Garmisch-Partenkirchen is a ski resort town in the Bavaria region of Southern Germany. Its close to the Astrian border and home to the tallest mountain peak in the country, the Zugspitz.
The mountain has an elevation of 2962 meters above sea level and can be seen from varuous parts of town making for a really amazing backdrop to the city.
As it's hyphenated name suggests, the towns of Garmisch and Partkirchen were once separate cities. They were actually forced into amalgamation in 1935 by Adolf Hitler in preparation for the winter Olympics that the city would be hosting the following year.
The 1936 winter Olympics was the first to include Alpine skiing and a few other winter sports and remains of some of the events can still be viewed there to this day. Visitors can check out the original Bob Sled luge as well as three large ski jump ramps on one of the mountains just outside the city. We didn't visit the jumps but we caught a glimpse of them way off in the distance when we walked over to Partkirchen.
We stayed in town for two nights during our trip and did some hiking and exploration of the surrounding area.
There were a few things that I really liked about the town beside the mountains, one being that both Garmisch and Partenkirchen had their own sort of feel and identity about them.
We stayed in the Garmisch side of the city which had a slightly more modern feel to it. There were lots of shops and restaurants and a really beautiful garden park right at its center.
We also wandered over the the Partkirchen side on one of the nights, which seemed to be a bit smaller and a little more historic and traditional.
I can't really say which side I preferred as both were quite nice in their own way.
Both sides had beautiful buildings with some really neatly painted facades. Many of the buildings were wood chalet style as well, which reminded me a lot of Switzerland. I suppose thats not surprising though considering how close we were to the border.
I don't know if it's based on tradition or if the people in Bavaria are super religious but I noticed that many of the murals were painted with religious scenes and figures.
There were also themes of nature, and farming and agriculture as well as scenes depicting festivities and merriment.
I mentioned in my previous post that every restaurant, hotel and venue in Bavaria required FFP2 masks and that we didn't have one. Normally this wouldn't be an issue but apparently in Germany all of the pharmacies and many of the stores close down on weekends, even Saturdays. It was around 2pm on Saturday and we couldn't find a single open pharmacy or store to buy a mask. Luckily the restaurant we ate dinner at was giving them to tourists for free, which was super helpful.
This has nothing to do with Garmisch-Partenkirchen or with Germany, but I find the FFP2 masks to be rather annoying. Not only are they significantly more expensive then the regular medical masks but they are also very cheaply made. The string that connects the mask to your ear is just glued to the outside of the mask and it will break with even the slightest of pulls. My wife broke hers within the first few hours of receiving it and had to puncture the mask in order to tie it onto the fabric. I managed to make mine last a few days by handling it very delicately but it eventually it broke as well. I don't have a problem wearing a mask at all but I do have an issue planned obsolescence. I think that the concept of a single use mask for everyday purposes is just ridiculous given the scale of mask use today. Unless of course, the goal is to make as much money as possible for the manufacturers and to completely turn a blind eye to the environment. FFP2 masks are nothing more than a racket in my opinion. Okay moving on.
Trouble at the Hotel
Now that I'm ranting a bit I may as well mention that we had one minor issue with our hotel during our stay. It was nothing major, not enough for me to write a bad review, but enough to make things slightly awkward for us during our stay. It was the only negative we had during our trip to Germany.
It happened the first night when I walked into the lobby after dinner, several hours after we had checked in. We were stopped by a new woman at the counter who I assume was the owner. She basically started giving me a really hard time because we had our dog with us. Kindly and apologetically I explained that her website clearly states that dogs are allowed in the hotel for a fee so I didn't see why it was a problem. She responded with,
Owner: "Yes, but you needed to tell us that you were bringing your dog."
Me: "Oh I'm sorry I didn't realize that. I booked online on your website and there was no place to specify that we were traveling with our dog."
Owner: "Well you were supposed to tell us because some people have allergies and we need to do extra cleaning in the rooms. Now I have to clean the blankets and the pillows and everything!"
Me thinking in my head: "Don't you clean that stuff anyways???" Giving her the benefit of the doubt, "Maybe she means extra special cleaning above the normal washing?"
At this point I'm basically just apologizing for the misunderstanding and asking how we proceed. I don't like confrontation.
Then my wife chimed in: "When we checked in earlier the woman didn't say anything about the dog being a problem. She was petting him and telling us how cute he was and didn't say anything about there being an issue with having a dog." (That did actually happen by the way).
Owner: "Yeah, well she doesn't know the rule."
Me, again in my head: "What!?!? You're telling me your own employees don't know the rules and you're expecting your customers to realize this special requirement when there is nothing on the website stating that fact? That's absurd!" What I'm actually saying out loud though is basically, "Sorry for misunderstanding the situation."
Owner: "Well, I will need to charge you more now."
Me: "Okay, thats fine. I expected there to be a fee for the dog. How much is the fee."
Owner: "Well, I don't know right now. I have to clean everything." Again she goes into how much cleaning she needs to do. "Maybe 100 euros. We will see."
100 euros for a dog for two nights is insane but at this point I'm just trying to keep the situation calm so I'm agreeing with everything.
My wife went back later and spoke to the woman again and got the price down to 20€ per night, which is still expensive compared to most places but is still reasonable. Strangely though, the woman actually only charged us 14€ per night, which is exactly what is listed on the website.
Everything was completely fine in the end but the whole situation made things super awkward for us. It was one of those situations where you feel like the other person is mad at you for doing something wrong but really you didn't actually do anything wrong. I felt like she thought we were trying to rip her off or something, like get away with not paying for the dog even though we were super up front the whole time about having him with us. It was just awkward after that.
We still really enjoyed our stay overall though - the rooms were nice and the breakfast was really good.
