We are going to be hiking in the Dolomites beginning of September 2026 with our base in Ortisei. We would like to go to Garmisch and Fussen, Germany afterwards. Any suggestions for train or bus transportation from Ortisei to Garmisch?
Thank you,
Posted by
canada
66 posts
HI Patti,
You can get a local/regional bus from Ortisei to Chiusa and then a train to Innsbruck. Once there, you take regional train to Garmisch. It's between four and five hours for the whole trip. We bought our tickets the day we travelled rather than in advance. The bus ride in particular was very scenic.
I've only done Garmisch to Fussen in the winter and it was a little tricky, but that may have been because of the season. Seems to me we had an option of going by bus or by train. We went by train to Reutte in Tirol and then transferred to a bus for the last bit to Fussen. You can get a sense of it by searching point-to-point on Google Maps.
Cheers!
Posted by
451 posts
We did this trip a few years ago but had a rental car because we felt it necessary to access hiking trails in the GP area. We did not use it at all in Ortisei due to the excellent lift access.
Posted by
OP
Whitefish
18 posts
Thank you for the information! We may look into getting a car in Bolzano, after our week in Ortisei. The option to go by train and bus sounds good too. We love to train travel and meet a lot of people along the way.
Posted by
Firenze, Italy
2055 posts
This is a case where going by car is much quicker than going by public transportation, as you would be crossing borders several times and often buses and trains stop at borders and you have to wait and change. Ortisei to Garmisch would be about two hours, or a little less, with a car. Garmisch to Füssen is easy by car, not always by public transportation.
But for the same reason that you are crossing borders, it is impractical to do it with a rental car as returning the car in a different country may be very expensive. You either have to return to starting point (the home country of the rental car) or do it with a car of your own.
In any case: the Italian highway would be paid for each trip, the Austrian segment Brenner to Innsbruck Süd is paid for each trip (and quite expensive), the short segment Innsbruck Süd-Zirl has to be paid with an Austrian sticker (the shorter being ten days); or to be done without using highways.