size of map to dowbload via josm or xml export

hi
I am bit dazzled! How can I download bigger (custom) chunks of of osm. Like Bavarian alps or italian alps?
osm export says:Dieser Bereich ist zu groß, um als OpenStreetMap XML-Daten exportiert werden. Bitte heranzoomen oder einen kleineren Bereich wählen.

how can i overcome this?
thx
momo

You probably want http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Xapi

Thx for the quick respond.
one question is anything wrong with this?
http://xapi.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/map?bbox=10.31616,46.34408,10.91492,46.58529

my firefox crashed already twice, and it took 2-3 minutes after entering this url till the crash.
momo

Perhaps your area is rather large and browser is not an optimal clients for such a big download. Try for example wget

wget -O output.osm “http://xapi.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/map?bbox=10.31616,46.34408,10.91492,46.58529

and see if it succeeds that way.

yea that was it. Firefox probably crashed while trying to open the xml
thx

s