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Around Munich
Around Munich
Munchner Freiheit
In late summer there is no trace of melancholy in Munich. Oktoberfest. A city is upside down. A gourmet tour through the five-lake region offers motorcyclists a breezy balance.
Sylvia Lischer
10/01/2001
“Baast ois?” Asks a passer-by as I frantically pull the Munich city map out of my tank bag and unfold it over the tank of the BMW R 1200 C.. The man’s head – “I am the Schorsch” – is adorned with a white and blue checked hat with a handle, in the shape of a mug filled to the brim with beer. It takes a while for me to understand that he just wants to find out if everything is okay. Very attentive, these Bavarians, who are often decried as grumpy “grumblers”. But now in autumn everything is different anyway. The largest festival in the world has been brewing in the state capital for ten days ?? the Octoberfest. Anyone who identifies with it puts on a white and blue checked hat, throws himself into a festive dirndl or a leather jacket and moves to the rhythm of the brass bands that set the pace in the Theresienwiese marquees. As with the Carnival in Rio, there is a state of emergency. A city is upside down. The description of how to get to the English Garden, presented in deep Bavarian language, is followed by a final comprehension check ?? “Host mi?” ??, then Schorsch dismisses me with a friendly pat on the shoulder ?? “Goodbye” ?? into the pulsating traffic arteries of the metropolis. Although there is no question of leisurely cruising, the BMW in Schwabing has proven to be an adequate means of transportation. Stop-and-go, rapid lane change, rapid traffic light start. It’s amazing how quickly the almost six hundredweight Bajuwarin gets out of her socks. And in competition with Porsche Boxter and Co, it rolls at a triumphant 53 km / h past the Siegestor into town onto the Munich promenade. The fact that big companies and big money reside in the Bavarian metropolis is nowhere more clearly displayed than between Leopoldstrasse and Odeonsplatz. A few hundred people fill the street cafes on this sunny autumn day and examine the polished luxury cars that glide by as if on a four-lane catwalk. After a flying visit to the Theatine Church, a look at the Marian Column and enjoying the carillon at the New Town Hall, the hustle and bustle of the big city becomes too much for me. The tranquility in the English garden has a beneficial effect. With a pretzel in hand, I watch swans, gray geese and coot at Lake Kleinhesseloher. A natural idyll in the middle of the city center, which can be reached with its own descent from the Mittlerer Ring. At 3.7 square kilometers, the English Garden is the largest green oasis in Europe’s metropolises. In which you can also have a wonderful »beer garden«. As soon as I have settled down, a group of cyclists comes in, throws themselves on the wooden benches under the canopy of chestnut and linden trees and unpacks the sausage rolls that I have brought between the beer mugs. You can recognize a real Bavarian beer garden by the permission to use it yourself, I learn. In Munich city alone there are around 50 “real” beer gardens. When the cyclists move on, I look after them with envy. The park paths under beautiful old trees and through extensive meadows are unfortunately taboo for motorized two-wheelers, but not all meadows in and around Munich are green. Especially not the most famous: the Theresienwiese. So back up on the cruiser and straight through the bustle of the city to the “Wies ?? n”, where the festival of festivals takes place every year. There were around seven million visitors last autumn alone. The first thing that becomes visible from the Oktoberfest is the Bavaria, a 78-tonne lady cast from bronze who has been looking at the festival meadow for 150 years. There wasn’t too much to see in her younger years. Until the end of the 19th century, the Oktoberfest consisted of just one carousel, two swings and three beer stalls. Today there are 14 gigantic beer tents, 52 small and medium-sized catering establishments, 121 food stalls, 113 bread women and 200 fairgrounds on the 31 hectare festival site. As soon as the BMW is parked on the edge of the meadow area, a wave of people hits me and pushes me to dizzying highs. Tech carousels, where passengers are catapulted into the air or thrown around their own axis at a good 30 revolutions per minute. Too few revolutions for a motorcycle, too much for some stomachs, as the sign “No handover” next to the cash register suggests. I slowly walk past long-established showman businesses such as steep wall drivers, flea circus, Hau den Lukas and Old Bavarian Scherbenschieben, which have held up to this day despite ultra-modern competition. “Today execution” is to be read by theschichtl, who has been delighting his Wies ?? n audience since 1871 with curious vaudeville performances. The Paulaner marquee has already closed due to overcrowding, so I take a look at Lowenbrau across the street and just get hold of one last places. Although there are no traditional Bavarians at the table, there are six Koreans. The enthusiastic Kim explains to me in perfect German that they came specially. From Seoul? No, from Frankfurt, where you have been working for a computer company for eight years. When I order a small Coke, the waitress looks at me crookedly. She usually serves wheat beer in liter mugs, usually six at a time. Without a tray. Not an easy task when the traditional band is singing “Anton aus Tirol” like now and the crowd climbs on tables and benches, dances, tramples and claps. There’s hardly any getting through, even for the Wies’s landlady. Put up the jugs – oans, zwoa, g ?? suffa! When I park the cruiser at the Deutsches Museum the next morning, the buzz from the marquee buzzes through my head. Actually, now would be time for the more sophisticated Munich experience. But instead of rummaging through the largest collection of technology in the world, the view of the Isar floodplains falls right next door … The first sun worshipers have already made themselves comfortable on the water. With and without swimwear? In arch-Catholic Bavaria there seems to be a tolerant island here. The floodplain divides the city center like a green swath and is much more appealing than museum technology on this warm late summer day. I envy the cyclists who whiz past me in droves, who can roll along the river to the south while I first have to cross the congested Mittlerer Ring on Candidstrasse before Grunwalder Strasse takes me back to the Isar past the zoo the ride more relaxed. The hustle and bustle of the big city is behind me, my visor and jacket collar are wide open, and I casually cross past the neat villas in the posh suburb of Grunwald. Perlacher Forst, Grunwalder Forst, Forstenrieder Park ?? the name Grunwald doesn’t promise too much. Lots of forest is right on the edge of the big city. At Grobdingharting the trees recede and the geranium-decorated wooden balconies of foothills of the Alps come into focus. Not even 20 kilometers from Munich’s Marienplatz surrounds me in deepest Upper Bavaria. Cow dung garnish the streets that meander under stone-old oak and linden avenues without guard rails or median strips. I leisurely overtake a tractor and chug past meadows, pastures and paddocks until the road suddenly plunges into the Isar valley. Twelve percent incline and tight turns ?? first foretaste of the alpine passes only an hour away. I leave the river behind and rush past the Schaftlarn Benedictine monastery, which advertises with a magnificent monastery church and no less appealing beer garden. The fact that pilgrimages by Munich residents tend to concentrate on the latter is proof of their sense of tradition. After all, it was monks who brought the art of brewing to the Isar. On the other side of the valley, the road leads steeply upwards again – in sleek bends that seem to teach the cruiser the spark. A few more swings through the forest, then the road dips between the gently undulating hills of the Upper Bavarian moraine landscape. Velvet green pastures, small villages and baroque onion domes that protrude boldly from the valleys. At Munsing I turn to Ammerland on the east bank of Lake Starnberg. The old fishermen’s huts that once stood here have long since given way to millions of objects. Some of the most sought-after private properties in Germany are located on Lake Starnberg. It is correspondingly difficult to get to the bank as a normal visitor. With a little luck I will find the jetty of the Starnberger-See-Schifffahrt, jammed between parks and posh villas, where a ferry is just leaving. Otherwise there is a strict engine ban. Even on the banks of the river, motor vehicles are undesirable, and cars such as motorcycles are not allowed to continue on the lakeside road. While the cyclists once again have the better cards and pedal along the water towards the Alps, I curve back over a few corners to Munsing and on to Seeshaupt at the southern end of the lake. The air is so clear that the Zugspitze seems to rise within reach and just behind the lake. There is foehn, that warm, dry fall wind that can bring beautiful weather on the edge of the Alps even when it is raining everywhere else. I comfortably chug from Seeshaupt to Bernried and enjoy the postcard idyll of the five-lake region. At Bernried I discover a narrow street that leads in pretty arches to Dieben and Ammersee. The maple and chestnut trees that I pass are already dropping the first leaves, but autumn is still out of the question. The foehn heats the Indian summer again. The Ammersee appears shimmering and no less impressive than its Starnberg brother. After all, a colleague from the Wurm Glacier, who planed Lake Starnberg out of the rock around 150,000 years ago, also excavated the Ammersee right next door. Both alpine glaciers piled up moraines at their edges, which still characterize the landscape today as gently undulating peaks. No five-lake tour without five lakes. Via the northern end of the Ammersee I reach number three, the much smaller Worthsee and then curve to the Weblinger and Pilsener lakes, the smallest of the five-way round. After visiting another important pilgrimage site in Munich, the beer garden of Andechs Monastery, I gradually make my way home via Starnberg. But the region’s top autumn theme doesn’t let me out of its clutches. Even on the most elegant beach promenade there are souvenir stands with Wies ?? n devotional items: beer mugs, Oktoberfest hats, white and blue T-shirts with silly toasts or the poor portrait of Bavaria’s favorite king Ludwig II, who is at least as popular as Oktoberfest and in Lake Starnberg died mysteriously. After a last look at the Alps, I turn onto the winding road through the narrow Wurmtal in Leutstetten, the green canopy of beech trees collapses over me like a tunnel and leads me back into the bustle of the big city. It’s my last evening in Munich. I park the cruiser at the hotel, walk to the Hofbrauhaus and finally order what I had dreamed of all day: a liter of beer. Next to me, an Indian tour group with a couple of Bavarians swayed to the beat of the brass band, through the window you can see a US eatery of the Planet Hollywood chain, next to it a Japanese sushi restaurant. White sausage meets hamburgers and raw fish ?? Munich is multicultural. This is also proven by reaching for the newspaper, in which I find out about the latest news: »Revolution at the Oktoberfest. The Wies ?? n hosts were amazed when two Japanese suddenly unpacked their chopsticks in the Fischer Vroni tent and began to skillfully fillet the fish on a stick that had just been served. ??
Info – Munich and the five-lake region
A beautiful way of life and rustic nature are on the agenda in and around Munich despite the hustle and bustle of the big city. And a tour through the five lakes region to the south opens up the foothills of the Alps that are ready for film.
TRAVEL TIME If you come too late in October, you miss »the Wies ?? n«, because custom wants the 16-day beer bliss to end on the first weekend in October. This year the Oktoberfest rises from September 22nd to October 7th. In the five-lake region, bikers get their money’s worth from April to November. OVERNIGHT STAYS In the Munich Pension Wurmtalhof (by the way, the favorite place of the Indian Motorcycle Club), telephone 089/8921520, there is a double room with breakfast for 149 Marks. We also recommend the Hotel Senator, where a double room with breakfast costs 180 marks. Telephone 089 / 8921520.ESSEN Less touristy than the famous Hofbrauhaus, but no less rustic is the Weibe Brauhaus in the valley, at the corner of Maderbraustrabe, not far from Marienplatz, telephone 089/299875. The Lowenbraukeller at Nymphenburgerstrabe 2 has been a popular beer garden and traditional restaurant since 1890, phone 089/526021. Both restaurants serve hearty Bavarian dishes. If you want to dine with a magnificent view, go to the revolving restaurant in the 180-meter-high Olympic tower, phone 089/30668585. Bistro cuisine at lunchtime, gourmet menu in the evening. Of the beer gardens in the English Garden, the Chinesischer Turm, Seehaus, Hirschau and Aumeister are particularly recommended. LITERATURE The Bavarian metropolis is covered in detail in the volume “City of Munich” from Reise Know-How Verlag. Price: 19.80 marks. The ADAC city map “Munich” on a scale of 1: 20000 for 11.80 marks is suitable as an orientation aid. Michael Muller Verlag provides well-founded background information and practical tips on the five-lake region with the “Upper Bavarian Lakes” travel guide, EUR 29.80. One of the best maps comes from Mairs: General Map Extra Sheet 12 “Bavaria South”. Scale 1: 200000, for 12.80 marks. WORTH SEEING You should definitely visit the German Museum in Munich. It is one of the largest technical and scientific museums in the world and is definitely worth the twelve Mark admission fee. Phone 089/21791; Internet www.deutsches-museum.de. Art lovers shouldn’t miss the Alte and Neue Pinakothek on Barerstrasse. Quirky and funny things are available for 299 pfennigs to enter the Valentin Museum, a tribute to the Munich original Karl Valentin. It is housed in the Isartor on Thomas-Wimmer-Ring. In the west, Nymphenburg Palace attracts with a number of interesting museums and one of the most beautiful parks in the city. INFORMATION General information is available from the Munich Tourist Office, Sendlinger Strabe 1, 80331 Munich, phone 089/2330300, Internet: www.muenchen-tourist.de. Further internet information: www.muenchen.de; www.oktoberfest.de. Distance driven about 250 kilometers Time required: one day
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