Recently I have been mostly travelling in the afternoons, spending the first half of the day in the office before taking a train. That would not have worked well with Maurach am Achensee, however, for the simple reason that it is too far. On the other hand, morning journeys have the advantage of leaving enough time after the hotel check-in to explore the surroundings. Of course, long hikes are out of question, so the preference lies with the most obvious locations. In the case of Achensee lake, such a location is the Zwölferkopf mountain, which is not only quite low and easily reachable with a cable car, but is also conveniently situated, so that one can walk down to the hotel at a leisurely pace and still be on time for dinner.
The Alpengasthaus Karwendel is right next to the upper station of the cable car, and though the view from its terrace over the lake is quite spectacular, I did not expect anything exceptional in terms of a Brettljause. In fact, when ordering the “Tiroler Jausenteller,” I was anticipating something very basic, as many Tyrolean Jausen tend to be. In reality, variety did not turn out to be a problem at all. A bigger concern was that the dish arrived less than a minute after my order, implying that it was waiting for its fate plastic-wrapped, hopefully in a fridge and hopefully for not too long.
Nevertheless, the ingredients were of good “supermarket quality” – nothing groundbreaking, but completely edible. The highlights were the Geselchtes and the slices of a surprisingly juicy Hauswurst; the disappointments included the cheeses (for being so thinly cut that they were almost transparent and lacking any flavor) and the liver spread (by simply being present). I also missed green stuff – a tomato slice, a tiny Pfefferoni and some sad excuse for a pickled cucumber did not fulfil my “healthy food” needs, and there was no separate salad in the menu.
I can’t really recommend the Karwendel, but I guess every clueless tourist ends up there sooner or later and will agree with me that it could have been much worse. If you want to try something different, there is another hut, the Bärenbadalm, just 20 minutes away. It serves a Brettljause as well, but eating two in a row is unmanageable at my age.
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