MUNICH MEMORIES
For siblings, hiking in foothills of the Bavarian Alps recalls childhood
It all started when my partner injured his knee. I impulsively emailed my brother Garry, asking him to join me for a week of guided hiking, in the foothills to the Alps, no less. To my shock, he said yes.
I had rarely seen him since childhood. Me, the older sister who always had to go with him to things I had outgrown, such as trick-or-treating, birthday parties, and the kids’ roller-coaster. Unlike me, who normally runs around like there’s no tomorrow, my brother prefers to stop to snack, chat, and enjoy his surroundings. There would need to be many compromises.
We both agreed the best way to see a new city is by guided walking tour, and Munich didn’t disappoint, although my memories are now tinged with current events. Munich’s solar-powered Glockenspiel carousel clock features the Schäfflertanz, dance of the barrel makers. After the lockdown from the plague, the coopers, in 1517, were the first to come out into the streets and dance.
Munich’s central square was renamed Marienplatz after the Virgin Mary to gain her protection from a cholera epidemic, and the 11-metre marble column with Mary’s statue on the top is to save the city from hunger, war, plague and heresy. Amen to that.
Throughout the day, my brother always wanted to take a break, first at the Viktualienmarkt, with its food stalls, cafés and beer garden, and later at restaurants such as the Tegernseer Tal for rinderpfleischpflanzerl, Bavarian meatballs.
The second trade-off was the Alte Pinakothek art gallery with its more than 700 paintings, created from the 14th to 18th century, versus the Hofbräuhaus, with its beer, live oompah music and tables you share with total strangers, a place I’d normally not be caught dead in.
I was fascinated by Albrecht Dürer’s oil portraits. I’d recognize that shifty look of Oswolt Krel anywhere, and I wouldn’t trust him now, so how could he have been painted in 1499, hundreds of years ago?
My reluctant brother, standing in front of Albrecht Altdorfer’s Battle of Alexander at Issus (1529), was entranced by the details of thousands of soldiers, battling under such a momentous sky. His interest caused me to look more closely at a painting I would have otherwise ignored. I later learned it’s one of the gallery’s 10 most recommended works. At the Hofbräuhaus, this reluctant sister was happy to discover they served wine. The stranger sitting opposite was a German who had come to town with his wife to visit a seriously ill daughter. She was now recovering, and the family had sent him out to enjoy the afternoon. We chatted in German about families, work, things that matter and trivialities, until he departed saying, “We will always remember this afternoon’s conversation between the German and the Canadian.”
A short train ride took us to Bad Wiessee, an iodine sulphur spa town on Tegernsee Lake. Used to the lakes of our childhood, my brother swam in the Tegernsee every day. I have become unaccustomed to swimming, so with my teeth chattering and lips and fingertips turning blue, I swam with him in the cold water only once.
Each day we hiked up meadows to guest houses. We took a boat across the lake to climb up to the small Riederstein Chapel perched on a mountain. As we climbed over gnarled tree roots and scrambled up rocks, the others complained, but my brother and I were smiling.
“This is just like the woods of our childhood,” he said with a laugh.
We had one day free of hiking, and my brother wanted to go to Neuschwanstein, because it’s a fairy tale castle just like the ones from the stories I read to him when he was little, so we booked a one-day coach tour to include Oberammergau, the Linder Palace, and Neuschwanstein.
In Oberammergau, we each bought a locally carved cuckoo clock because we remembered sitting on my grandmother’s carpet under her clock, waiting for the hour to strike.
We enjoyed a wonderful meal in an outdoor restaurant, and missed our tour time. They’re serious when they say don’t be late, but I talked us into the next slot by telling the woman at the ticket window I was with my younger brother and did not want to disappoint him. She must have been an older sister.
On two days we took cable cars up the mountains and climbed the peaks.
Originally I was concerned that our HF Holidays volunteer walking guide Chris, who had been on an expedition to the North Pole, would push me too hard or belittle me. But Chris always encouraged me and celebrated each hard-won pinnacle.
Struggling up one particularly steep path to reach the Summit Cross and admire the view of the surrounding Alps of Germany and Austria, I said to a German resting there that it was well worth the climb.
“Yes, because the world looks different from here,” he answered.
The world looks different when the view is shared. Even though I visited castles, climbed mountains, saw great art, and visited baroque churches, it is not buildings and scenery, but people who make a trip memorable. It is the connections you forge through travelling, whether with family, friends, or total strangers, that you remember most.
The world looks different when the view is shared. Even though I visited castles, climbed mountains, saw great art, and visited baroque churches, it is not buildings and scenery, but people who make a trip memorable.