London / Germany / Austria - Work & Holiday - May and June 2016 - Page 4

Before leaving Munich (I will be back for another 1.5 days at the end of next week) I did a lap of the town area. It was very busy on Saturday morning setting up for the days fairs, despite the threat of rain.
Here is one last clocktower.

This is a hidden street full of currently closed cafes with a lot of flowers, for people who like flowers.

White asparagus is the thing at this time of year. I am yet to try, but would like to. My understanding is it is grown in the dark?

Also popular, many kinds of olives, but I doubt these are grown in Germany.

More likely grown in Germany are all these mushrooms. I would be afraid to eat them though. Who knows if the person selling them knows which are good and which are deadly. It does happen, Woolworths in Australia killed someone a few years ago!

Beer is delivered by horses here, it adds to its delicious smooth horsey flavour.

This large advertising sign of a half naked Italian girl was erected yesterday, so to celebrate all the Germans have dressed in their finest knickerbockers with embellishments of ribbons and bells to pay tribute.

I decided that to survive the 1.5 hour train ride I needed to build up my strength with a cinnnamon scroll covered in icing and nuts.

My train. This kind of bullet train only goes to Gardenia-Parentkinder on the weekend. It is totally pointless though as most of the way I could jog faster.
Also apart from 2 people dying of tuberculosis I had a whole carriage to myself. Glad I didnt pay extra to reserve a seat.

The inside of the train is quite luxurious, comparable to China or Taiwan, better than England and Japan, presumably because its a newer system.

I stood at the bar most of the way, observing the staff who were all gay men with funny little moustaches sharing a bag of gummy bears. There were more staff than passengers.

This is my hotel. It looks like I expected in this town where everything is a hotel. The resident population is 20,000 but generally there are more than 50,000 people staying here on weekends.

I was a bit early to check in so set off on a walk, in the rain. This is a tiny hill, it is not Zugspitze.... not by a long shot.

I believe this is the cog railway. All going well tomorrow afternoon it will be part of my journey down, although I plan to take the cable car most of the way as the cog railway stays inside the mountain!!! where there is no view just a cave. Also it takes 2 hours instead of 10 minutes.

I now realise this is the same hill as 2 pictures previously, please ignore and move on.

The main area of the two towns is like 200 Hahndorfs combined (Adelaide people will know what this is), it is also a closed off pedestrian area.

One of many town squares...thats still not the mountain.

If I cant climb tomorrow, I can play a sad round of abandoned mini golf.

German supermarkets are terrible. This is not Aldi although it looks exactly the same, this is Lidl. The other brand is Mueller, which is also like this. There is no 'nice' supermarket.

The real mountain is back there in the cloud somewhere, if I get to climb I will loop around the back which is apparently not technical in any way, just very far (22km). There are huts along the way and a few cable cars at different points, options for me if the snow is too deep.

This is my tiny room. I had luxury in Munich for a week that cost an absolute fortune due to the conference / exhibition I was attending, this room is 1/8 the price, but for me, I am just as happy, the internet is very fast, the shower works.

I also get a view, again, not THE mountain.

This is the olympic ski jump park. I presume it has been rebuilt since 1936 as it looks quite modern.
The top part is the jump, the bottom green part is the landing area.

Perhaps this explains the ski jump concept a little better. There is a small stadium at the bottom, which I did not photograph.

I had to go to a pub for dinner. My invisible dinner guest was as always there to keep me company.

The menu was all in German, I got beef and potatoes following some miming and broken English. I didnt expect it to be corned beef but it was quite good.
The side dish is creamed spinach. Unfortunately, I didnt get any white asparagus.

Thirsty cat was thirsty.

Tomorrow... maybe, main peak still in cloud here.

This part is actually shorter than the peaks in the previous photo.

I follow this stream about half way up the mountain, it appears to be a raging torrent here, however the gorge cave thing was open today.
I might bypass it anyway as it doesnt open to 8, I plan to be there at 6, internet says you can just go through the gate without paying, but there is an alternate route.

I then went to the other half of the divided town which was once two towns prior to merging. It is apparently the forgotten half because its part of the name comes after the hyphen.
Looks nice, but all closed.

The petrol station delivered, they were selling paper cones filled with hot candied nuts. They sit on a heated metal tray to keep them warm. They have probably been there for a few years.

Next door to my hotel lives some sheep. I threw sticks at them for a while in the fading twilight at almost 9:30pm. It sure does stay light late here.

I got up at 5:30am. It was raining. Not a good start. None the less, I put on my backpack, grabbed my jacket, and started jogging. My plan was to get ahead of schedule as best as possible on the lower flatter parts.

I am glad I didnt cancel due to rain, as it was soon starting to clear up, as I passed fields of flowers.

I avoided the famous tourist gorge thing, which is carved into a cliff face, as it apparently doesnt open until 8am.
The internet said its possible to go past the gate without paying before then, but that sounded like a situation ending in me having to double back.
The slightly alternate path meant I had to climb a bit, and then descend again to the river, which is frustrating.

There were hundreds of these tiny black lizards.

The journey ahead looked exciting.

Cloud would come and go, but it didnt really rain much apart from the 30 minutes between my hotel and the start of the trail proper.

Eventually I rejoined the river, which appears to be blue. It looks cold.

Here is the first hut. No one there, opens at 11am for day trippers keen to make a 4.5 hour round trip for a beer in the valley.

Every now and then I would reach a plateau. Note the lack of snow here... remember that for later.

Hut number 2 has a nice outdoor area for picnics.

People sleep here before descending back down.... not me. Heres one of very few people I saw, a woman in her pyjamas on the phone.

Time for me to break out the good stuff.

Soon after hut 2 was this cool grassed plateau, the last one. It was sharply up hill from here.

First signs of ice. I was still feeling highly energetic and about 90 minutes ahead of schedule.

The view back from where I had come was impressive. That isnt a path, its streams of rocks and gravel.

Then I got to what was by far the hardest bit. A very steep section, hundreds of metres high, of whats called scree.
It took me 90 minutes to crawl to the top of this.

I had to put on my gloves and jacket, and accept that I would slide back down some of the time.
I was very glad to get to the top, at times I was questioning if this was the right way.

Once I crested the ridge, I knew it was the right way, here is hut number 3. I was very glad to see it.

They were very surprised when I told them I had climbed up from the bottom, most catch the cable car to the top, the cable car back down my side, then walk down to avoid the scree field and to shave off 6 hours of climbing.
I was still well ahead of schedule according to the sign outside, so I enjoyed a cake and coffee. Amazingly only $9 Australian.

Snow dog was old and tired. The staff looked like escaped criminals. All their supplies come down the mountain via cable car.

I had to wear funky slippers.

Immediately above hut 3, the snow started.

I had footsteps to follow of someone who had come down.

Thought I had better do the selfie thing, as the weather appeared to be following me up the mountain.

Epic scenery not conveyed in the photo, those rocks are hundreds of metres high.

Happy someone else made footsteps. There was a metal pole sticking up every now and then, but it was a case of make your own trail.
The snow actually made it easier to walk on than the rocks / big gravel. Just every now and then your foot would sink in further than expected.

More snow.

And more snow. Remember it is summer here!

I was getting closer to that rock face after a couple of hours, but still couldnt see the top of the mountain due to cloud.

It got really foggy for a while, but then I spotted the lower cable car station....I would at least achieve my backup plan.

I walked around to see if I could keep going from here, all signs point to yes!

Still at least an hour ahead of schedule, I decided to check out the buildings. How do they build them up here? Helicopter the stuff in?

Someones built a church even.

BMW did definitely helicopter the car in. I saw a documentary about how they did it on the train once I was down.
Kind of a pointless advertisement, if it drove up, that would be an achievement, but you might as well drop a 2 tonne piece of concrete up here.

This place had a huge snack bar, and very few customers.

So I had some more cake.

Its also the spot where the cog train pops out of the mountain having spiraled its way up inside the mountain in a man made tunnel.

100% natural, apparently.

It wasnt far to the summit now, about an hour, but it was very foggy. My camera extended the lense at one point and then turned off! So I was a bit concerned.
It wasnt at all cold, not even 0 degrees, so I dont know why this happened.
Towards the very top, there was a small section of wire to hang onto so you didnt fall off a ridge.

And then I climbed up some metal steps to the huge tourist centre on the summit. I technically crossed the border to Austria.

There are even big cranes on the summit building more stuff. The weather was getting worse, but there was basically no wind all day.

No view to speak of, but selfie I did.

Then I walked around and saw the real summit. It appeared to be closed. I asked someone and they said closed because idiot tourists try and go up there drunk in flip flops and t-shirts.
I explained I had walked from the bottom the long way, he said 'today? all the way? from the town?'. When I told him I had, he let me go to the summit!
Apparently I was the only person to climb UP this week, and the route from the lower cable car hut to the summit was officially closed today.....I must not have seen that sign.
There was NOTHING to see when I was on the summit, just whiteness. My camera was struggling to focus too.

Inside has bars, restaurants, and tourists from everywhere. I was full of cake by now.

There is a really high end restaurant somewhere, this isnt it, its only open for dinner and they bring you up as a group in the cable car.

Now time to descend, and seriously it was like coming down in a plane. So fast, so steep.

It is not possible to climb up this way.

Nearer the bottom is a famous lake people like to walk around, I forget its name though, and cant be bothered looking it up.

Back at the bottom, the summit was still in cloud.

Time to transfer to the cog train for the rest of the ride into town. The part inside the mountain takes over an hour, the cable car takes 10 minutes to go up 2300 vertical metres.

One last mountain photo! Dont expect many photos tonight.

Nothing happening in town. The few people out are all doing what I am doing, wondering why everything is shut.

Church bells were echoing across the city from every direction.

Religious motifs are also all over the place, due to the previous witch crisis.

My dinner from the Italian restaurant. I am certain that is a pre packaged schnitzel from Aldi and that the potatoes were deep fried.

Nice photo of river running through town with mountain backdrop.

My hotel features angry old Germans and strangely, a segway to take you into town.
Tomorrow I go to Innsbruck, in Austria. Maybe I will go by segway?

Before leaving Garnish-Pieceofgherkin I had a long walk around the city before my train at noon. The big mountains were unobscured. The mountain I climbed yesterday is obscured by the jutting up twin rocks in the foreground. The one on the left is the second highest mountain in Germany I think.
I talk about mountains a lot, there will be more such talk.

I stopped for coffee, and got a soup bowl of it.
I asked for skim milk please, not a problem in Munich generally, but here the answer was 'Milk comes from a cow, its up to the cow if its skim or not'.
As a result of a soup bowl of full cream milk, I felt as though I weighed 3.429 tonnes as I walked around.

This is a slightly smaller mountain range that towers over Mittenwald. I was going to go here before I found out the place I went to had a higher mountain, and cheaper accommodation.
On that note, this morning I looked at house prices in a real estate office. Now these are two level detached houses with nice gardens, but a 3 bedroom will set you back a cool million euro! This isnt near a big city either, I doubt you would be commuting to Munich, just using it on weekends and holidays.

Just prior to descending into Innsbruck I realised we were actually quite high up. Hence the reason the train went so slowly. Along the train line there was a mountain bike track being used by lots of people taking it seriously, it seemed to go for 20 miles or more.
There was no fence between the bike track and the train track and at times it was just a metre away.

Arriving in Innsbruck to a small but nice and modern station, with some decent shops below.

Including a very flash high end supermarket. I like supermarkets.

I liked the supermarket so much I bought lunch from there, for 2 euros ($3). I was excited to get some kind of vegetable other than potato.
Dont worry though, they also offered schnitzel and potato baugette.

Then theres the small matter of the mountains towering over the city in every direction.

Finally, this is my hotel room. Its small but fine by me. The bed is actually quite large, the internet works, the bathroom is modern, theres a single English tv channel (CNN instead of BBC this time) and its about $80 Australian a night.
I dont really understand how its so cheap, its literally on the corner of the start of the main pedestrian shopping street running through the city centre.

Excellent view.

Instead of looking at the views, I headed into the mall. This is the biggest mall in town. It had free toilets! A first in this part of the world.

For a reason I dont care to look up, this is famous. Famous enough to be featured on the wikipedia page about the entire region of Tyrol.

The 'old' part of town is also nice to look at.

And has its fair share of ridiculously painted buildings.

The size of the buildings seem to be much grander than a place with this population would need.

There is also a large botanic garden in the centre of town. It was full of young people in what I at first thought was their underwear.
Some sort of prank maybe? Then I realised, the garden is their beach. There is no beach for millions of miles in any direction, only mountains. So you go sun yourself in the garden.

I crossed a river and enjoyed some more view.

Then appreciated this gay mountain for a while.

Being so close to Italy (50 miles) I thought I might have some pasta. I chose the healthiest item on their menu, it was ok, nothing speacial, I was glad they provided cheese and tabasco sauce so I could add flavour.

Now for my brave drink choice of the day. Its sugar free but other than that I have no idea.
The bottle features a topless couple wearing ribbons to cover their genetalia with matching cowboy hats. With a label like that how can it possibly be bad?