The Black Forest to The Alps
Today was primarily a travelling day, to get us from The Black Forest to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, an alpine ski town in Bavaria, Southern Germany. It was a four hour drive, broken up by a rather pleasant lunch stop right next to a large lake, Bodensee Obersee, from where we could see Switzerland across on the far side. Along our route, we also dipped into Austria, where we filled up on diesel – because it’s slightly cheaper than in Germany.
One thing we’ve noticed is just how little litter there is. I mean really, hardly any at all. Almost everywhere we’ve driven has been clean and litter-free, unlike many of the roads that we’re used to seeing back home, where people’s crap lining the roads is quite common. We should be ashamed of ourselves.
At around 4pm, we finally arrived at our destination, a campsite surrounded by some extremely high, snow-capped mountains, the highest if which is Zugspitze – the highest mountain in Germany. It felt like I’d died and gone to heaven.
Here are a couple of first impressions…
The campsite is quite large, and offers 3-star or 5-star camping. Our pitch is defined as a ‘comfort’ pitch, which means it’s a little larger, and as far as we know, it’s a 3-star, which also includes electric and water on-tap, and a nearby water wastage system specifically for that pitch. 5-star buys you a personal shed with a bathroom.
After dinner we started going over the itinerary for the next five days of our stay. Tracey had planned for us to embark upon a mega adventure, involving multiple ascents of the mountains via a complex system of cog trains and cable cars. We had maps laid out on the table, showing the many combinations of routes available to us… Except – horror or horrors… it turns out, on this occasion, on the dates of our visit, many of them are closed for maintenance.
Needless to say we’re massively disappointed about this – Tracey in particular because of all the careful planning that she’s put into it. Maybe this sort of information should be front and centre on the Zugspitze website…
Disappointments aside, we still have five days ahead of us, and there are lots of alternative activities still available to us. We simply have to figure out a new itinerary…
