It's a swinger's dream. I'm sleeping with two young German couples. We met
hours earlier over a white wine and now we have a waterbed, a sheepskin rug
and moody lighting.
The perfect Euro-trash scenario, you might think, except that our waterbed is
frozen solid and the sheepskin is for insulation, not an aphrodisiac. Oh,
yes, we're also zipped into supersized sleeping bags - a row of goose-down
mummies in a sub-zero sarcophagus.
Iglu-Dorf is the lone traveller's low-cost answer to Sweden's famous Ice
Hotel. While a room in the original Lapland chill-out hotel will hit you for
£238 a night - you can cut this by sharing - these German igloos charge the
lonely soul only £91. But price isn't the only weapon in Iglu-Dorf's
armoury. Like the other five igloo hotels across the peaks of Switzerland
and Andorra, it occupies an elegy-inducing location, nuzzling the summit of
Germany's highest mountain, the 2,962m (9,718ft) Zugspitze.
My camera is clicking well before I begin the ascent. After exploring the
medieval frescoed heart of Garmisch-Partenkirchen - 85 minutes south of
Munich by train and much less expensive to reach than Arctic Scandinavia - I
climb around the town's new ski jump, a sublime steel and polycarbonate
structure that floats above the slopes like a giant apostrophe.
It's mesmerising, yet terrifying. I don't want to leap off a 90m jump - I'm
British, for heaven's sake. I prefer sensible thrills on the Zugspitze's
cogwheel train. It chugs past petite villages before rising into a steep
tunnel, wheezing and groaning like an arthritic jogger. A short hop in a
cable car and the panorama explodes into glorious widescreen.
The Ice Hotel's forest and rivers are mesmerising, but this is scenic drama on
a different scale. Alongside waves of Bavarian peaks, I can see 200km (125
miles) across Austria to the Italian Dolomites. Turn my head and it's
Switzerland's Eastern Alps.
Almost 400m below, on a ridge kissing Germany's only glacial ski piste, is
tonight's accommodation. Seen from a distance, Iglu-Dorf resembles a patch
of moguls, but as you approach it morphs into Star Wars' planet Tatooine, a
rough cluster of white domes with a suntrap alfresco bar.
This is a wild, isolated setting for soft urban types - overnight temperatures
will fall to -15C (5F), so we start with a safety talk: drink liquid for the
2,600m altitude, and don't stray after dark. “We can only hear for 4m with
the wind,” says our coolly understated guide, Michael Buck. “You could be
screaming with a broken leg.”
Before fondue, we divide up the ice rooms: three six-person communal rooms and
several doubles linked by icy corridors. Tonight the hotel is almost full
with 24 guests - more igloos are being built - and I'm looking around
warily. A couple on my train were ludicrously tactile. I fear I may be a
frozen gooseberry. I want frigid room-mates. Phew, the lovebirds head to a
“romantik” suite, where a €100-a-head supplement buys privacy, zip-together
sleeping bags and an en suite bathroom.
“Darling, I've booked a -1C room with a chemical toilet for our anniversary.
Why the long face?”
Iglu-Dorf, which originated 13 years ago in Switzerland when a snowboarder,
keen to be first on the piste, built an igloo and found himself swamped with
guests, is less photogenic than its Swedish counterpart. Its carved cherubs
lack the ethereal beauty of the Ice Hotel's chapel, bar and art suites. The
prime glory is its setting. And atmosphere. While the Ice Hotel has been
criticised as a processed tourist experience, Zugspitze's igloos are still
run by young mountain addicts such as our guide. After supper he leads an
hour-long hike through thick snow to Windlöche, a viewpoint with a sheer
600m drop into Austria. “It's a thin rail,” he warns. “If you slip, that's
it.”
A hot tub under nature's planetarium sets me up for a surprisingly solid kip.
We're woken with hot tea to witness a purple dawn, before taking the cable
car to a panoramic breakfast where the sci-fi steel and glass tubular
architecture ignites in the sunlight.
An excellent lunch of Euro-Asian cuisine at the mountaintop Restaurant
Gletschergarten is an incongruously upmarket finale. Iglu-Dorf is fun,
sociable and spectacular. You would never call it sophisticated, but if you
need to fulfil a primeval Inuit urge to entomb yourself in ice and snow,
forget the Arctic: this is the place.
Need to know
Rail Europe (0844 8484070, www.raileurope.co.uk)
travels to the ski resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen from £181 return.
Overnight Zugspitze train/cable car returns cost €36, including one day's
skiing (www.zugspitze.de).
Stay Iglu-Dorf, which opens from December 31 to mid-April, costs from €99pp
half board (00 41 41612 2728, www.iglu-dorf.com).
Hotel Zugspitze (00 49 8821 9010, www.hotel-zugspitze.de)
in Garmish-Partenkirchen has doubles from €150.
More information www.garmisch-partenkirchen.de
