September 2018, updated July 2019

 

As no other duck to our knowledge has documented the collision of two cableway gondolas it was Sheilas and the swarm’s job to do so. So we (Sheila, Clemens  August, David and Byron) again went up on the “Zugspitze” mountain, Germany’s highest mountain to document the latest striking event. A rescue gondola was tested for emergency cases and during the test got detached (something broke, they are still figuring it out) from its pulling cable and rolled / raced down on the carrying cable and crashed into the gondola were it was supposed to test the rescue procedures.

It reminds me and maybe a lot of you of this legendary movie scene from the James Bond movie “Moonraker” and the friendly smile of “Jaws”.

Fortunately nobody was on board yet, neither in the rescue gondola nor in the real gondola which can carry as much as 240 passengers. Twice as much as the old ones. (when working) The whole cableway just got finished in December 2017 and superseded the older one, both holding the record for the longest single stage of a cable for a cableway.

Naturally we could not take the new cableway as planned before for another occasion, so we took the old cog wheel train (the one Wittelsbacher Prince Luitpold thought to be not necessary for lack of demand). We started with a normal Train of the private Company (operated by Garmisch – Partenkirchen) which took us to Grainau where we had to Change into the cog wheel train.

 

Many people were on the train today. The new cableway had 100.000 passengers in the first three months and the old cog wheel train is always busy too. So the damage of business interruption will be quite significant as repairs will take months and thorough new inspections of the whole cable might have to be performed.

Sheila and the other joining members of the swarm really enjoyed the warm, sunny day, because of the hot summer there wasn’t hardly any snow left in the glacier area, of course global warming in just fake news. The rental of skiing equipment wasn’t paying of today.

The band „Die Toten Hosen“ staged on of their exclusive concert here.

We also enjoyed playing with the daws, the daws which Wittelbacher princess Auguste studies and is a worldwide known expert for.

We did some research too and found out that the Daws did not like to eat Pretzels but they do enjoy Waffles with cream and sugar.

July 2019: some of the younger less spoiled Daws do eat Pretzels as I recently found out. I returned with friends and we had the highest German Mass in the highest German beer garden, an event with a reliable eye witness, no fake news. And we went up with the completely new gondola which superceded the wreck in record times. The ride was calm, fast and save.

We again visited Germany’s highest toilets,

 

prayer room,

beer garden,

post office,

maypole,

church,

train station,

souvenir shop,

car,

border station,

hut of the Alpine Club, (background)

 

snow cats,

 

saw the highest tourists in the gondola who even to our delight started to yodel when they reached the summit station,

had the highest beer and waffles and all in all had a wonderful day.

Then we started our way back down, first to the Zugspitzplatt glacier area with the glacier cableway

 

 

 again reaching the glacier Station Zugspitzplatt

Sheila was clever and insisted to take the seat at the end of the cog wheel train next to the driver cockpit and with a window looking out at the rear end of the train. So we could enjoy the full view driving through the tunnel and down the mountain.

 

  reaching the tunnel exit, back in the sun

   the Daniel mountain in the Background, also called the Bavarian Matterhorn, part of the Ammergauer Mountain Range

At the Station Eibsee, which is the starting Point of the cableway gondola and which is served by the cog wheel Train we saw the other, undamadged gondola hangin undeployed at the cable.

 

 

 

Credit: Maps Icons Collection, https://mapicons.mapsmarker.com

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