Thursday, 8th July 2010
Today we headed about 1 1/2 hours east of Bolsterlang, cutting through Austria and then back into Germany to visit the highest point in Germany, the Zugspitze, rising 2962 metres above sea level. Upon reaching the base of the Zugspitze, we started our journey up from the station at Eibsee, luckily for us, they had a section on the platform for groups of Australians to gather:
The journey up to the summit itself was undertaken in stages, starting at Eibsee we took a cogwheel train to the Zugspitzplatz, this was outdoors for about 20 minutes and then in a tunnel gouged in the mountain for another 20 minutes as we climbed the last stage. Stepping out from the train as it emerged from the top of the tunnel we were presented with this view.
It was hard to believe that yesterday we were swimming in the Bodensee and today we are nearly 3000 metres above sea level playing in snow. Klara found it absolutely fascinating and couldn’t keep her hands off it, we had to keep an eye on her hands as she had no gloves but didn’t care about the cold if it meant she could throw snowballs around.
Also at this point is Germanys highest chapel, sitting within the snowline.
From Zugspitzeplatz we took a cable car the last couple of hundred metres to the ‘gipfel’ or summit, from here we had travelled in a short time from the highest chapel in Germany to Germany’s highest beer garden, which we took great advantage of, sitting in the sun and snow.
On the Austrian side of the summit was a huge pile of snow which led me to see if I could be Germany’s highest juggler of snowballs, seeing as though it is also world cup time I added in an appropriate finish:
After spending a few hours at the summit, we took the quick trip down in a cable car which takes you directly from the Zugspitze to the station at Eibsee within 10 minutes, the summit itself is quite tiring, being so high in the thin air, so it was good to then have the quick trip down, the train trip up is definitely worth it but is much better taken first going up when you have the energy to enjoy the journey. However, one person below did not seem so tired, perhaps being closer to the ground she was not as affected by the thin air 
JW
