Garmisch-Partenkirchen

In German you don’t have good luck and bad luck. All luck is good. It is called Glück. We had arrived in Garmisch Saturday evening after a very slow drive from Berlin (nine hours) and hooked up with our rental agent at our apartment for the week. As far as our apartment goes, we had Glück. We found it online and it was unbelievably nice. It is on the ground floor of a new building nestled in quiet residential part of Garmisch about one mile from the Hausberg lift. The building looks like a typical, large Bayerisches (Bavarian) house with a broad roofline and lots of exposed wooden beams, but it is totally modern (including an underground parking garage). The apartment had two bedrooms, two full baths, a large kitchen, dining living area and even a fireplace. All of the fixtures are first class, and the tiled floors have radiant heat. There are two terraces as well, with views of the mountains all around us. I highly recommend Apartment Louise if you ever have reason to visit here.

The opposite of having Glück is having Pech. Well, our first day skiing at Garmisch we had pecks of Pech. Skiing here is great, as long as there is not a crowd. Sunday, however, when the BMWs and Audis were streaming in from Munich, was a different story. The mountain was packed. Contrary to our stereotype of German organization and efficiency, lift lines here are total chaos. They make the S-Bahn etiquette look polite. People push, stand on your skis, jostle you to the side and move into every free centimeter around you. The concept of an organized American lift line where everyone waits their turn is as foreign as a stranger’s smile in Berlin. It is actually a bit bizarre. Even in a simple situation where you are waiting at a double chair behind just two people, the Germans (and most every other European except the queue indoctrinated Brits) will try to pass you. Imagine skiing in Vermont surrounded by pushy New Yorkers and multiply it by a factor of five. It REALLY pisses me off. The amazing part is that they don’t get that. It’s totally cultural. In fact, a move like sticking out your pole so people can’t pass you really pisses THEM off. Our pecks of Pech continued when we finally got to the top and realized that Jack's rented snowboard had a broken binding. By the time we had our first real run in was lunch time.

Monday the crowds had evaporated and so had our Pech. We took the cog railway to the glacier. Wow. What a difference. We were close to 10,000 feet up with fabulous skiing and hardly a soul around. The best part was skiing the powder off-piste. 95% of the skiers stick to the few groomed trails. The other 5% have the rest of the mountain to themselves. Jack and Cam ate it up. What a kick! Having grown up on the narrow icy slopes of New Hampshire and migrated to the narrow icy slopes of Vermont, skiing in the Alps is a dream come true. There is so much to love (except the occasional lift line cultural collision ;-) ). Talk about quality of life! And what I really don't understand is how inexpensive it is. No wonder Europeans can take six weeks of vacation. The Happy Ski Card (stupid name, great product) cost me 185€ for six days. Six days! It covers the two ski areas in Garmisch and at least five more 30 minutes away around the corner in Austria. These things are so clever. Stick it in your breast pocket and forget about it. Every lift has a turnstile activated by your card to let you through. Because we had our car, we were able to zip around to Austria two different days. So cool! What shall we do today? Let's ski in Austria. Life is good.