Garmisch-Partenkirchen – Bavarian Alpine Retreat

Large wooden balconies sturdily stick out the front of the houses, heaps of flowerpots with colourful displays trailing from them, plus alot of the house fronts have painted frescoes on the facade as well.  This is one beautiful town, the cold, closed in weather give an air of authenticity about its location.

We walk around the town and are taken in by how neat and tidy it is, this too is a regular town, everything you need is here, side by side with souvenir shops and mountain wear n gear stores.

Rosie is wanting the weather to clear….tomorrow it is supposed to be fine….fingers crossed.  We would love it to be clear to take the cable car up to the Zugispitze, the highest point in the Alps, everyone in town is waiting for the weather to clear so the stunning view can be seen, apparently it has been misty for the last 3 days.  This journey was supposed to be our afternoon adventure, no point if there is no view.  We have also have mundane things like washing to do and The Operator had sussed out a Laundromat.  Being a crappy day we were going to surrender to the hour and a half it took to wash and dry the clothes…our Hotel charged by the piece and it was way to expensive to get it done that way.  We go to the laundromat, it was manned and we didn’t have to wait, the lovely lady would do it all for us, come back at 4.30pm with 10 euros.  Deal!  Yay, now we can go somewhere.

We decided to drive to Oberammagou, it was 20 mins away further up the wriggly mountain road.  This town of 5000 sits in another valley with tall dark forests surrounding it overlooked by the Ammergau Alps…we couldn’t even see the tops of the forest.

They make their own spectacular costumes and sets and grow their hair and beards specially for their parts…no wigs allowed.  Oh, and did I say they have been doing this play every ten years since the late 17th century!  It all started as a collective thank you from the village to God for sparing it from the plague.

We stopped in at the Passion Theatre, damn they only do tours in English at 1100.  We paid the 6 euros to go into the theatre, we got a little lost in translation as Rosie thought they had some kind of museum as well….we got to see the stage, some old photos and that was it.  Oh well, we have made our donation to the production. They are currently getting the stage ready for the Mid Summers Night Dream.  Its quite a small area, total local repertory society type set up, I suppose it could be called intimate.  The stage is open air with a tin barrel shaped roof over the seating and it was freezing today, if you are thinking of going to watch the Passion Play, it is on between May and December and they will start taking bookings for the 2020 production in 2017….make sure you take a blanket to put over your knees.

The village itself is cute and small and full of the most talented woodcarvers, who mainly carve religious items….

….you can by a whole Last Supper scene carved from one piece of walnut, or there are hundreds of Christ on the Cross, or, why not a little cherub baby.

We also came across the Pilatushaus, the house facade is painted in an illusionist style. It takes a couple of seconds staring for your eyes to adjust and then wow, the painting pops out at you in 3D.

Driving back in the drizzle, and low visibility we saw this wee grotto on the side of the road….there is nothing around it but the forest, isn’t it beautiful!  Candles were burning inside, it was like fairies were tending to the Virgin Mary.

Back at the Hotel we are deciding on our plan of attack for tomorrow….all is dependent on the weather and we have good weather plans and bad weather plans…fingers crossed it is good.  Rosie and The Operator would love to see the glorious Alps.