Eine kurze Reise: Garmisch-Partenkirchen

I just realized that I forgot to post about this trip back in January, so allow me to make amends now!

So my boyfriend, Patrick, came to visit me in January. Being that we both love mountains and snowboarding (though he is, admittedly way better than I am at it), we decided that his visit would be a prime opportunity for us both to see the Alps for the first time. We decided to head down to a town called Garmisch-Partenkirchen to experience the tallest mountain in the German Alps, the Zugspitze. 

Garmisch-Partenkirchen is, as you might expect, waaaaay south in Bayern, or Bavaria, as you probably know it. It's pretty much in Austria. In fact, it's so close to Austria that one of the ski passes you can purchase in Garmisch allows you to ski on some of the Austrian Alps nearby. 

Waaaaaaaaaaaasy down there.

One of the interesting things about Garmisch-Partenkirchen is that, until 1935, Garmisch and Partenkirchen were separate towns. Hitler essentialy forced their unification in anticipation of the 1936 Winter Olympic Games, which were held (of course) in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Being only about an hour by train ourside of Munich, it's an ideal place for winter sports, and many ski-jumping competions are held there today. Nowadays, there's a fairly prominent American presence due to the Edelweiss Hotel that's only open to American military and congresspeople.

So back to us: I was hype for this trip. Patrick and I had been planning it since October, and I bought our train tickets in November. It was set to be perfect: A train ride with only one transfer in Munich on the way down, 3 nights in a beautiful hotel, and an equally convenient train on the way back. We would have practically 3 full days in Garmisch to enjoy skiing, food, mountains, coffee, food, each others' company, and food. It was going to be the highlight of my year.

As you probably could've guessed, it was not destined to be so easy. About two days before our train, a massive winter storm rocked Germany. I, ever the optimist, held out hope that everything would clear up in time for us to depart.

It did not.

We got to the Hamburg Hauptbahnhof at approximately 5:30am. The trip there was completely uneventful--the weather in Hamburg was just a bit rainy, and everything seemed in order. Upon walking up to the train platform, however, we found out that our train to Munich was cancelled. I kept my cool, and we stood in the steadily increasing line for the information desk. I was rather brusquely informed that the next train to Munich was supposed to depart at 8am, so we, still somewhat hopeful, decided to wait.

As 8am approached, we realized that this next train was also doomed to be a no-show, as was the next one, and the next one, and so on and so forth. We, now significantly more bitter, decided to rent a car and just drive down to Munich to catch a train to Garmisch.

I'd like you to take a minute to look at the above map one more time. Hamburg is one of the northernmost cities in Germany. What should've been a 6 hour train ride to Munich was now going to be an 8 hour drive on 3 hours of sleep, followed by another hour on a train. At this point, I knew that I was destined to be 90% stress and 10% espresso for the rest of this little adventure.

The one upside to the derailment (ha) of our plans was that I finally got to drive on the Autobahn. Herz had provided us with a little blue Ford Fiesta (almost the exact same car that I drive in the US) and I, be it due to adrenaline or espresso, found myself zipping down the Autobahn at up to 110mph. From Hamburg to Munich, we proably averaged about 90-100mph. I was over it. Patrick slept.

Eventually, we made it to Munich. What we didn't anticipate was having to drop off the car at the Munich airport an hour outside the city. We had been running out of patience since 6am, and I'm pretty sure this was what drained the last of Patrick's. We caught the train to the Munich Hauptbahnhof, waited forty minutes, then caught the train for the last hour of our journey to Garmisch. It was on this train that we found out that our (very nice!!!) hotel had no shuttle service. We considered trying to catch a bus. I nearly cried. We grabbed a taxi.

This is what I look like after driving nonstop for 6 hours only to find out that we've got at least another 4 hours of travelling to go. The word you're looking for to describe the look in my eyes is "dead."

We finally got to our hotel at around 10pm, 8 hours later than we had originally planned. I found myself rather pathetically rejoicing that we had made it before midnight. We spent the rest of the night watching Netflix and complaining about the fact that there were no food delivery options still open.


The next day was much better. We slept in until 9 in no small part due to the fact that breakfast would only be served until 10. We were finally able to take in our surroundings, so that's what we did.

The view from our hotel room feat. yours truly.

An old church building right outside our hotel. Patrick likes this picture.

Right outside the front doors. Peep the Alps in the back.

Waiting for the cog-wheel train to take us up to the Eibsee, a lake at the base of the Zugspitze as well as a word that Patrick struggled to pronounce for a week and half.

The Eibsee. Less liquid than most lakes.

Big pile of rocks or the Alps?? The world may never know.

Patrick took this picture.

After drooling over the majesty of very pointy ground, we went back into town for refreshments.

I got a cappucino, Patrick got a ~chocospresso~. This is the face of a man whose dignity remains fully intact, I tell you.

All the effort of eating made us hungry, so we got dinner.

It was eerily silent. But the food was good! The beer is mine (a Hefeweizen). Patrick got apple juice with sparkling water, further tightening his already firm grasp on the typical brand of American masculinity.

We went to bed relatively early in preparation to get up at 6 the next morning to allow enough time to eat breakfast before skiing. The following morning, we woke up, ate (a lot), and made our way back to the train stop.

Getting to the Zugspitze required taking the cog-wheel train up to the Eibsee and then climbing onboard a massive cablecar that would (seemingly) float us up to the very tippy-top. One of my favourite moments of the trip was when we found out that our round-trip ticket up the mountain also acted as our lift ticket for the day and it was only 40EUR hallelujah.  We were also pleased to discover that renting equipment was equally as inexpensive.

The cablecar up to the peak. I guess it's the longest one of it's kind or something?

Between the train and two different cablecars (one to the summit, one to the glacier), it took us about two hours to get to the glacier on which were to ski.

"Yes, but you must've had an amazing view!" You may find yourself thinking.

You would be wrong. 

Like pretty much every other part of this trip up to this point, our day skiing was also... bad. Let me put it this way: if white is your favorite color, then you missed out on a really great opportunity to see a lot of it. For hours.

Note the minimal visibility of pretty much anything in the background. 

A truly stunning view, contested only by those you have when you close your eyes. But I'm not bitter.

However, it was, admittedly, pretty rad to be snowboarding on a glacier for the first time. Even more interesting was the fact that, because it was blizzarding, I had no concept of of where, how fast, or even if I was moving. I just kinda pointed my board between the little orange sticks marking the slope and just sort of... hoped. I could only keep this up for about two hours, spending most if it employing every ounce of muscle I had in a grand effort to be very, very terrified the whole time. Patrick (being the really, genuinely amazing specimen of human being that he is) stayed with me for all two hours of my bullshit and rode the same slope with me over and over again, until I decided that I had endured enough cortisol for one day. He did a few more runs without me, I ate snacks, all was right with the world.

We left the hotel the next morning and boarded our train to Munich. We had about three hours to kill once we got there, so we took what I thought was a fabulous mini tour of a couple of churches near the Hauptbahnhof.

I just love the way baroque churches seem to effuse humility.

I'm here for the architecture, not Jesus! These people were of the opposite opinion.

After 3 churches, Patrick was #overit so we went back to hang and, as is ever our MO, eat food at the Hauptbahnhof in anticipation of our train. The next hour or so went pretty quickly, and we hopped on our train without issue. Well, I take that back. There was some dude decked out in full Pittsburgh Steelers gear getting on the same train, so Patrick was equally engrossed with trying to find any reason to chat with this stranger and follow him pretty much wherever he went. I took issue with this. We ended up sitting about 8 rows away from him on the train. Like super creeps. Sigh.

Our train ride back to Hamburg was, thankfully, wholly uneventful. This, along with the fact that the bathrooms on the train are free, helped redeem Patrick's opinion of the whole travel-by-rail thing ever so slightly. I chalked it up as a victory, and we made it back to Hamburg safely.

Though our trip was riddled with problems, I'm glad I went, and I'm especially glad that I shared my first Alpine experience with someone so important to me. I'll definitely be back. Hopefully the trains will, too.