Zugspitze: The top of Germany

On top of Germany looking towards the Austrian Alps

Often we sit at home and watch travel based cooking shows, like Anthony Bourdain's 'Parts Unknown' or Rick Stein's 'Long Weekend', or other shows like 'The World's Most Scenic Railway Journeys' with commentary from Bill Nighy or 'Great Train Journeys' with the wardrobe malfunctioning, and obviously colour blind former English politician Michael Portillo (who is fantastic by the way) & his trusty Bradshaw's Guide (a book produced by George Bradshaw first in 1839 featuring railway timetables). Well I take notes about them, for future reference, in a book kept on the coffee table and there are pages of notes about many, many places, just in case we decide to visit them one day and need things to do. Today is one of those days when we did exactly what we saw on The World's Most Scenic Railway Journeys, but without visiting the monks that ran a brewery in their monastery, the Ettaler Klosterbrauerei.

Up and out to breakfast as we had an early, well 8am, train to catch to take us to Zugspitze, the Top of Germany. The train from Munich Central, across the road, only took us 6 or so stations to reach Munich Pasing where we had to change platforms and trains. A wait of around an hour saw us finally head in the right direction, there is a lot of railways improvement works going on everywhere.

Heading to Garmisch-Partenkirchen via around a dozen of so stops, we follow beautiful green fields, mountains in the distance and typically German houses, though they're similar to Swiss (great statement Weiry!!)

Our route was the light blue line

At Garmisch-Partenkichen, we have to change and walk around to a much smaller train, complete with skiers, ski etc, to take us to Kreuzeck-Alpspitbahn, where we change to the cogwheel train (or rack rail train) which takes us up and inside the mountain to close to the summit.

The Riggenbach rack system (courtesy Wikipedia)

Another stop at Grainau & Eibsee, where people disembark to catch the Zugspitze Cable Car to the summit. We remain on the cogwheel train and progress steeply (hence the cogwheel) up and into the tunnel, where they show a safety video sans seat belts & drop-down masks. There is an array of doors in the tunnel which have enough supplies & equipment to last passengers a few days until rescue arrives, should the need be.

The tunnel is quite long and an amazing engineering feat. We pop out at the lower Sonnalpin / Gletscher 2600(m) station plateau where we change to the Gletscherbahn Cable Car to take us to the summit. A lot of skiers and snowboarders depart at the lower stop however the more hardened join us to the Zugspitze summit at 2962m.

We disembark and wander around the various levels of the summit structure & find a restaurant & cafe where we purchase refreshments and take a seat overlooking the Austrian Alps which, literally, Zupspitze is a part of, but on the German side of the border, and invisible line that cuts through the summit.

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It was signed as -5 degrees when we were at the summit but certainly didn't feel like it with a spectacular sun shining down and keeping things pleasant.

After an hour or so we decided to take the Cable Car Zugspitze down to Eibsee.

The Cable car Zugspitze holds three world records:

1/ The cable car’s steel support is the highest of its kind at 127 metres.

2/ Unique in the world: The difference in altitude between the valley and mountain stations is two kilometres.

3/ The section between the last support and the summit is the longest freely suspended section of rope in the world (3.2 kilometres).

The view on the way down is spectacular, views of the valley and Lake Eibsee throughout the entire ride.

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A little bit of a wait for the cogwheel train then it was off, but in the opposite route, train changes, all the way back to Munich where we headed out for a wine for Mandy & some dinner at Cucida de Nina again, lovely manager & great food, what more could you want, except early to bed as we were both exhausted. But a spectacular day, one worth the wait.