We woke up to another beautiful day and we had beautiful views driving along the Alpenstrasse, a picturesque road that winds through the north side of the Alps. Along the way, we were slowed down by a small procession of Austrians in traditional wear who had decorated their cows with flower headdresses and marching the cows down the center of the road to their winter pastures. (We glanced at each other with a “Can you believe what you are seeing?!” look.) With the rolling meadows in the foreground, Tyrolean houses along the road and the mountains tinged with snow surrounding the valley, this went into the unbelievable storybook moments of travel.
As for Garmish, it looked like the most convenient town for a room that avoided the overflow of the München Oktoberfest tourists. Being tired from driving all day, we didn’t have an overly favorable impression of the town. One of the ‘attractions’ of the town is to ride the cable car up the mountain for the views. This was soon realized to be a non-attraction for us, as the weather was changing and getting cloudier by the moment and the price for two of us to go up the cable car was 90 Euros… 90?!
On the positive column for the town, we were surprised to see Indian and Vietnamese restaurants, since we just left a series of heavy tourist towns that only had a Pizzaria or Trattoria on show for International food. We discovered the reason for the existence of the International restaurants as we left the town the next day, there was an American military base on the far side of town, which did explain why the folks eating in the Indian restaurant didn’t look like your standard American tourists. We were sort of wondering what was up with the patrons.
