior citizens. Hmmm.

An experience for families and senior citizens

That evening we did some research on the next high place and set off in the morning on a lovely clear blue sky day for Lake Eibsee where we intended to catch a cog wheel train then a cable car up to the top of Germanys highest mountain – Zugspitze. The views would be stupendous, I had worked out there was an aire nearby and we drove through the chaos of Munich’s midsummer Saturday-traffic. There was a bit of difficulty finding the right entrance to the aire, but we parked up and started consulting our maps about the best route to the station.

Something wasn’t feeling right – we were next to a lake but there wasn’t much of any kind of services and also – no mountain! I had picked the wrong name out of the aire-bible and we didn’t have time to turn around and battle the traffic. We made the best of what we had and cycled the lake perimeter. The lake was deep blue fringed with a turquoise shoreline, the sun reflecting off the white rock lakebed. People had all manner of non motorised water toys out and sunbathers filled every little white beach.

X6 parked on glacier at Zupspritze

 To resolve that feeling of FOMO (fear of missing out) we were up early the next day and after the rain cleared, drove back to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, found the cog-wheel train station and parked on the side the road. We bought our tickets with 2 minutes to spare for the first departure of the day.

The cog railway went up a steep incline and into a tunnel arriving at Zugspitze Glacier at 2600 metres. The trains need the cog mechanism underneath to be able to pull themselves up. We had breakfast at the glacier restaurant and waited a few hours for the drizzle to clear, enjoying the free wifi. The next highlight was the cable car to the summit, it seemed to whizz along – 9 metres a second, covering 1km. Stuart climbed to the summit (nearly 3000m – Mt Cook 3700, using a via ferrata. I chickened out, heights have always made me nervous and the iron was wet and slippery.

When the weather cleared we didn’t get the blue skies of the previous day, but the views were still amazing – mountains all around. Stuart went on a tobaggan ride accompanied mainly by children and a bunch of Muslim girls out for the day, loosing his favourite $2 shop glasses in a tube - irreplaceable. Unfortunately the cloud descended as we took a different cable car down back to the cog railway catching glimpses of the forest below and whisking past the rock face.

Stuart during summit

Jane practising ferrata techniques

The third high place was a visit to the Eagles Nest. We had camped near Berchtesgaden, drove to the (need I say – free parking area), stumped up the entrance fee and with the rest of the great unwashed – we were ushered onto pre-designated buses for the 7km ride up to 1834 metres.

To get to the actual top we walked through a 124 metre tunnel and took a brass panelled lift up another 124 metres. The lift and tunnel were orginally built to transport Adolph Hitler to the mountain top residence. He rarely stayed there however, preferring a grand holiday residence lower down the mountain. The Eagle’s Nest (a name the Americans gave it) was used to receive dignataries, it is now basically a restaurant which disappointed me, to find out more I would have to visit the Dokumentation Centre back down in the valley.

Look at the cog rail

 We enjoyed lunch and morning tea to celebrate Stuart’s birthday, then were bussed back down to visit the idyllic valley close to the German/Austrian border, where together with his henchmen Hilter chased out the local people and erected fine houses, each with their own bunker. He turned this area close to where we stayed for 3 days, into an off-limits zone .

The Nazi leaders planned and strategized in this second seat of power. We visited an exhibition about the sinister history of this holiday area. Alot had been bombed by Allied forces, however some of the large communal bunker had been excavated and we walked through some of this massive bunker system , and even got slightly lost at one stage. The bunkers had been built for comfort with air conditioning and hot air heating ducts, and all the other necessities to house a small army. The exhibition was a massive information overload and after walking around in the hot sun most of the day I was flagging and looking forward to getting back to our aire for a cup of tea. At the aire some of the wohnmobiles scored a fantastic view of the mountains – I think they don’t moved as we never got a chance in 3 days to see the mountain view from our wohnmobile - and had to settle for a view of the men’s urinal (why don’t they close the door!).

Eagle's Nest

 On to Austria next, land of the cheap diesel – but our vignette is nearly expired and we only used 15 minutes of it. Will need to find some LPG for our tank before we go as we are not certain on the availability in Austria. The big ticket item in Austria is the Gross Glockner pass, one of the bucket list driving experiences apparently. We will need to pick our day carefully.

Two frauleins - one from Australia at Eagles Nest