We’re not only here for the beer!
Giles Milton revels in Bavaria’s castles, scenery, fossils and food – as well as its world-class drink...
WE HAD been in our rented cottage for less than an hour when the owner brought us the good news. The neighbouring village, which bore the mildly titillating name of Titting, was holding its annual beer festival that very evening.
So along we went, expecting a couple of beer tents and a few dozen people. But this was Bavaria, an area of southern Germany that takes its beer very seriously, and it soon became clear that what we would be witnessing was drinking on an industrial scale.
A vast number of revellers were traipsing towards the festival site – the young, the old, the fat and the thin – and all were intent on carousing through the night.
Bavaria is perhaps best known for its annual beer festival, the Oktoberfest, held in Munich. But the rest of southern Germany switches into party mode long before autumn.
The beer festival at Titting was the first of many that we stumbled across during our week in Bavaria – and all were gutsy affairs, with thumping brass bands and lots of hearty singing.
The local men of Titting were decked in lederhosen and felt caps, while their girlfriends and wives were in trademark lace-fringed dirndls (Bavarian pinafores) in every conceivable colour: blues, greens and chequered reds. Some of the coquettish younger girls had pitched up in skimpy lederhosen – mimicking the boys, only revealing a lot more leg.
As the numbers swelled and the beer tents filled, buxom waitresses slammed litre jugs of beer on to the trestle tables, sloshing the liquid everywhere, while bratwurst-fingered lads kept everyone fed with hunks of pork. When we left at midnight, full and somewhat bleary-eyed, the party was only just getting started.
Not until the following morning did it dawn on us that we’d been the only tourists at the Titting festival. Perhaps it was not altogether surprising, for Germany has never been a popular holiday destination with Britons. Just two million of us travel to the country each year, compared to the 28 million who holiday in France and Spain.
Even fewer people visit the Altmuhltal, a sprawling national park that lies in the neglecteded heartland of Bavaria. Yet this is one of the most enchanting cororners of Europe, a landscape of forest and farmland that’s dotteded with Disney-like medieval castles,es, gilded baroque churches and cobobbled market towns. Many of them hem are scarcely touched since the days ays when the Teutonic knights ruled led from their hilltop fortresses.
AT THE heart of the Altmuhltal lies ies Regensburg, one of f the greatest undiscovered towns of Europe – a perfectly preserved place complete with a towering cathedral and a labyrinth of cobbled streets.
But there are also scores of mini-Regensburgs that are a match for the region’s capital.
There’s Berching, with its circuit of medieval ramparts and towers; Greding, with its gabled homesteads and stately town hall; and Weissenburg, with its picturesque market squares and 600-year-old taverns.
Better still, for the summer visitor, is that each of these places has its own festival, usually focused on the consumption of vast quantities of beer.
Titting was our first festival. Just a few days later, we found ourselves in the village of Riedenberg, where the young and the old had turned out to celebrate the summer, with many of them dressed in costume. An oldtime brass band was once again pumping out Bavarian folk songs and festivity was in the air. Everyone, it seemed, was determined to have fun.
The Altmuhltal national park is known in Germany as a place for outdoor pursuits – hiking, cycling and boating. One of the most pleasurable activities is to rent a kayak and paddle down the river Altmuhltal, passing through a landscape of limestone bluffs and immaculately kept farmland. There are riverside villages every couple of miles, each with its own beer garden serving ice-cold tank-
ards of pilsner and hearty portions of spatzle (local pasta), with wedges of roast pork and creamy mushroom sauce. When you come to the end of your day’s boating, you simply call the rental place and someone comes to pick you up by car.
The unexpected and the eye-catch- ing come hand-in-hand in the Altmuhltal. On one occasion, we were driving along the banks of the river Danube, which runs through the region, when we spotted a huge white building straddling a distant hillside.
Intrigued, we set off to investigate, only to find ourselves standing before one of the most flamboyant follies in the world.
The Befreiungshalle, or Hall of Liberation, is a monumental circular temple built on the orders of King Ludwig I of Bavaria: its purpose was to celebrate the greatness of Germany and the victories over Napoleon. It’s built on such a lavish scale – and filled with such monolithic statues – that it would be the principal sight in any capital city. Yet here it is, on a hillside in Bavaria, miles from anywhere.
What makes it even more extraordinary is that it is one of a trio of similar monuments (the two others are in Regensburg and Munich).
THE castle of Eichstatt was another surprise – the rambling medieval fortress occupies a commanding position overlooking the Altmuhltal. Its vaulted halls are home to a truly spellbinding display of fossils hacked from the local Jurassic limestone. There are fish, turtles and weird marine creatures, many of which are in such a spectacular state of preservation that you can still see the folds of scaly skin.
Fossil-hunting is hugely popular in the Altmuhltal: if you fancy searching for your own ichthyosaurus, there are plenty of workshops where you can rent the tools and then set to work.
You’ll need a car to explore this sleepy region of Germany. We meandered our way through dark spruce forests on little-used roads. Every turn brought a new medieval splendour. There was the soporific town of Pappenheim, dominated by yet another vast stone fortress, and the gigantic Plankstetten monastery and abbey, where a handful of Benedictine monks smoke hams and sausages in a fashion unchanged since the time of the Holy Roman Emperors. And there was Beilngries, where we ate in a tavern that has, astonishingly, been in the same family for 15 generations.
But it was the beer festivals that left the deepest impression, especially the one we went to on our last night. It was the turn of Nennslingen, the village in which we’d rented a cottage, to have its annual party.
By the time we arrived, the revelry was well under way. A number of youths were dancing on the tables, while the local constabulary, all in uniform, were knocking back litre jugs of ale.
We joined in with the carousers, ordering a bathtub of beer and stomping our feet on the wooden floor of the marquee.
As midnight approached and the brass band blasted even louder, it all began to get a little blurred.
But one thing was abundantly clear: Germans certainly know how to party.