Mangia Minga

A lot has changed for us in the past year. Things tend to change, when you have a baby. But I feel like, we took the changes a little further for ourselves, especially for me. From the outside, that seems so stereotypical. “Oh, she had a baby, she’s using that to change up her career path a little.” “She’s finding herself again.” “She picked up sewing baby clothes.” And those are all true. Well,…

“The best days are not planned by common sense, by lack of time You just happen to be where everything feels fine”. (Anna Ternheim, “My secret”) It’s not quite true, that we didn’t plan our Johanni hike to Vorderkaiserfeldenhütte near Kufstein. We had planned something, just something else. Then we found out Little Dub was on her way and just kept that weekend open in everyone’s calendars. And…

Foraging herbs around Benediktbeuern

I’m always excited about the diversity of courses offered by the Münchner Volkshochschule. I’ve been to dirndl sewing classes and foraging walks, Bavarian singing evenings and woodworking workshops, fashion sketching studios and cabarets. And with the spring pulsing from every corner out there now is the time for another foraging trip! For this one we went south to Kloster Benediktbeuern, the…

My feet are itching. Itching for spring. For getting out there and breath in that electric spring air that’s buzzing with change to come. Our walk up Valle delle Cartiere may have just made it a little worse, the ichting. The hike was a super easy, almost level tour that follows the Toscolano creek upstream as it winds its way through rocky boulders. You could probably continue a lot further and…

Easter was a treat. It’s not like I got any more sleep than usual. In fact, I don’t remember the last night I slept 7 hours straight – having a baby does that to you (I’m not quite a sleepwalking zombie, but there’s definitely days where I’m really looking forward for Dub to come home from work). Rather, stepping out on that terrace at my family’s cottage makes all of that tiredness fall off my…

Impressioni di Monte Castello di Gaino

Even though I have probably spent 2 full years of my life at Lago di Garda, there’s only very few hikes  in the area that I have walked. I was never a big fan of hiking as a kid. I still remember the day my parents decided to take us up Monte Baldo and how I was whining and pouting most of the way up. The view from the top (as in the top of the hike, not of the mountain) was pretty neat, but it…

Of påske haren and Osterhase

Dub loves taking a break from winter when it’s at it’s fullest. Escaping to somewhere warm. Recharging on sun and warmth, to restore his strength and make it through the remainder of the cold time. I like to take the seasons as they come (and maybe have a little glimpse of what lies ahead in spring). I think we may have found a compromise: Lake Garda for Easter. We went last year and we’re just…

I’m super pumped. I got my beloved Fujifilm X20 back from repair after it had had dust on the sensor for almost a year. Though we were hesitant at first, going out to Eibsee was the perfect way to celebrate that spanking clean sensor! So far I had only known the lake from above – looking down the forested slopes onto the blue and turquoise waters while winding up the mountain in the Zugspitzbahn.…

A walk in Weipertshausen

What is great about effectively having a 7 to 5:30 workday is that by Friday afternoon, I’m not only exhausted, but also done. 2pm – though mostly 3pm – and I’m out of the office. Bye bye construction sites. Bye bye stress and deadlines and suppliers and sub-contractors. Hello weekend. Since Dub would still be working most Friday afternoons, I’d often take the long route home, cruising through…

Dashing through the slush

When we decided to spend a few days in Wildsteig over christmas, one of the factors had been the hope for snow. The town seems to be a favourite of Frau Holle. While surrounding towns often sport nothing more than a slight dusting of snow, Wildsteig has a decent cover. Last spring, while the Wildsteiger cows were frolicking in the snow like puppies, the ones in Saulgrub, the next town over, were…

Winters aren’t what they used to be.

For the past few years, Munich has seen the most beautiful weather around christmas. Just not you classic winter wonderland type thing. More like 10°C to 20°C and mellow wintery sunshine. But really, that was the perfect weather for some beautiful, fun winter outings - as long as you substitute winter activities with fall ones.

For a few years now we’ve had family ties to a small town on the verge of the Ammergauer Alpen: Wildsteig. So rather then spending zwischen den Jahren - the days in-between Christmas, New Year’s and Epiphany - in the city, we packed up the baby and the in-laws and headed to the countryside for walks, eating and some sweet doing-nothing.

One of our favourite places out there is the Mühlegg, a small hill just outside the town. It’s a bare 15 minutes walk form the road and only a short climb up, but standing atop it feels like the Alps are lying to your feet. The most magical time is around sunset (or sunrise, but we tend to catch that only very rarely for some reason…). The light has gone all soft, the chirping of the birds reaching one last climax before fading into the night. The air feels soft and cool. In moments like those I feel overcome by the incredible, calming power of nature. I just feel there. In the moment. And nowhere else.

On the way back to the hotel Dub and I often start talking about moving out of the city, but the feeling fades and loses its urgency. Some day.

christmas market at the upper-bavarian farmhouse museum

As a kid, once a year my parents would take my brother and me on a “Germany-vacation” exploring one of Germany’s 16 Bundesländer at a time (though we only made it through Sachsen, Hamburg, Thüringen and Schleswig-Holstein). In retrospect I’m not sure whether we actually dreaded those trips or just we slightly annoyed about our dad dragging us to all those places where he’d talk about our ancestors, their professions and relations, for hours. There are a few events form those trips though that I still vividly and excitedly remember - like a museum where we got to build and arch learning about the principle of a corner stone and to grind our own flour using rounded rocks.

If I learned one things there it’s that museums can be pretty cool!

Today my favorite type of museum is probably the open air (farm) house museum full of relocated old buildings. Granted, being a civil engineer and a historic building enthusiast I’m somewhat partial towards open air farm house museums... But isn’t it so much more thrilling to be ducking through small door openings than reading that people used to be shorter? In Bavaria there’s a bunch of them strewn across all Regierungsbezirke, from Ruhpolding to Fladungen.

Now, I find find them pretty sweet on a regular day. But how about a christmas market nestled inbetween the little hamlets of an alpine Freilichtmuseum, snow on the surrounding hills, a hot steaming Glühwein or spiced apple cider in your hands? Not surprising, I jumped right at it when my friend suggested we’d drive out to the Christkindlmarkt at Glentleiten, a 45min drive outside Munich on the last weekend in November.

The christmas market at Glentleiten turned out to be one of the prettiest markets I’ve seen! Usually markets are crammed onto the town squares, a big pile of stalls selling similar things over and over again. At Glentleiten, the stalls are tucked into the individual hamlets that make up the museum. Some set up in barns, others in the cosy living rooms of the farm houses. We stumbled upon traditional bavarian chamber music and squeeze into the heated Stubn to warm up a little.

A painter had set up in a granary and a few paintings were set up outside under the apple trees. Next door the local bakery had fired up the old wood stove and was baking dark crusted sourdough bread. Farther on an old wood carver had set up shop in the living room in one of the outlying farm houses. The buildings themselves, their furniture and their stories had become the stage for this rather romantic, wintery outing.

Despite the relatively large crowd that flocked to the market that day, it rarely felt overcrowded (unless you tried to sneak around a few stalls set up in the already tight ground floor indoor spaces). Since the museum’s own parking is quite limited, they set up parking at the nearby Landgestüt Schwaiganger and ran a shuttle service, which was advertised as running every ten minutes but really as soon as one bus left the next one already pulled in again. There was a entry fee for the market which I find fair considering that you do get to see almost all of the exhibits as well. We had the baby strapped on in the carrier which was a good choice - bringing the stroller would have been such a hindrance with so many of the stalls being inside different buildings. If you feel like getting into the christmas feeling without all the hype and rush, this is your market!

a foggy, rainy day in the Chiemgauer Alpen

One of Dub’s friends back from small town Ontario has been living in Vienna for 6 years (but has recently decided to pack his bags and join us in Munich!).  And though Vienna lies in the “mountain country” Austria, there isn’t much easily accessible mountain hiking around that city. So when another lad from the small-town-Ontario gang stopped by Munich, too, we headed south to breath some good old Alpine air.

Viehscheid in Haldenwang

Da summa is umma.

Summer is over.

Kids are starting school again. Temperatures are dropping to chilly realms. Blue skies and and grey days come and go. The tips of beech trees ring in the reign of fall colours and turn golden. And the cows leave their summer pastures on the Almen to return to the stables and pastures in the valleys and villages.

Sounds like an tourist-luring, nostalgic romanticisation of what Bavaria is like? Maybe.

But in regions like the southern Allgäu, Berchtesgaden and Chiemgau (and certainly also further into the mountains) farmers still send their cows to higher elevations in die Sommerfrische. There’s less of them nowadays and especially less Melkalmen, where cows are milked and cheese is made right on the flank of a mountain. Still, on most hikes snaking through the Bayerische Voralpenland you’ll be accompanied by the soothing, monotonous sound of cow bells ringing near and far.

But all good things come to an end and so does the Almsommer. Throughout September cowherds guide their proteges back down to the villages. And this “homecoming” is a bit of a big deal around here. Cows are done up with festive cowbells and crowns - if the summer has gone well and man and beast return home safe and sound.

Neither my friend nor I have ever been so yesterday we decided to make use of the good weather and her new car and flee the crazy Oktoberfest crowds flocking through our neighbourhood. Our destination: Haldenwang im Oberallgäu close to Kempten. City dwellers on their way to the country side.

We were a little surprised about how quickly the cows jogged down main street onto the temporary fair grounds and how few of them wore their ornate crowns. Staderer eben - us naive city dwellers had expected a lot more pomp and cows, but in retrospect it was only 70 cows from the town’s one Alm. And after they had come through town all the cows were lead to a fenced in meadow for presentation and sorting to send them back home to their respective owners. At that point we weren’t the only ones who behaved like they had never seen a live cow, gathering along the fences and snapping photos like paparazzi.

In the end it seemed like the Viehscheid was a welcome excuse for a town fair. After half an hour of staring at the cows people turned to beer and food and music, to chatting and enjoying the outing.

Im "Braunschweig" Kanadas

Grand Manan held the best an the worst for our trip.

I tend to get motion sick, I always have. However. lately I even managed to read in a car once or twice. On the other hand I love feeling the wind and the ocean spray in my face. And I’m always down to see wildlife. So I figured: the trade-off going on whale and puffin watching trips would totally be worth it and my system might not actually get confused by ocean waves (just planes and cars and busses and trains).

In the end I felt rather unwell, emptied my stomach multiple times, saw no whales and didn’t get to go aboard Machias Seal Island as planned - and still wouldn’t want to have missed it!