August 11th: We check out of the hut and the campsite. Everything is very dirty by this time, muddy, wet. I am ready to stay in a Gäst-Haus. I'm not a hippie, North Face hiking pants or not.
We drive past what I assume are many beautiful views of the Alps and the Bodensee but cannot see because it is still bloody raining and murky.
It clears occasionally so we get glimpses, but the cover still remains. We get to Garmisch-Partenkirchen at about 5:30 PM, in the very south of Germany, south of Munich by about an hour and a half. G-P is well-known because it is at the base of the highest mountain in the German Alps, the Zugspitze, and you might have heard of it because it hosted the fourth winter Olympics in 1936.
We check into Gäst-Haus Hamburg, which is very "cute", which Xander has told me Southern Germany is. And very Christian, too. For some reason, I feel a general sense of unease about all this cuteness. Perhaps because I'm a New Yorker. Cute is like a swear word there.
So we go to dinner and I order a big dark ("dunkel") beer, and Xander orders a glass of red wine, and as usual, they think the beer is his and the wine mine. The trout that I ordered shows up with a head and tail, and combined with the Christianity, the really tanned people all around, and the perfection of Garmisch, I cry. The head and tail are the icing on the cake. All of a sudden I feel really really far from home. Where the hell is this place? The mountains feel imposing, the weather ghastly, and food weird. I long for restaurants where fish comes out in little pieces, wrapped in seaweed and rice for dipping in soy sauce and wasabi--like it's supposed to be served.
After my breakdown, we decide to grab a deck of cards and a six pack of Warsteiner and go back to our little room to adjust to Bavaria. This adjustment is hampered by "Schlager" "music" on the TV--very happy lyrics sung by very happy people in those outfits worn on the Sound of Music or National Lampoon's European Vacation. Playing accordions and guitars and smiling a lot. And the sun is shining, which is my first indication it's all a farce.
And then the deck of cards has 36 cards in it! What the hell? Must be for some jacked-up (or queened-up, ha ha) local card game. We play a game of war, the only game I can think of which doesn't require us to have cards under 6. Xander wins, with a lot of shit-talking. He would do well in our Uno games in Central Park.
To top off the evening, we read a bit from the Bible (yes, it's in English and German) and head to bed.
The next day, my heel is still hurting from the day in the Black Forest, and we decide to put off a hike in the Alps for a day and head to Obersalzburg to check out the Eagle's Nest, or Kehlsteinhaus. This is Hitler's "tea house", sort of his Camp David, where he met with foreign dignitaries and his people to do the real business. It is perched on the top of the Kehlstein, a 1834 m-high mountain in the Alps. At the bottom of the Kehlsteinstrasse leading to the Eagle's Nest is Dokumentation Obersalzberg, a permanent exhibition which details the government of the Nazis, which was very, very scary, and there is an old Nazi-era Bunker underneath you can visit, which was scary and also creepy and cold.
It was sunny for a bit but then the clouds descended on the mountain, which made for some very scary precipices. Xander, being a daredevil, loved to climb around on the rocks with blatant disregard that we were really really high up and I chose to instead freak out and refuse to go near the edge.
Tourists here were almost as bad as at Burg Eltz. Or maybe worse. Though I will say that in the elevator up to the Eagle's Nest, which was very large, there were some loud Americans yelling across to other loud Americans (okay, perhaps "loud" is redundant, but I am using it for emphasis) about where they were staying and it actually warmed my heart to hear that familiar accent. Obnoxious or not, they're damn friendly.
We visit the Dokumentation next, which we should have done first, for we run out of time as it closes and there is so much to see. They have a huge amount of Nazi information, and like I said, it is creepy to see how they manipulated people. The propoganda alone. Crazy.
We get in the car to go home and Xander does a small psychoanalysis of Sarah and why she freaked out on the mountain/last night in the restaurant. Basically, I'm in a lot of new situations, continually, and when I'm faced with one I really don't know, I break down. I suppose it's easy to see from the outside. Also, perhaps the mountains freak me out. They are very pointy.
Sadly, we go to Pizza Hut in Garmisch to pick up some pizzas for dinner. I was craving it big-time since I saw it the night before. I asked them if they had pizza with trout heads but they didn't. It was a disappointment, but we ordered the Tex-Mex pizza (I'm serious) instead. The slogan for this joint was "Welcome to Pizza the American Way". !
Breakfast in the Gäst-Haus, which we always do. I never really like staying in these places, like Bed and Breakfasts, because everyone assumes because the place doesn't have a lobby bar that you have to speak to one another. "Morgen" "morgen" "morgen". Blah blah. I don't want to be spoken to until I've had minimum two cups of coffee, and I don't want to be looked at funny by the family in the corner who look like they've come to do zero hiking. Which makes me wonder why anyone comes to G-P if they don't want to hike. Then Xander points out that there are cable cars. Which I will address later.
I get brave and decide, hurt heel or not, we're in the damn Alps and we are going to hike. And we took out my insoles which helps. So we head off to Mittenwald, a little town about 20 minutes down the road, for a little gentle hike. We originally tried to stay in Mittenwald, but it was all booked. It was very cute, and I liked it better than G-P, not as snotty, a little more catering to tourists. More options, generally. But no Pizza Hut.
We are walking from our car to start the walk, looking all official in our North Face gear, backpacks, camelbaks, and Xander's various navigation devices including but not limitied to a fancy hiking map which, though obviously extremely necessary for hiking in the freaking mountins, is admittedly scary-looking to surburbanites in SUV's. Speaking of SUV's, a KIA one pulls up next to us and the window rolls down while we are walking. The very tanned, made-up blonde in the passenger seat holds up a very touristy map (you know, more advertising) of a gorge about 30 KM to the south of Mittenwald and says to us with a heavy Italian accent "we want to go here. where are we now". And looks at us pleadingly. We both spring into action, me pointing at the tourist map (okay, way off the map) and saying we are there, and Xander pointing at HIS scary map and saying we are here, and me explaining that they need to go BACK to the tourist office to get more information, and not looking at Xander because I will laugh. Exasperated, they pull away from us, and Xander and I laugh for a good 10 minutes. So much wrong with that whole incident, but we will find out that Italians are the most amusing tourists we will run into. Which is refreshing for me, having come from the most maligned country in terms of obnoxiousness. Sorry to any Italians reading this. I mean no offense.
The walk we planned ended up being pretty easy, and the weather cleared up and it was a beautiful day.
As we sat and had lunch, we decided to go up to the Grünkopf, a 1600 m/1 mile peak.
The map made it look much more benign than it really was, and thus I wanted to kill myself, the mapmaker, or Xander several to many times before we reached the very elusive peak. Once we arrived there, though, I was very happy and sweaty and proud of us.
We head back down as quickly as possible, which is also not easy because walking down proves to be painful like going up, but mainly for the knees and not as much for the psyche and mental well-being. Once in Mittenwald, we find the nearest beer garden and devour our chewy rump steak and fries with beer. Oh, and of course Xander finishes off every meal with a coffee and a schnapps, this one being a particularly potent Blutwurz, with 50% alcohol content. Seriously! The existence of Jägermeister now makes so much more sense to me.
And then home in the car, but not before being suspected of being muggers by some locals.
With success warm in our hearts from the day before, we arise on our last day in Garmisch to dreams of climbing another, HIGHER mountain. What I was thinking, I don't know. The ego taking over, I'm sure. Freud?
This time, the peak, appropriately called The Wank, is 1780 meters high. There are cable cars going up the mountain for those families like the one at our Gäst-Haus who don't want to actually climb, but we decide to walk up and take the cable cars down. Stupid.
The walk was hot. Now, it's not raining, but instead you feel light-headed from the heat as you climb, climb, climb.
This, my friends, is super "Sound of Music" land. I was humming the songs all the way up the mountain. I now have to watch that one again, and I think so many things will make so much more sense to me. As we climb, we cross the cable car lines from underneath several times, and it gives us delight to belittle these spineless, drive-less people, taking the easy way up the mountain as we sweat buckets and curse all the way up.
And, as we begin to near the peak, we also begin to see clean, dry, happy families headed DOWN the mountain after taking the Wankbahn up. They say "Grüss Gott" (literally, "greet God", the way the southern Germans say "hello!". we will dissect the psychology behind that one later) with bounce and sunshine, and we mutter "Grüss Gott" back, not wanting to lose too much of our precious energy in the effort. Also, we want them to know what wusses they are.
Here is something I would have liked to have: those hiking sticks. I think that they would have been nice to have, but Xander and I decided they were for wusses.
Well, surprisingly quickly, and with less profanity than the day before, we make it to the peak. I think it was motivating to see the other wusses and bask in our bravado in climbing up. And, I admit: fun. There, I've said it. I may enjoy a good glass of Malbec and a nice arugula salad after a day of pedicures and shopping in Nolita, but I will say that proving to myself that I can (insert Sound of Music music here) Climb Every Mountain (okay, maybe not every one) was a very valuable experience.
We hang out on the peak for a while, having coffee and eating our gourmet lunch of noodles. There was, of course, an extremely overpriced restaurant at the peak to exploit the tourists, but a. we did not want to mix with the wusses b. it was like we didn't want to enter back into reality--we wanted to feel the accomplishment and the bond that we created between each other and the mountain for a little bit longer. It's hard to explain if you haven't done it, or maybe it's obvious, and since this is my first experience hiking, I'm still in awe.
After enjoying the mountain for a bit longer, and hearing the bells of the cows tinkle as they graze on the grass, we jump on a cable car and head down the mountain, after Xander asks me "are you sure you don't want to walk down?" to which I laugh and drag him onto the car. As we head down, we look at the trail we climbed, and it doesn't even connect in my mind to the experience we just had. Anytime you look at anything from afar, it's just not the same as being there and experiencing it.
After our cable car ride, we have a beer at a little place in Partenkirchen, which is joined to Garmisch--previously separate towns until the 1936 Olympics, they are now joined and appear seamless. We were staying on the Garmisch side, which was a bit ritzier than the Partenkirchen side, Pizza Hut and McDonald's francises notwithstanding.
So we are sitting and having a beer (ok, I'm having a beer and X is having a coffee) and we have another Italian tourist incident. We are sitting outside and the Italian woman comes from nowhere, on her cell phone and with a cigarette in her hand. She uses the cigarette to point at a couple of German guys sitting a couple of tables away (no greeting beforehand): "where is the McDonald's?". In that accent. And the German guys, uncharacteristically sarcastic, as the Germans are friendly and helpful, say back: "it closed, the food was terrible and no one ate there". The Italian woman doesn't blink an eye and just stands there, on her phone still. Xander feels badly for the woman and says: "it is in Garmisch." She says back: "what is this place", pointing with her cigarette again, but this time at the ground of "this place". Xander replies: "Partenkirchen. Garmisch and Partenkirchen are connected." (being very nice...I however cannot turn and look at the woman, who is behind me, for fear of losing it. This whole exchange is very, very amusing) She says: "how many kilometers are we from Garmisch". Xander says: "two at the most, maybe one". She is now done with Xander and turns back to her cell phone, telling the person she is obviously supposed to meet: "something in Italian, baci, baci" and then kissing noises, turns around and leaves. We all just kind of look at one another, in awe.
Ah, the Italians.
It starts raining, hard, and tired of looking at kitschy German souvenir shops which include of course beer steins and painted plates, but also many Christian items, we head to Gäst-Haus Hamburg to watch My Super Sweet 16 on MTV. Then we head back out after the rain has stopped for our last hearty Southern German meal, including but not limited to: Spaetzle, Strudel, lots of pork, wurst, and schnitzel. Delicious, and perfect after our big climb up the Wank.
Off to bed!
