The stops
- Adventure · Price: moderate Germany's highest peak with summit wine terrace The Zugspitze is Germany's highest peak at 2,962m, offering panoramic views of four countries from its summit terrace. The glacier skiing is Germany's most reliable, and the summit restaurant serves Bavarian and Austrian wines with incomparable Alpine panoramas.
- Adventure · Price: moderate Historic Olympic town with Bavarian wine tradition The twin villages of Garmisch and Partenkirchen retain painted Lüftlmalerei facades and traditional Bavarian charm. The pedestrian Ludwigstraße is lined with wine taverns and restaurants serving Franconian and Austrian wines alongside hearty Alpine cuisine.
- Adventure · Price: moderate Allgäu Alpine wine and cheese culture In 1821, a Swiss cheesemaker named Josef Aurel Stadler arrived in Bavaria carrying thermometers. Allgäu dairymakers had been dipping their elbows in milk to guess temperature. Stadler introduced science, and within 20 years every dairy in the valley had switched. The result now carries EU PDO protection. Twenty minutes from Oberstdorf sits Kleinwalsertal — Austrian territory accessible ONLY from Germany, because the valley has no road to Austria. The Walser people who settled it in the 1270s used German currency until 2002. You can ski from Germany into Austria on one lift pass, drink Grüner Veltliner from a valley that legally isn't Germany, and eat cheese made from techniques smuggled across a different border 200 years earlier.
- Adventure · Price: moderate Nebelhorn summit wine experience with Alpine panorama Bavaria is beer country. Every mountain hut down the valley serves foamy beer for the local cuisine. Ordering wine at 2,224 metres in the Allgäu Alps is a minor act of defiance — and the summit restaurant at Nebelhorn 2224 is where you do it, with 400 Alpine peaks across three countries in front of you. The Nordwandsteig viewing platform is bolted INTO the north face of the mountain, 600 metres of vertical drop below your feet. In 2021, Oberstdorf spent €55 million rebuilding the entire gondola system. The cable car is three years old. The panorama has been here since the Alps formed. Order Austrian Grüner Veltliner. Drink it for the contrast.