Two months after Sydney gave a rapturous welcome to the world's most famous Bavarian, thousands of Australians are about to descend on Bavaria. Not that anyone should draw a link. The Bavarian - Pope Benedict XVI - lives in Vatican City, while the Aussie rush to Bavaria (Germany's largest state) takes place mostly during Oktoberfest, which begins in Bavaria's capital, Munich, on Saturday.
Oktoberfest, the first annual beer festival, has spawned about 3000 imitators globally. Munich's rollicking two-week-long festival coincides with the city's 850th anniversary this year, so it should be special. Last year during Oktoberfest (held each September, despite its name) revellers drank more than 6 million litres of beer and devoured 95 oxen, 56,000 knuckles of pork, 500,000 fried chickens and 360,000 sausages.
Before those figures numb your mind, consider that about 6
million tourists were involved in that consumption, so it's not as
gross as it seems.
Munich is, in fact, immensely civilised and enjoyable. Its
"laptops-and-lederhosen" lifestyle combines traditional hospitality
with a thriving arts scene and high-tech engineering. Electronics
giant Siemens has its headquarters in the city. Some of Munich's
famous beer gardens resemble parks and others are located within
parks. Families gather under the shade of enormous chestnut trees
(planted to keep beer barrels cool in the days before
refrigeration) to listen to live music. Often they bring picnic
lunches in wicker baskets and spread out tablecloths. Bavarian
beer, arguably the world's finest, is consumed in moderation.
As well as being highly walkable, Munich is a perfect cycling city. I hired a bicycle for a day for about $18 from the central railway station and set out on a sunny afternoon to explore the Englischer Garten, the biggest urban park in continental Europe. Within half an hour I was listening to oom-pah bands belt out old favourites such as Tulips From Amsterdam at the Chinesischer Turm (Chinese Tower) in the park's centre.
Takeaway food stalls sell all sorts of sausages, while steins of cold lager (sold only by the litre) cost about $10. A whole smoked steckerlfisch (mackerel on a stick with accompanying salted pretzel) costs $22 - it's a full meal. Elsewhere in the park, Munich residents sunbathe nude or semi-nude in secluded places (acceptable in Germany if discreet) and a few diehard surfers in wetsuits catch waves on a tributary of the Isar River, as the water gushes out from under a stone bridge.
Not far from Munich's centre is the reincarnated BMW Museum. One of the city's foremost tourist draws since opening in 1973, the museum was closed for three years while it was expanded beyond recognition. It reopened a few weeks ago, with five times its former exhibition space, in space-age premises overlooking the 1972 Olympic Games site. Entry is free and a tour takes 21/2 hours. BMW motorbikes and cars, old and new, become art, exhibits are riveting and the building is reminiscent of New York's Guggenheim Museum. It's part of the BMW Welt complex, which encompasses BMW headquarters and a delivery space where, each year, BMW hands over about 45,000 new cars to owners. Buyers travel to Munich from all over the world to pick up their vehicles.
If you have a car, Germany's renowned autobahns provide swift links to out-of-town Bavarian attractions. Speed limits apply only in wet weather, when you must slow to 100kmh.
An effortless alternative is a German Rail Pass, available in Australia from Rail Plus, which gives five days of travel, not necessarily consecutive. Have the pass validated at any station ticket office and take the train when it suits.
Bavarian highlights include the extraordinarily ornate Linderhof Palace near Oberammergau, smallest of three castles built by the eccentric King Ludwig II. The castle is a rococo wonderland, with Arcadian-themed tapestries, ostrich-feather plumes sprouting from intricate gold ornaments and seemingly endless arrays of mirrors.
Within the palace grounds, Ludwig had an underground lake built and decorated. Here, in the Grotto of Venus (as the king named it), he commanded servants to row him around in a shell-shaped swan boat with a cupid figurine on the prow while he listened to performances of Wagner. Often, Ludwig was the only member of the audience. His grotto was the first place in Bavaria to have electricity; Ludwig installed 24 dynamos to illuminate it with changing colours and to run five electric heating furnaces. You can visit the lake, gaze upon the king's boat, listen to Wagner's Tannhauser playing in the background and perhaps reflect that kitsch is a German word.
Natural Bavarian attractions include the Zugspitze, Germany's highest mountain at 2962 metres (easily reached by cable-car across dramatically precipitous ravines). Jackdaws, called dohlen in German, flit around its summit, from where you can see Austria, Switzerand, Germany and Italy.
A valiant battle to save the mountain's last glacier has continued for 15 years. When I visited, the glacier was concealed under snow and tarpaulins. The cable-car operators protect it with anti-glare shields, but the glacier is gradually succumbing. A formidable 80 metres thick in 1910, it will have melted away completely within 20 years, predict climate forecasts.
At the foot of the Zugspitze near Wank Mountain, the town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen is a scenic masterpiece of cobbled streets, alpine architecture, upmarket health resorts and a classy, understated casino.
Men wearing lederhosen and women wearing dirndls in Garmisch-Partenkirchen's streets are not dressing up. Elderly Bavarian workmen in lederhosen cycle home along local lanes in the evening, their long beards blowing over their shoulders. At rip-roaring traditional restaurants such as Gasthof Fraundorfer you can tuck into hearty specialities such as schweinshaxe (roast pork shank with crunchy crust and gravy) as staff perform thigh-slapping schuhplattler dances. Dating from neolithic times, the schuhplattler is believed to be Europe's oldest surviving dance.
Garmisch and Partenkirchen were originally two villages, united by a decree issued by Hitler during the build-up to the Winter Olympics there in 1936.
The original stadium still stands, in fine condition, with its huge bas-relief statuary intact. "Designed by Hitler," a guide told me. Garmisch-Partenkirchen is now bidding in conjunction with Munich for the 2018 Winter Olympics.
The writer travelled courtesy of Lufthansa.
