Germany - Day 5

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Today we journeyed down south again to the German-Austria border. We wanted to see and travel up to the highest peak in the German alps, called the Zugspitze (ZOOG-spit-suh).

Upon arriving at our destination, called Garmisch-Partenkirchen, we had to transfer to a totally different and independent train station, called the "Zugspitebahn". It cost us over 100 euros for the both of us to travel by the cogwheel train to the Eibsee lake at the bottom of the Zugspite. On the short train trip, we rode past the cutest and most authentic-looking Bavarian houses & meadows you can imagine. Houses made of logs, balconies, flowers everywhere. Tons of cows and sheep in the bright green meadows. And the funniest thing to me was that each house had a MASSIVE pile of wood. I'm talking, piled up as high as their roof along a whole side of the house! They must get really cold winters!!!!
Once at the Eibsee lake stop, we could either continue on the train up the mountain to the top, or take the cable car to the top. We chose the cable car since it was faster, but boy was it a bit scary!!! We went up through the clouds, all the way to the peak at close to 10,000 ft.

Unfortunately, when we reached the top around 11:30am, the clouds were still pretty low. The weather was nice, blue skys, just a lot of low-hanging clouds and mist. We couldn't really see anything at all. At the peak of the mountain, there are several observation decks, a restaurant, and a little outdoor cafe and souvenir shop. It was mega-crowded at the top and, since you couldn't see anything, there were a ton of people hanging around drinking beers in the freezing cold and snow. We walked past all of that down a path and suddenly, we found ourselves in Austria! Yes at the very top, you cross over into another country! The mountain straddles both. So we went down and ate lunch in Austria. Haha! However, the lunch was TERRIBLE. Super gross. Whatever I ordered was seriously like a thick, fried bologna. Randy had curry-wurst, but it was pretty gross too. We waited a little bit to see if the weather would clear. It didn't, so we headed down on a different cable car to a glacier just below the top of the mountain. We were lucky to find that the view was much better! Though still some low clouds, we were able to see a nice panorama of the Germany side. There were more restaurants down on the glacier, as well as a ski area which wasn't being used quite yet even though there was tons of snow. We froze our butts off, it had to be in the high 20s or low 30s. I had to buy myself some gloves! We decided to drink a beer on the glacier and take some pics, which turned out great.

After taking in the view, we headed back down on the first cable car to the Eibsee lake. There's a hotel down there right on the lake and some of the rooms have balconies that overlook both the lake and the mountain above. We want to go and stay there one day. I tried to convince Randy that we should just do it tonight, but it was 360 euros to stay in one of the premium rooms. Ergh! Oh well, next trip maybe!

After heading back to Munich, we chose a dinner restaurant from my Rick Steves book. That guy never lets me down! The food was wonderful and we tried our first real German apple streudel. Delicious and we are stuffed to the gills! Luckily, we'd walked about 20 min from our hotel, so the walk back did us good.

One more day in Munich, fingers crossed that the rain holds off!

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