ZUGSPITZE

June 17:  After our difficulty in finding the train station yesterday we hired a taxi to pick us up at the hotel. When we arrived at the station, we realized we had been across the street from it yesterday, but did not recognize it as a train station. What idiots! I think we were looking for some sort of monumental granite building with pillars, but it was a sort of nondescript modern building that belonged in an office park. Now we had to figure out where the car rental offices were in the station (hidden on the second floor with no signs), then we had to deal with an officious rental agent, and finally we had to trudge two blocks and up to the sixth floor of a parking garage to find our car in slot 690. Avis did not have a road map to show us how to get out of town, so we had to rely on a map I'd printed out before we left home.

We encountered some road construction several times, but made it to Zugspitze without incident. Zugspitze is the tallest mountain in Germany, and even though it's dwarfed by the peaks of Switzerland and Austria, it has breathtaking views, sometimes all the way to Munich 100 kilometers away. The weather had been cool and comfortable in Munich, but to our delight, Zugspitze was much cooler. We bought some picnic supplies in Garmisch and were hoping that we'd have good visibility at the top of the mountain. The weather report said from 10 meters to 50 kilometers--a rather large range. Unfortunately, the visibility was perhaps 100 meters at best. The ascent on the cable car was thrilling, but once at the top, there wasn't much to do but eat our lunch at the biergarten.


We found snow at another level of Zugspitze, but otherwise the trek was a disappointment. The train trip down the mountain had an extensive safety video about what to do if the train stopped during the 30 minute descent--25 minutes of it were in a tunnel built in the 1930s. At the end of the extensive video, the narrator assured us that "It is very unlikely we'll have to use any of these safety procedures."

It was around 32 degrees, but felt great. 

Richard and I agreed Zugspitze was a mistake, both in time and money. We spent more than 100 euros and almost an entire day on the expedition. We could not drive all the way to Lake Constance that evening, so we stopped at a random gasthaus in Memmingen. I checked online, and the place appeared to have very positive reviews. It turned out the reviews were for the restaurant. The gasthaus wasn't particularly nice, but it was clean and quiet. Our dinners however were fabulous! I had some chili-encrusted pork medallions in a cream sauce and Richard has schnitzel with mushrooms and spaetzle with a pesto sauce.