Day 21 – A Night In Garmisch

Feb 25, 2023

Today’s Adventure

On Saturday the 25th Cindy and I left Castelrotto to begin our return to Williamsburg. We arranged for a car service to pick us up early at the apartment for the ride down to the Bahnhof in Ponte Gardena where we boarded a Trenitalia regional train for the scenic ride north to Innsbruck. Along the way we experienced the first significant snowfall of the trip as we crossed the Austrian border at Brenner Pass. Little did we know that this was a warning shot for the heavy snow that we would see overnight in Garmisch.

At Innsbruck we had some time to spare before our next train so we had breakfast at a rather happening cafe in the Bahnhof. We then boarded a very modern and quite elegant ICE or InterCity Express train for the ride northwest to Garmisch. The interior seemed more like a cruise ship or private jet than a train. Along the way the train passed through the resort town of Seefeld where we spent a most enjoyable week cross-country skiing back in 2012.

Garmisch, a scenic mountain resort town deep in the Bavarian Alps, is perhaps best known to many Americans as a major R&R center for US military personnel serving in Germany. That was certainly true for Stuart’s parents as they were stationed in Wiesbaden with the US Air Force from 1951 to 1953. We’ve passed through Garmisch on the train on prior trips to Europe but we’ve never spent any time there so this trip offered us a good opportunity to check out a true blast from the past. We found that Garmisch is a prosperous little town but also very much focused on tourism. We found that some of the charm of what is otherwise a potentially lovely area is lost to a few too many souvenir shops and a lot too much traffic. In spite of that we managed to have a nice visit.

Upon arrival at Garmisch we checked our maps and then walked a few blocks to the Hotel Zugspitze. Because it was early in the afternoon our room was not ready yet, so we dropped our bags at the front desk and went out to explore. It was cold and misty winter’s day with signs of a big snow storm on the way. Because of the limited visibility we elected to pass on taking the iconic cable car ride up to the top of the Zugspitze – there simply wouldn’t have been any views (aside from a face full of clouds).

During our stroll around the old town section we noticed that any of the buildings are adorned with colorful and quite detailed murals. These murals, officially known as Lüftlmalerei, are an artform that is native to villages and towns of southern Germany and Austria. This is especially true in Upper Bavaria and in the Tyrol. It’s a folk-oriented variation of trompe-l’œil from the Baroque and often imitates architectural elements. Its subject matter ranges from the patron saints, family emblems, everyday rural life, hunting and even Biblical stories.

The highlight of our visit to Garmisch, at least for me, was the solving of at least part of a family mystery. Seventy years ago when my parents left Germany, they were given a trio of paintings with classic Bavarian scenes as a farewell gift. I grew up with these paintings on the wall and they were one of the few things that I specifically wanted from the estate when my parents passed. There wasn’t much information about them, so I had always wondered if the locations were real or not. We took photos of the paintings into the tourist office near our hotel and asked the lady at the desk if she recognized anything. To our amazement she almost immediately identified one of the street scenes and had some ideas about the other. She didn’t recognize the mountain scene (the largest painting) but felt that it was probably from a bit further east in Bavaria.

Armed with the street name “Frühlingstraße” we fired up the map app on my phone and headed off in search of history. Not more than a few blocks from the center of town we found the target street and to our amazement were able to match the view almost exactly with one of the paintings – the low clouds prevented us from seeing the mountains in the distance, but the street scene was unmistakable. There had been virtually no changes over the seven decades so it’s no wonder that the lady in the tourist bureau recognized it.

By this time we were ready for a nice hot lunch to celebrate our discovery. We wandered back towards the center of town to a very quaint restaurant called the Bräustüberl that we had walked by earlier in the day. To say that this restaurant had some patina is a major understatement – there was no doubt that many beers have been consumed there over the years. Stuart ordered one last Wienerschnitzel (for this trip, anyway) while Cindy ordered the Weiswurst, which was served rather unusually with a fresh-baked pretzel! We enjoyed our meals as well as the needed warmth from the large ceramic heater that formed the centerpiece of the cozy Gaststube before heading back to our hotel.

When we returned to the Hotel Zugspitze we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and doing some final packing for our departure the next morning. Later we went downstairs for a lovely dinner in the hotel restaurant. The dinner, included with our half-board room rate, started with a spinach and potato en croute with truffle cream followed by Ammergauer venison with cranberry vinaigrette and some potato fritters on the side. For the dessert course we simply couldn’t say ‘no’ to one final shared order of Kaiserschmarrn with plum sauce.

The next morning we figured out how to use the spectacular fresh-grind coffee machine in our room before heading downstairs for the extensive breakfast buffet. It had snowed extensively overnight so we had to drag our rollerbags several blocks through the snow on the way back to the Bahnhof. The snows were playing havoc with the train schedule and the train in front of ours was cancelled – this meant that all of those passengers would try to fit onto our train when it arrived, so we figured we were in for an interesting boarding process. Fortunately our 1st class seat reservations ensured that we had no trouble when our train did arrive, but the coach compartment was filled to overflowing with quite a few people standing for much of the trip to the Flughafen München.

When we arrived at the airport we checked into our room at the Hilton. This hotel is a favorite of ours in Munich as the rooms are impeccably clean, surprisingly large, quite modern, and extremely quiet in spite of the location adjoining the main airport terminal. We walked back into the airport to the Edeka supermarket and bought salads to take back to the room for dinner. A quiet evening was just what we needed to get ready for the next day’s trip back to Williamsburg.

For Innichen’s main page click here.

For Castelrotto’s main page click here.

For the entire trip’s main page click here.