All action up in the Alps
4:55pm Wednesday 30th January 2008
If you don't fancy spending your next ski holiday in some soulless, purpose-built French resort, try a destination that you won't find in the brochures.
Garmisch-Partenkirchen is a place with a past. In fact it owes its existence as Germany's foremost ski resort to Adolf Hitler, who made a huge showcase of the fourth Winter Olympics here in 1936.
Like Adolf, you'll need to begin in Munich to see the legacy of the games - and luckily, the budget airline Air Berlin started flying there from Stansted in November.
A popular dinner spot is the 16th-century Hofbräuhaus, where Hitler started his political career making speeches to drinkers. You could say he had a captive audience, as the pale Weizenbier -wheat beer - is served in litre mugs (half-litres are for the ladies).
Or perhaps they were just too polite to interrupt his rants, as you cannot fail to notice how pleasant and well-behaved everyone is here, compared with Britain.
The Hofbräuhaus has a pleasant, piazza-like ambience, and Munich's baroque architecture, all broad, swooping curves and classical columns, gives the city an Italian feel - a nice change from that endless dark, pointy, Gothic architecture you find in so many European cities.
What makes Garmisch-Partenkirchen ideal for the independent skier or boarder are the cheap and easy rail connections.
The 85-minute train journey from Munich takes you direct to the rack railway, which carries you to Germany's highest peak, the Zugspitze, at 2,962m (9,727ft).
To celebrate you can stop for a drink or even a fondue at the Iglu Village there - a hotel made entirely from snow blocks, with some impressive snow and ice carvings.
There are now 22km (14 miles) of mostly intermediate pistes and nine lifts on the glacier, offering snow-sure skiing until May.
The Olympic events took place in the 'Classic' area. This is a quaint network of runs with 37km (23 miles) of a broad spectrum of pistes from gentle, beginner-friendly runs to lengthy, hair-raising black mogul fields.
The pistes run through charming woods, making them full of intrigue and excitement, and among the 17 lifts, several state-of-the-art, is a quirky two-seater chairlift, which you access through the roof of a building.
In the many piste-side stube - cafés-cum-restaurants - one of the waiters even had a traditional Bavarian waxed, upturned moustache.
Far from being an adjunct to the ski resort, Garmisch-Partenkirchen is a town worth visiting in its own right, and staying there had the feel of a city break.
Eating out felt like a cultural experience, and in the hotel where we were staying the staff wore traditional Bavarian dress even when serving us breakfast.
You can admire the frescos in the 'old' church dating back to the 15th century, and there are also many frescos painted on the walls of houses.
There's plenty of shopping too, though bear in mind that Germans aren't as keen on credit cards as we are, so it's worth keeping a stash of euros and checking if smaller shops and restaurants accept cards before you go in.
For après-ski there are accordion players and bottom-slapping dancers in lederhosen performing at the bierkellers like the Fraundorfer.
But perhaps the most interesting tour you can do is the Olympic trail - the tourist office will give you a map.
You can still see the art deco ice stadium and ski stadium. The swastikas disappeared in the process of de-nazification, but as our guide said: "It's enough that we still have the statues of what we Aryan Germans are supposed to look like."
The huge, athletic figures at the ski stadium stand guard over the place where Hitler himself opened the games on February 6, 1936.
The stadium is still used today as a landing area for the futuristic new ski jump, only just being completed, and its slalom run.
While you are there you can carry on up the narrow Partnach gorge to view the frozen waterfalls, finishing up for dinner at the Forsthaus Graseck. Don't worry, there's a cable car to take you back down. Slightly further out you can walk around the beautiful Rießersee Riessersee lake, which they still use for Eisstock - a form of curling - and where they hosted the ice hockey in 1936.
The Rießersee is one of the few places you can't reach by train or ski lift and it's a bit of a stiff walk.
Of course, you could hire a car. After all, Munich is where Bavarian Motor Works (BMW) is based and where the 16-year-old Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, was stationed in 1943 as part of the an anti-aircraft artillery unit protecting the factory from Allied bombers. But generally a car isn't necessary.
Whoops, did I mention the War? After 1945, Garmisch-Partenkirchen became the place that British and American soldiers based in Germany would go to ski. Most of the servicemen left in the 1990s with the end of the Cold War. Though an American base remains, it mainly serves as a centre for international relations.
Garmisch-Partenkirchen is still fondly remembered by many servicemen and their families - and today the Americans are the biggest overseas visitors, followed by the British. And they don't just go skiing.
A third of people who come visit the surrounding area, to see its many charms. The highlight is in the nearby town of Füßen Fussen where you'll find the castle of Neuschwanstein, the place in which Chitty Chitty Bang was filmed and which inspired the Disney logo. With its crazy pointed turrets, it's the perfect antidote to those tower blocks at so many French resorts.
GETTING THERE AIR Berlin (www.airberlin.com, 0871 5000 737) flies from London Stansted to Munich from £30 return including tax, seat reservation, inflight snacks and drinks and baggage check-in.
Colin stayed at the Hotel Exquisit in Munich ( www.hotel-exquisit, 00 49 89 551 99 00) and the Hotel Bavaria in Garmisch (www.bavarian-hotels.com, 00 49 8821 3466).
The Bayern Ticket costs £20 and allows up to five people a day's rail travel anywhere in Bavaria (after 9am Monday to Friday).