Garmisch Sunset

The final view looking out our hotel room towards the setting sun. An excellent trip, despite just being a week long. It was worth the jetlag, cool weather, and being away from the families to relive some very fond memories of one of the most beautiful places on earth. Auf Wiedersehen!

Linderhof Valley Before Sunset

The sun started going down on our last day in Germany. This is a view looking down the valley towards the Linderhof...about 5 miles away. The mountains in the distance are in Austria.

Two more Neusch. views

The first view from the bottom of the walk, the second from the car on the drive back through the town of Schwangau.

More Snowy Walks

It's about a 30 minute hike up the hill from the car parking area, unless you want to take a horse-drawn carriage. Then it's a 30-minute ride.

Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein

On our way into the castle area we could see first Hohenschwangau, and a few minutes later Neuschwanstein.

Plansee

Continuing on past Linderhof via the Plansee (Plan Lake) on the way to two other Ludwigschlosser....

Schloss Linderhof

Southern Bavaria's main tourist sights include the castles of King Ludwig. This is one of the smaller ones called Linderhof. It's beautiful in winter, but we've been here in the summer when the grounds were all decked out.

Oberammergau and Kofel

Two views of the Kofel, the pointed mountain overlooking the town of Oberammergau. O'gau is where they have the world famous Passion Play every 10 years. We also visited O'gau a number of times, as Dad had a few weeks he had to spend at the NATO school in town. Dad, Brian, and I climbed this mountain back in 1984. Major accomplishment. I'm sure we had significant amounts of Schnitzel, Pommes, and Sinalco Cola afterwards.

Ettal

Going north out of Garmisch, we head towards Oberammergau. In between is the small town of Ettal, with it's famous monastary.

Bill's BMW

OK, not really mine, but a momentary coveting. We took our little Opel Corsa rental car up to about 130-140 km/hour, which translates to about 80 mph. These BMW's were passing us at what seemed twice that speed. Probably not, but they were doing at least 100.

Partenkirchen

Brian overlooking the main street in old town Partenkirchen. Garmisch-Partenkirchen is actually two towns that have grown into one.

Rathaus

A typical Bavarian building. Rathaus means town hall. This one not as old as some.

Garmisch Morning

Vol 5/5. When we lived in Germany in the 80s, we made several trips to Garmisch at several times of the year. This was the last stop on our trip, and we enjoyed walking around the town, looking for old landmarks, and enjoying the scenery.

Three Views of the Zugstpitze

The Zugspitze is Germany's highest mountain peak. This was our view of it as we approached from the east, near Reutte, Austria.

Swiss Border

After leaving Hirzel, we headed east towards Garmisch, which as it happens took us through not only Austria, but Liechtenstein as well. This was the border crossing. Most of Europe has open borders within the EU, but of course Switzerland is not part of that, so they have a little more stringent border crossings.

"Downtown" Hirzel

A very small town, this was where the main number of buildings was clustered, including the house of Johanna Spyri, the lady who wrote the story "Heidi", Hirzel's claim to fame.

Hirzel Kirche

Brian in front of the Hirzel church. We looked around for some dates to see if there was anything standing that was there back in the 1600's, when our ancestors would have been there. We never came to any concrete conclusions, but we did find some things dated from the 1700s. Can't remember when the family left.

Hirzel

Had to get the sign indicating Hirzel. A few hundred meters up the road was the Gemeinde, or community center. We stopped in and told them our family was Hartsell, originally from Hirzel. We showed them our ID cards and they were fascinated that we had come all that distance to see the homestead. They were extremely helpful and gave us pamphlets, books, a nice history book of Hirzel, shot glasses, stickers.....all sorts of things and all for free. Very nice.

Swiss Autobahn

A great day to drive, and despite all the snow, all the roads were clear and we were able to make good time. We left Lauterbrunnen around lunchtime and headed towards our family hometown of Hirzel, about 2 hours away near Zurich.

Sunny Lauterbrunnen Valley

Volume 4/5: After the trip back down to Lauterbrunnen from the top of the Schilthorn, we took one last walk around town, now that we had a sunny day. Same view of the church looking into the valley.