Munich: 3 Generations of Family, 2 weeks in Bavaria
- Lauren Smith
- Oct 7, 2021
- 9 min read
Cast List:
Papa & Nana
Mom & Dad
Sister & Brother-in-law
And Me :)
The border closures resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic had a different impact on different people. Some might not have even noticed the restrictions, others were simply inconvenienced, but for a mother with a daughter living overseas, the travel ban was felt distinctly and painfully. That being said, when the EU offered my family the first opportunity to visit my sister (Rachel) in Munich after 18 months, we weren't going to wait around. I hadn't even seen the apartment she had been living in for the past 2 years!
We had to jump through several hoops regarding mask, vaccination, contact tracing and testing requirements, but the excitement of touching down in Munich allowed any residual stress to dissipate entirely. After dropping our bags in our AirBnb on Frauenstrasse, our first destination was the Viktualienmarkt, a large outdoor market near Marienplatz, where we had planned to gather food for a simple dinner at Rachel and Felix's apartment that night. It was as we were perusing the cheese options that Rachel snuck up behind us. Mom literally burst into tears. So dramatic. Just kidding-- we were all so thrilled to see her in her home city for the first time in what has felt like a lifetime!
Their apartment, perfectly located right next to Isator, was beautifully decorated and belonged in a magazine (though I would expect nothing less from Rachel). We enjoyed a charcuterie board, lentil salad, and sips of Rachel and Felix's super fancy tequila as we all caught up and simply enjoyed being together that first night.
We spent the next day getting the lay of the land while Rae & Felix worked, trying out our first cafes and biergartens, strolling down the walking mall and catching the glockenspiel at Marienplatz. Nana had a successful day, walking away with a lovely handmade purse which she dubbed "Black Beauty". We got together for dinner at the iconic Hofbräuhaus, where I had a liter of beer and a deliciously filling goulash ("filling" could really be used to describe all Bavarian food).
And we were just getting started.
Friday started out with a trip to Rachel's go-to resale shop (A novel experience for our parents and grandparents, I believe), where we shopped for dirndls to where to Oktoberfest the next day. Rae had found a couple lederhosen and a dirndl for Papa, Dad and Mom to wear, but Nana and I needed our own traditional dress if we wanted to avoid stares and judgement in the beer hall. It was a successful trip, capped off with some of the best Döner in Munich right next door.
Döner: a Turkish-German dish that vaguely resembles shawarma, topped with roasted veggies and several delicious but mysterious sauces.
That afternoon, we were booked for a tour of Hopfen Erlebnishof Stiglmaier, a hops farm just outside of the city. The journey through the Bavarian countryside was particularly exciting, given that Rachel's phone (the only one with data in our car) died, and I had to navigate us down nameless streets using only pictures of the map, our milage tracker, and intuition. Miraculously, we arrived at the farm seamlessly, and embarked on a fascinating tour. We journeyed through the production areas and out into the fields where we got to witness the hops harvesting in-person. We tasted hops tea, which has an impressive amount of health benefits (in controlled doses!!) and finished the tour with a beer tasting. Our guide, Elisabeth, was an excellent companion, obviously passionate and knowledgable about all things beer. She owned the farm with her husband, having married into his farming family, which has been running the hops farm since the mid 1600's. 1600s!
We finished our evening at Schloss Ratzenhofen, a local castle-turned-biergarten (of course), and all tried steckerlfisch for the first time- it was a winner!
Steckerlfisch: A typical Bavarian dish consisting of a whole trout spit-roasted over an open fire
We had to get to bed early that night to prepare for Oktoberfest the next day.
We all got dressed in our lederhosen and dirndl the following morning, the women tying on our aprons, the men scrunching up their tall socks, and caught a train to Lowenbräu, Papa's favorite of the "Big 6" major brewhouses in Bavaria, where we had reserved a table for the afternoon. Due to the pandemic, Oktoberfest would not be held in the typical tents filling the designated field in Munich over the next 2 weeks, but within the individual beer halls, in an effort to control capacity. Nevertheless, the experience was one to remember!
Since we had our table on the first day of the festival, we got to watch the ceremonial keg-tapping at noon to kick off the event. We then spent the next five hours drinking liters of beer, eating traditional Bavarian foods, and singing along with the Schlager band (think German country music). Upon leaving the hall, we only made it downstairs to the Lowenbräu biergarten before ordering our next drinks. While sitting and drinking yet another liter of beer, a traditional Bavarian quartet stopped to serenade Papa for his upcoming 81st birthday. They didn't stopped there though, hanging out and chatting with us for a while before sharing their snuff tabbacco with the whole table (and teaching us how to do it, of course) to celebrate Papa and beer and a beautiful day.
And it was a beautiful day!
Sunday was a day of rest, as it was intended by the good Lord.
We had a picnic on the Isar river, which included homemade pumpkin dip, pumpkin muffins, and sweet potato hummus (Rachel doesn't do anything halfway!). There, the seven of us met Silke, Felix's mom, who had come in to Munich for the day from her home in Bielefeld. We ended our picnic with a stop and Rae & Felix's favorite gelato shop before heading to their church for 4:00pm service. They go to an international church just outside of downtown Munich, led by a Scottish pastor and a german translator, so us Americans were in luck :)
Papa, Nana, Silke, my parents and I journeyed to the Andechs Monastery the following day, located in the hills just outside of Munich. The Baroque church was beautiful, the views were stunning, and the beer, originally brewed by the monks in that very spot, was fantastic. Okay, it tasted like most every other German lager to me, but Papa really liked it, and he would know.
After Silke headed back north, we joined Rachel and Felix for dinner at Museums Stüberl, a small authentic Bavarian restaurant just steps from their apartment and full of history, where we officially celebrated Papa's birthday over giant pork knuckles and sauerkraut. The night was capped off with shots of Bielefelder Luft, Papa's favorite peppermint schnapps produced in none other than Felix and Silke's hometown of Bielefeld. By this point, we had been gifted with SIX BOTTLES OF IT, four from Rachel and Felix, and two more from Silke (they know what the man likes).
The next few days consisted of more cafes, biergartens and restaurants, interspersed with various activities and sites throughout Munich. We strolled through the English gardens and enjoyed coffee at a rooftop bar (only 5 stories up, but that's a rooftop in Munich). We enjoyed lunch at Fink's knödel kitchen, where we tried a dozen flavors of the traditional bread and potato dumplings. We toured the Residenz, an opulant palace that housed generations of Bavarian monarchs. We ate schnitzel twice the size of our head. We drank four bottles of wine at a lovely local wine bar. Dad and I even climbed to the top of St. Peter's catherderal (306 steps) for a 360 degree view of the city, backdropped by mountains in the distance.
And those mountains were our next destination.
On Friday, we headed out to Kufstein, Austria (barely over the border). This small mountian town just happened to be the birthplace and primary distribution location of Riedel Glass. Now, if you're not a wine enthusiast, this name might mean nothing to you, but to people like my parents, this shop became a must-see. Riedel, founded in 1756, has led the way in wine glass production for centuries, turning the shape of the bowl and formation of the lip of each glass into a science to optimize the wine drinking experience. Of course, we had to see it. And we left with some expensive goodies.
We then headed up in to the mountains, where we would be staying for the next several nights. Carrying our weekend bags up several hundred feet to our first hut (Veitenhof Kaisertal), we were rewarded with Austrian beer and an incredible view of the city down below, framed by mountain peaks. The hut was nestled in a valley running east to west that offered stunning views on all sides, allowing us to enjoy both the sunrise and sunset over the majestic Appalachian peaks.
Our first full day in the mountains started out with a mile hike up to another hut, where we, of course, sipped a beer with the new view. From there, Rachel, Dad and I took off up the mountain, hiking up another 1,800 feet to a hut nestled close to a peak. We enjoyed those ridiculous views with a well-earned rhubarb cake and a germknödel (and a beer hehe)
Germknödel: An Austrian specialty consisting of a fluffy dough dumpling filled with spiced plum jam and covered in poppy seeds, served in a warm vanilla cream sauce
The hike down was made interesting by the herd of cows that chose to share our trail for a bit, but we made it down the steep trail with no other obstacles. The three of us returned in time for a shower before dinner and a sunset on our hut's beautiful patio.
The next morning, we headed down to town and over to a chair-lift that would take us to our next hut (Weinburgerhaus), much higher up into the mountains. With our bags in our laps, we spent the 30 minute ride up to the hut with our jaws dropped, taking in the breathtaking views. At the top, we were greeted by a small alpaca farm, the adorable residents of which stared us down as we strolled past them to the biergarten at the back of the hut.
Wrapped with stunning views of the valley and mountains, we enjoyed yet another beer and planned our hike for that day. We decided on a 3 mile out-and-back trail that Rachel and Felix ensured us would lead to some of the most stunning views in this region of the Appalachians. And boy, we hoped those views were good, because the trail turned out to be a little more demanding than some of us anticipated. However, mom persevered, despite her bad hip, and Felix stayed strong, despite his injured ankle, and Nana trekked on, with Rachel's diligent support, until was all summited this peak and saw that it was all so worth it. We were greeted with a stunning panorama of the Wilder Kaiser, a majestic range of rocky peaks, that revealed the true beauty of the Austrian Appalachians. Handfuls of trail mix were enjoyed while we took in the unbelievable sight.
After a bit, when the rest of the group started the hike back down, Rachel and I took the long way around, completing a 6 mile loop that featured the impressive wall of jagged, rocky, Wilder Kaiser peaks, a tiny mountain community, and a beautiful horse that came over to say hi. we never ran out of views to enjoy, and made it back to the hut in time to enjoy a celebratory beer with the family before dinner. After our last meal in the mountains, we capped off the night with some red currant schnapps (I had no idea Austrians took their schnapps so seriously) and a game of cards.
After a crazy storm that shook the hut all night, we woke up to a stunning view of peaks blanketed in clouds, the white puffs hugging the sides of the mountains and hovering just above the town below. This was the view we got to enjoy on our chair-lift ride down, yet again rendering us speechless.
We made the one hour trek back to Munich (yes, this gorgeous mountain escape was just one hour from the city) to seize our last day in the city before the "adults" headed back to Chicago in the morning (I would be staying with Rae & Felix for another 2 weeks). Upon our return to Munich, Papa, Nana, Mom and Dad completed their at-home COVID-19 tests, with the guidance of a virtual proctor and myself, their resident tech expert (lol), with no major issues and four negative results (YAY they could get on their plane!).
The seven of us then headed to the suburbs of Munich, where a lovely Austrian woman welcomed us into her home and taught us how to make the legendary Apple Strudel! Her knowledgeable tips were lifesavers as we struggled through the particularly tricky steps of stretching the paper-thin dough (thin enough to read a newspaper through) and transferring the fragile, 2 foot long strudel to a baking tray.
The end result was beautiful, to say the least.
We each enjoyed several pieces of homemade strudel over coffee and tea, and promised to use our new skill to impress our friends and family. We then took the train from there to the original Paulaner Brewery, another of the "Big 6", where we shared our last liters of beer (though sharing a liter is supposedly cause for divorce in Bavaria, we risked it). It was under the string lights of that large biergarten that we had our last Bavarian meal, sharing bites of currywurst, roasted chicken, and, braised pork. After dinner, we head back to Rachel and Felix's apartment for a final round of Bielefelder Luft, hoping to stretch our last night as long as we could.
After breakfast together at the hotel the next morning, Felix assisted the family in purchasing their train tickets for the last time (that system is tricky), and we sent them on their way to the airport.
All in all, it was a fantastic two weeks in Bavaria, full of quality family time, great memories, and wonderful experiences. I would like to personally thank Felix for marrying Rachel and bringing her out to Munich, giving all of us a permanent excuse to visit anytime!
Love your recap of our trip to Munich! Captured it beautifully!. 💕