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Published: June 16th 2007
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Garmisch-Partenkirchen
Assi Visamo Hello!
June 15, 2007 a group of four exchange students of Technische Universität Darmstadt (3 Finns & 1 American) rented a car and drove down to southern Germany to spend a long weekend near Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Now after visiting the place I can tell it is a great place to spend a summer holiday - especially if you like outdoors activities like hiking, biking, swimming or mountaining climb.
It takes about 4-5 hours to drive down to Garmisch-Partenkirchen from Darmstadt. We stayed on autobahns and trusted our way to the Navigator. "She" said to follow first the autobahn A5, then A6 to Heilbronn, then A81 to Stuttgart, then A8 towards München and finally A95 to Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Estimated travelling time: 4 hours and some minutes. All went well, except for we got stuck for 2 hours on the autobahn 6! (So many road constructions - it is better to avoid that autobahn this summer if possible!) So travelling down south took us a bit longer than estimated...all together 7 hours! And, all this time it was raining heavily, just pouring down! At times it rained so heavily we had to slow down to 60km/h because we couldn't see
the tail lights of the cars in front of us! Our normal travelling speed was around 120-140km/h. Germans drive faster, about 160-200 km/h, but the 750€ collision excess kept me on slower speeds!
So, eventually we got there and we had a wonderful
Gästehaus Mack waiting for us in Oberau, about 8 km north from Garmisch-Partenkirchen. We had a two bedroom apartment with a kitchen, livingroom, bathroom and a big terasse. And the view from each window - the Alps!! Very nice and at a very convenient location.
After an enormous breakfast we headed for Garmisch-Partenkircen and the Alps. Out "plan" was to just start hiking on one of those hiking paths and plan the rest of the way while hiking. We parked our car near the Garmisch-Partenkirchen Olympic skistadium and headed towards a small town called Elmau. The hiking sign said "2,5 hours". Nice looking path and perfect hiking time!
We climbed up and came down a mountain and walked on green mountain hills for good 3 hours. The views were magnificent!! We took our time while hiking and stopped quite frequently to take
photos or to just look at the view. Mountains surrounding
us we walked in pine tree forests, by flower and weat fields and through local farm lands. We met nice German hikers and bikers on the way and exchanged a few words with some of them.
Weather on the Alps can change quite fast. We woke up to a beautiful sunshine and blue sky. A few hours later we got a rain shower. After half an hour the sun was shining again. At times the sun was shining but we still had some light rain! Just enough to get us wet! One rain shower was particularly heavy but luckily we found a barn for our shelter. While waiting for the rain to stop, we enjoyed a little snack and some white chocolate. By the way, the white chocolate kept our spirit up also in autobahn jams!! Each time we ran into a traffic jam, it was time for a white chocolate.
We reached town Elmau around 5 pm. We found a Biergarten (yes, there's a biergarten in every town in Germany!) and had a nice german meal. It felt good to sit down and relax for a while. We were also safe from the rain there!
While eating we were entertained by an american lady who spoke so loud to her cell phone that we couldn't help from over hearing her phone conversation. Apparently she had been "left sitting with a horse" which "she didn't appreciate". So she called to "Missy" who had left her there and who "hadn't called her back although she knew her number". So now the lady called her "just to let her know that she had sold the horse for 100 000€"! "It (the horse) is on its way to Spain." The phone conversation took about 20 minutes and the destination of the horse changed about 3 times during the call! But the 100 000€ stayed so we guessed it really was an expensive horse. And we all thought that "Missy" should have called the lady...
After the meal and some classes of bier and wine we started our way back home. Since it was getting late (it was already about 6:30pm), we decided to follow a small river and walk back on an easier path. The way back was also beautiful. We followed this little river and saw the mountain region this time from a river valley.
Half way we stopped to amaze the power of erosion - running water had eaten part of a sandy river bank and many trees had falled down the bank in to the river. I bet this small river looks quite different in spring when it carries the water of melting snow of the mountains.
After about an hour and half we got to a cross road of multiple path signs. We knew we had to follow the sign "Partnachalm" but there were at least 3 signs of Partnachalm, each pointing in different direction in this cross roads! We decided to follow a sign that we tought pointed the shortest way to Partnachalm. It was a good decision!! We found the
Partnachklamm,
the Partnach Gorge!!
The Partnachklamm is a gorgeous miracle of nature. It runs 700 meters between high limestone mountain walls. There is a tunnel carved out of the rock along one side of the gorge allowing visitors to see this beautiful place. This tunnel led us to Partnachalm. It was a beautiful, exciting, amazing walk: the river rushed on the side, water dripped down on us from the high mountain walls, we walked behind waterfalls and
at times in a pitch dark tunnel. We stopped many times to look at the beauty of the gorge, the waterfalls, the river swirls. The rushing river was loud and we had to shout when we wanted say something. The Partnachklamm left us speachless - we didn't find words to describe this unexpected beauty we had discovered by accident. But we all strongly recommend everyone to go and explore this miracle of nature!!
We got back to our car around 8:30pm and drove to Oberau to our apartment. The sun set behind the mountains. We relaxed with a bottle of wine and watched pictures taken that day. Everyone agreed that the Partnachklamm was the highlight of the day!
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Erik
non-member comment
Greetings from Garmisch
Thanks for the great informations about my hometown! If you wanna go back to the Partnachklamm then have a look at partnachklamm-info.de It's like to be there again. And if you come back to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, then please visit the Höllentalklamm. If you enjoyed the Partnachklamm, then you will love the Höllentalklamm!