Zugspitze

Today I bring you pictures from the top of the world.  Well, not the top of the world, but the Top of Germany.  Zugspitze is Germany's tallest mountain peak in the Alps and is just under 10,000 feet high.  And we went there!  And we stood on the top!  And we looked down!!!  First we took a train from our hotel in Garmisch, which was just leaving the station when we were buying our tickets, so the ticket seller ran us out to the track and held the train so we could get on.  (The same thing happened to us in Norway!)  The train tootles through the charming Bavarian countryside where cows wear bells, men wear leather lederhosen and green felt hats with feathers in them, balconies are abloom with flowers and firewood is stacked with a precision that Scott admired very much.  Then we switched to another train, a cog wheel train to get us up the steep ascent.  We know exactly how steep it was because Scott pulled out the iTouch and used the level app to tell us that the grade was around 14%.  Very steep!  

This is not quite at the top yet.  We still need to get on a cable car to take us to the very top.

This is at the top.

The gold cross is at the summit.  The lake is Eibsee, and that is where we then had to take the cable down to.  The cable car was not scary.  The platform at the top of the mountain, however, gave me butterflies in my stomach.You can see that I am holding onto the railing for dear life.  So I don't fall off, or jump off, or even get PUSHED off.