The mountain with a border down the middle

Here's the Zugspitze detail I love. Germany's highest peak has the border with Austria running directly across its summit, and for decades that meant something genuinely strange: you had to show your passport to cross the top of a mountain. That only stopped in 1995, when the Schengen Agreement did away with the checks.

The border also sparked a proper rivalry. Austria built a cable car up to their side of the summit first, so not long after, German engineers drilled straight through the mountain and built a cogwheel railway to deposit visitors on the glacier just below the Bavarian terrace. To this day there are two separate summit platforms, Bavarian and Tyrolean, connected by a narrow walkway that used to be the actual border crossing. Two countries, two railways, one mountain, and a surprisingly petty bit of alpine one-upmanship.

I painted the peak in watercolour and ink, that sharp alpine light over the ridge. There's a poster with a letter home and a postcard if you'd like one.

Shop the poster here: Zugspitze, Bavaria · Travel Poster