Mittenwald: a Bavarian Village amongst Alpine Wilderness

Translated from German, “mittenwald” means literally ‘in the middle of the forest’ and the village sure does live up to its name. Located in the small valley among some of the highest Alpine peaks in Bavaria, Mittenwald is drowned in the wilderness of the mountains, forests, and Alpine meadows and lakes. Mittenwald is only 16km away from Garmisch-Parternkirche and is less than 40km away from Innsbruck, but it is not as busy as the other two popular and tourist-filled locations. We took a 7:13 am train from Munich, which was supposed to get us to the village just before 9 am. Besides us, there were two more people traveling on that train to Mittenwald at that time in the morning. I thought that this was quite remarkable, for ,just a week ago, we were on a full train (where many people had to stand) traveling to Füssen around the same time in the morning. Mittenwald is a perfect village to visit if you’re looking for a hike out in nature as well as something to do in a small town. Mittenwald is less than 2 hours away from Munich and you can get here by a direct regional train from the Munich Bahnhof (Munich’s main train station). The train ride is incredibly beautiful as you ride amongst Alpine pastures and villages in the foothills of some of the highest peaks of the Bavarian Alps. Because all of the mountains around Mittenwald are pretty high (most of the peaks are nearing or are over 2000m), we could not find an appropriate summit that we could do in a couple of hours without any nordic poles or mountaineering equipment. We opted out to hike to the Mittenwalder Hütte–an alpine hut where one could get some food or stay overnight–at 1519m high and then back down to Mittenwald for some lunch and a much easier hike to nearby lakes. The trail signs say that the hike to the hut from Mittenwald is 2.5 hours; however, we finished the hike in about 1hr and 20 mins. There was quite a bit of snow for the last 20 minutes of the hike, so we were taking our time because we didn’t have any nordic poles; we also stopped quite a bit to take photos. There were many locals hiking the trail to the hut: it was nice to stop for a chat and it was very inspiring to see many much older folks hiking up the mountain on their own (and doing it much quicker than Dwayne and I too!). We spent about 10 minutes outside of the hut taking pictures, using the restrooms, and getting a snack and a drink of water. It took us only about 45 minutes to get down the mountain, even though we had to be very slow trying to come down the slippery, snow covered trail. We had lunch in Mittenwald and then hiked to the nearby lakes: Lautersee and Ferchensee. It was a pretty easy walk to both of the lakes: we got to walk through some of the beautiful homes in the village, then hike up a trail along a waterfall, and walk through Alpine pastures (with a huge herd of Mittenwald mountain sheep!) towards Lautersee and the Ferchensee. The sign for Lautersee said that the lake was about 45 minutes away from Mittenwald, but it took us only about 20-25 minutes to get to it. From there, it was another 20 minutes to Ferchensee. Before catching the train back to Munich, we enjoyed more of the picturesque Mittenwald. In the picture below, you can see the two gondolas (this is the Karwendelbahn that takes you up to Karwendelspitze at 2,385m) passing each other and just the right of them on the slope is the Mittenwalder Hütte. Mittenwald was probably my favourite day trip from Munich because it was a direct train ride away from the city and because the village was so quiet. We got to experience both the Alpine wilderness with snow-topped mountains and green pastures, as well as the traditional picture-perfect mountain village with great food and kind people.