We like walking, sometimes love it, but to walk two kms to the wrong end of town  to see the info officer who told us to go back if we wanted a difficult walk. She suggested we climb Mount Wank. There is no end to German words echoing English words. I can roll them off my tongue so easily: There is fhart, der crapfen, schitten, koch, dick and so the list goes on. It is difficult to say a sentence without these usually good meaning words sounding bad. I’ve met some Germans who see this as unfortunate when relating it to English.

Well today the word was wank – Mount Wank in fact that we intended to ‘climb’ at least part way, The little child in me would stifle a giggle as many men probably would have some inappropriate reaction to. Once I’m through the initial smiles, I was able to use it without feeling self conscious. Often I use the same word when asking directions and now I’ve been in Germany for so long, I listen more to the accent, not the word eg, I think ‘wank’ is pronounced ‘vunk’ and the giggle has gone.

We climbed smartly again to over 1000 metres and were really happy we did, especially at 23 degrees and 95% humidity. There was a huette, a place where people eat, drink or sleep overnight. This is where you stay eg, on the dream path across the Alps, it is like a timber cabin with no luxuries. We walked to the middle section where we got a reasonable view of Zugspitze.

The Germans we passed on this walk today are not serious hikers, or maybe, but having time out, and seem to be natural greeters. Mostly in the morning it is ‘morgen’ and also in the morning I mostly hear ‘hello”or “hullo’. They nearly always greet but always respond. They have a sense of humour, today a serious looking young father was standing in the middle of a bridge and as I approached I raised my poles in a challenge and he said it was not fair because he was unarmed. We continued our game in different ways as we overtook each other. They nearly always respond when I ask them if they speak English, which is a lot.

After the mountain my back was hurting even without carrying the pack so it’s a matter of looking after it, exercise and less standing. On the way down it was lovely greeting the other walkers and then the final wind-down to home. Soon it was off to look for maybe our last track closer to the Zugspitze tomorrow and take a look at the interesting old part of Garmisch. G and P were separate villages once but in 1936 they were joined because of Germany’s holding of the Winter Olympics, I think it was.

We had dinner at our hotel, a first because I complained about not having hot water for a shower so it was dinner on the house.