Enjoy the highest peak in Germany!

Located in the south of Germany and the Austria-Germany border runs over its western summit, the 2,962-m-high Zugspitze is a mountain of superlatives! In the summer of 2019, I feel lucky to visit this wonderful nature in Germany! And trust me, it is a pretty easy day trip from the Munich.

Transportation

To visit the Zugspitze, it lies south of the town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. For the day of visit, we took the regional train from Munich to Garmisch-Partenkirchen. The trip takes about 1hour and 20minutes and it operates hourly.

It is easy to search the OBB rail schedule through its’ website:

https://www.oebb.at/en/fahrplan.html

The BZB station just next to the DB train station!

Once we arrived the Garmisch-Partenkirchen train station, the Bayerischen Zugspitzbahn Bergbahn (BZB) station was just in a walking distance for less than 5 minutes! From the BZB, we just took the cogwheel train directly to the Zugspitze. The timetable of the cogwheel train is a good match with that of OBB regional train. It usually operates 20minutes after the arrival of regional train from Gamisch. We found that it’s easy for us to have enough time to queue and buy the train ticket after we arrived the Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

Timetable of Cogwheel train:

https://zugspitze.de/en/service/en_ueberuns/fahrplan

Ticket

Both the BZB and OBB provide the day ticket with a reasonable price:

Bayern ticket, regional day ticket for Bavaria

Starting from 25EUR in the 2nd class plus 7EUR per extra passenger (Max. 4), it provides unlimited access for the local train in Bavaria Region and the public transportation inside the city. The ticket valid from 09:00 until 03:00 on the following day and it can be easily purchased from any ticket machine in the metro station and train station.

Zugspitze Ticket

For the adult the price is 58EUR per person, it includes one mountain ascent and descent, either in the form of a round trip on the cogwheel train, a ride on the Glestscherbahn cable car and the Cable car Zugspitze, starting from the Garmisch. They provide a discount for family visit, here is the price list:

https://zugspitze.de/en/summer/preise/zugspitze

Combined ticket

DB regional train and Zugspitze-Ticket

The price is 69EUR for the adults, it provides all the thing the Zugspitze Ticket provide and the access of regional train to and from the Garmisch-Partenkirchen. The benefits of this combined ticket is that you don’t need to wait for 9am to start the trip. However, the public transportation inside the city is not included.

So, it is just a easy Mathematical question. Since I and my friend were not staying near the train station in Munich, we need to take the metro to the train station. We bought the Bayern ticket and Zugspitze ticket separately (74EUR per person) as we found that it was cheaper than buying the combined ticket with the metro ticket (75.9EUR per person). However, I think that the combined ticket will provide a better value for you if you are staying near the Munich Hbf.

The cogwheel train to the top!

We decided to take the cogwheel train to the Zugspitzplatt directly. The trip took 1 hour and 10minutes. The view was really cool, especially from the Eibsee to Riffelriß, it provided us a nice view to watch the crystal-clear Eibsee from the sky.

The Zugspitze

The view was really amazing after we step out from the train! With the clear weather, the peaks ranging from 2000m to 3000m were all around us. It is a hot August when we visited there. However, there are still some snow on the peak of the mountains, provided us a wonderful view combined by the white, brown and green colour! It was so good to take a short walk around the peak. With just a few minutes walk, we found a really nice place to take some picturesque photos!

Then, we just took the Gletscherbahn cable car to the summit. From there, it provided us the other view to watch the mountain and Eibsee.

Relaxing walking of Eibsee

If you get enough time, don’t forget to take a short walking around the Eibsee before going back to Munich! After staying enough time on the Zugspitze, we took the cable car back to the Eibsee.

A nice walking path is around the lake. The walking path provided us a good close up to the wonderful lake.

A photo with the green Eibsee!

After the walk, we just took the same path back to the Munich. For me, it is really a memorable trip and worth the time to do that from Munich! For few reasons:

1. Zugspitzplatt is the top of the Germany! And you can reach that just by taking the cogwheel train, the physical demand is really low! How cool is it when you said that you had reached the top of Germany?

2. It is really a good place for visiting when you visit so much church, historical site and museum in the city!

3. The time matching for the transportation is really good! We don’t need to wait for a long time between different kind of transportation.

4. The Eibsee is one of the most beautiful lake in the Bavaria region!

5. Surely we can take a lot of great photos during the trip!