2006 Vacation in Europe, Part Four
Day Four (10/9): Holding Still
On Monday, we decided not to do anything; finally, enough train travel was enough. We spent some time walking around Landstuhl, which is a neat little town; it's probably best-known for being home to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, which is one of the primary locations providing care to U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq.
We didn't really do much. I slept in, read for a bit, and ate. Exciting world traveler, I am.
Days Five and Six (10/10-11): Dude, I Was So High
After a day of downtime, Tuesday was spent on the train to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, down on the border between Germany and Austria. On Eurail passes, ones you've purchased for use for, say, six days, there is a place for you to write down the dates on which you've used the pass.
The pass is validated by the train conductor, and you ride to your heart's content. If you write the wrong day on there, perhaps as a result of forgetting you didn't ride the train the day before, well, you're just out of luck, and you get to write the correct date and use up another day on the pass. But after the embarrassment of doing just that, I was able to sit back and enjoy the ride. The mountains just get more and more impressive the closer you get to Garmisch. And there were gnomes.
Garmisch is situated at the base of the Zugspitze, the highest peak in Germany, and is a popular tourist and ski town.
It reminded me of a less-kitschy, rather larger, version of Gatlinburg. And with much higher mountains. We walked around the town until the sun set, and then we returned to our five-star hotel (which still failed to be as nice as the Hotel Merkur) for an expensively disappointing dinner. Oddly enough, they had a French theme at the restaurant at the time we were there, and it seemed like things just weren't coming together for them. The food was slow in arriving, the servers were harried and dashing in every direction, and it was just difficult to get anything. The food being slow is kind of to be expected; dining is a social event in Germany (and in most of Europe), and you shouldn't be in a hurry. If you're in a hurry, you shouldn't go to a restaurant. But this place was very slow, and you could tell that it wasn't supposed to be that way.
The rooms were comfortable enough, though. The way they do the beds in hotels over there is interesting. There's a sheet over the mattress, but instead of a blanket covering the entire thing, there's a narrow (three feet?) but heavy comforter on each half of the bed. It works surprisingly well and I guess it makes the washing easier as well; less material in general, and you don't have to wash a whole big blanket for a bed that just one person slept in.
I got up bright and early the next morning, and Bill, Roan, and I took the train up to the Zugspitze. The train meanders around some low cattle pastures for a little ways before starting up the side of the mountain. About half-way up, you have to switch to a cog-wheel train; they add an additional, notched, track in the middle of the normal tracks, into which a cog on the bottom of the train car fits. It's to keep it from rolling backwards, and I'm all about that. The train passes through a 14km-long tunnel through the mountain on its way to the last station.
That station itself is quite high, and we were able to clamber around on the rocks, look out over the Alps, and throw snowballs. There's a small chapel up there; while I couldn't read the plaque associated with it, I can only assume it read "Thank God we don't have to climb any more." One tourist had a huge fluffy dog with him, and it was just ecstatic to be up in the mountains; it would bark very quietly, fling itself to the ground to wallow in the snow like Java wallows in the grass, and pick up chunks of snow, toss them, and then chase them. Unfortunately, it was shy and I didn't get a chance to play with it.
From the train station, we took the cable car to the observation post at the peak itself. It's a combination weather station, restaurant, and tourist trap, none of which diminishes the awesome view from up there. We stopped at the restaurant to have a beer and enjoy the view; the beer, incidentally, was cheaper than the soft drinks at just about every place we went.
For the trip back down, we took the cable car which overlooks the Eibsee (Lake Eib). That's a ride, right there, plummeting about 6,000 feet in just a few minutes. That's the sort of thing I'm used to doing in an airplane, not a little gondola on cables. From there, we took the train back down to Garmisch, had lunch, and endured* another ride on the Eurail back to Landstuhl.
*(Yes, endured is the right word. However cool the Eurail may be, however great a way to see the country it is, you can get tired of it, especially when you're herding four adults, three children, and assorted luggage. I swear, the next time I go, it's going to just be a big ol' backpack and me.)

We didn't really do much. I slept in, read for a bit, and ate. Exciting world traveler, I am.
Days Five and Six (10/10-11): Dude, I Was So High
After a day of downtime, Tuesday was spent on the train to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, down on the border between Germany and Austria. On Eurail passes, ones you've purchased for use for, say, six days, there is a place for you to write down the dates on which you've used the pass.

Garmisch is situated at the base of the Zugspitze, the highest peak in Germany, and is a popular tourist and ski town.

The rooms were comfortable enough, though. The way they do the beds in hotels over there is interesting. There's a sheet over the mattress, but instead of a blanket covering the entire thing, there's a narrow (three feet?) but heavy comforter on each half of the bed. It works surprisingly well and I guess it makes the washing easier as well; less material in general, and you don't have to wash a whole big blanket for a bed that just one person slept in.
I got up bright and early the next morning, and Bill, Roan, and I took the train up to the Zugspitze. The train meanders around some low cattle pastures for a little ways before starting up the side of the mountain. About half-way up, you have to switch to a cog-wheel train; they add an additional, notched, track in the middle of the normal tracks, into which a cog on the bottom of the train car fits. It's to keep it from rolling backwards, and I'm all about that. The train passes through a 14km-long tunnel through the mountain on its way to the last station.

From the train station, we took the cable car to the observation post at the peak itself. It's a combination weather station, restaurant, and tourist trap, none of which diminishes the awesome view from up there. We stopped at the restaurant to have a beer and enjoy the view; the beer, incidentally, was cheaper than the soft drinks at just about every place we went.

*(Yes, endured is the right word. However cool the Eurail may be, however great a way to see the country it is, you can get tired of it, especially when you're herding four adults, three children, and assorted luggage. I swear, the next time I go, it's going to just be a big ol' backpack and me.)

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