Austria and Back to Frankfurt

Oct. 10 - 22, 2002

We headed for the Leutasch valley in Austria. We learned about this area when we lived in Garching. It is just over the border from Germany, near Mittenwald and the Zugspitze, the highest mountain in the Bavarian alps. Leutasch is well-known for cross-country skiing in winter, but it is also a delightful place the rest of the year, with paths for strolling to interesting villages and mountain huts.

Leutasch valley looking east. The valley floor is about 1200 m above sea level and the peaks go up to about 2500 m. (For those of you not used to the metric system, the valley is about 4000 ft, similar to Yosemite, and the peaks go up to about 8200 ft.) There are some resort hotels, but the valley floor is mostly small farms. October is the off-season and some restaurants and hotels were closed until December. We enjoyed the tranquility of the area, but the selection of restaurants got to be a little limited.
 

We spent a week in Leutasch hiking most days. Here is one mountain area we went to on a  day with absolutely beautiful weather. A nice thing about hiking in the alps is that at the end of a long climb, you often find a chalet or hut where you can get something to eat or drink and relax on the terrace.

As you might guess, we took advantage of what this particular chalet had to offer, not only in the way of the scenery, but also refreshments.

The Alps are well known for lousy weather at times. We had one of those times, so we headed for Innsbruck and visited the folk art museum there. They had several rooms with reconstructions of old Tirolean farmhouse living rooms, some dating from the 17th century. Here Nancy is sitting in front of a "kochelofen", which was the common way of heating the house.
 

After Austria, we headed north since we needed to start back towards Frankfurt to catch our flight home. The next stop was Munich, where we had a delightful time visiting some old friends. We also drove through Garching; that is where we lived when we spent the year in Germany. Since that was 25 years ago, Garching has expanded a lot and seemed much more hustle and bustle then the way we remembered it.  We liked the older Garching much better.

On the way from Munich to Frankfurt we took the Romantic Road and stopped by Dinkelsbuehl and Rothenburg ob der Tauber, two towns which have preserved their medieval town walls. This is the town wall in Dinkelsbuehl.

We stayed in this hotel inside the walled part of the town. The black car in front is our rental car. It was an Opel Corsica and drove very well, although I didn't like going over 120 km/hr in it. It got about 40 mpg, which was very helpful since gas was rather expensive, about $4 per gallon (US).

Next stop was Rothenburg, where we just spend a few hours and traveled on. This view is in the walled part of the city.

In Rothenburg, they try to preserve the medieval look, even for things as American as McDonald's.
 

After this we headed to within an hour's distance of the Frankfurt airport, so that we could make it to the airport in plenty of time for our flight home. The traffic on the autobahn was ferocious and it was raining, so I was very relieved when we reached the airport and turned in the rental car.

We said "auf wiedersehen" to Germany and headed home. It was a great time and we will be back in the not too distant future.