Bavaria spans the alphabet easily. The letter A can represent the Alps and art. B is for bratwurst or breweries. C represents Bavaria’s magnificent castles and cheeses. And in the city of Bayreuth, it’s all about the letter W: Wagner, Wilhelmine, wurst, and white wines from Franconia.
Few places in Europe live up to the promise of a fairytale quite like Bavaria, where half-timbered towns and enchanted alpine landscapes draw millions of visitors each year.
Most Bavarian stories open in the regional capital, Munich, which is accessible by direct flight from Tel Aviv, more than a dozen North American cities, and most major cities around the world. A short hop on the S-Bahn or U-Bahn leads to the wonders of the city. Some familiar and some hidden treasures.
The city’s historic centerpiece is the Gothic Rathaus, the town hall in the splendid Marienplatz square. In the region of castles and kings, Bavaria’s Jewish story stands strong. Just a short stroll from the square lies St.-Jakobs-Platz, home to the cube-shaped, concrete-covered, glass-topped Ohel Jakob synagogue, the Jewish community center with its Einstein kosher restaurant, and the impressive Jewish Museum.
The permanent exhibition on the lower level is a good introduction to Jewish Munich. The best starting point is the poignant timeline of the community and the interactive map of stories of some of its members. The blank spaces in the timeline are deliberately stark. Upstairs, until the end of February, is a thought-provoking exhibition on the transgenerational emotional legacy of the Holocaust, told through media such as photography, art, and even wallpaper design.
Munich’s showpiece event is the annual Oktoberfest, which attracts more than seven million visitors over two weeks to the open grounds at Theresienwiese. However, the City of Munich is trying hard to take advantage of its excellent transport network to spread tourists throughout the city, especially to newer, more up-and-coming neighborhoods.
Werksviertel, a few minutes from Ostbanhof station, the site of a former dumpling factory, is now home to hotels, restaurants, a big wheel, and an urban shepherd who tends to his flock on a grassy rooftop.
Schlachthofviertel, which translates as the Slaughterhouse District, though some guides prefer “meat-packing district,” was once home to Albert Einstein’s family, and now hosts artisanal food emporia, the alternative Bahnwarter Thiel art center and commune, and a boat built into a bridge that serves as an arts venue and restaurant. Throw in the Volkstheater with its neighboring Levantine restaurant Schmock (yes, really), and there’s a totally different Munich to visit.
If that wasn’t enough modern art, MUCA, the Museum of Urban and Contemporary Art, housed in a former substation, houses two very different temporary exhibitions. Modern art’s equivalent of the emperor’s new clothes, Banksy’s Girl without Balloon sits in a darkened bunker, while Portuguese street artist Vhils shows his progression from graffiti to wall carvings and beyond in a wondrous exhibition in the main museum building.
It wouldn’t be a German fairytale without heading for the Alpine mountains on the country’s southern border with Austria: Stunning castles, crystal clear lakes, and villages with quaint farmhouses. And beer – lots of it. A two-hour drive from Munich to the mountainous Allgau region leads to perfect hiking country, with a stop or two for local beer.
Alpe Kammeregg, a waystation for walkers, offers a welcoming cold-bottled weissbier and Brotzeitplatte, a wooden board featuring a variety of hearty, savory German meats like Leberkäse and Bratwurst, local cheeses including Obatzda or Bergkäse, crusty bread, pickles, radishes, and condiments like mustard. Duck fat also makes an appearance. Vegetarians may be happier with Kasespaetzle, a tasty homemade pasta tossed with fried onions and Emmentaler cheese. It’s a German version of mac and cheese.
After a 15-minute ankle-challenging walk down the hill, there is the Bernadi Brau (brewery) and its Bieralp, a traditional wooden pub & restaurant serving exquisite hand-crafted beers. The taster set is a good way to get acquainted with regional flavors.
After a hard day’s staggering from brewery to brewery, heading back to Munich, stop off in Landsberg am Lech. It’s a beautifully preserved town, like something out of a Brothers Grimm story, that played a major role in the medieval salt trade. Its conservation is largely due to the town’s early surrender to American Forces in World War II.
Landsberg was the origin of a pivotal piece of modern history: It was there, during his incarceration in 1924, that Hitler wrote his seminal manifesto, Mein Kampf. On a musical note, it is also the setting for the founding of Johnny Cash’s first band, the Landsberg Barbarians. His US military service brought him to the town.
Glomm lies about 45 minutes east of Munich. It’s the base of the Herrmannsdorfer Landwerkstätten organic farm. It was founded by Karl Ludwig Schweisfurth, a butcher and sausage maker who devoted his life to future-oriented agriculture. It aims to “promote soil life, animal-friendly livestock farming, quality-oriented food processing, and a healthy, conscious diet.”
In addition to guided tours, there are fun workshops making butterbrezel, baking and folding the dough, and learning to churn butter. Like all good Bavarian workshops, the brezels are served for lunch with sliced meats and cheeses and local Franconian wines and beers.
Traveling a few hours to the next city
FROM THERE, it’s a couple of hours to Bavaria’s second city.
Nuremberg has its own unique story to tell. It’s the largest city of the Franconian region of Bavaria. It is closely associated with the rise and decline of the Nazis. Chosen as a focal point because of its medieval past as a seat of the Holy Roman Empire, Hitler selected Nuremberg as the venue for the Reichsparteitage, the huge annual rallies that took place from 1933.
The Documentation Center Nazi Party Rally Grounds is a must-visit. The center offers a look behind the scenes. The unfinished Kongresshalle, the Colosseum-like arena that was scheduled to hold rallies post-1939, is slowly being repurposed as a home to the permanent exhibitions about the site, and will house the new Nuremberg State Theatre building. The architecture for the new buildings is designed to be as far away from the style of Albert Speer as possible: Random angles and reflective spaces. The center even has a disabled inclusive café and venue called Café Arthur, named for Arthur Brunner, a 22-year-old with polio and brain damage who was gassed by the Nazis at the Hartheim Euthanasia Center.
The story of the fall of the Nazis is best told at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, in Courtroom 600, where multiple trials of Nazi war criminals took place. The courtroom is part of the Nuremberg Trials Memorium and includes a 15-minute audio-visual experience that hits hard, a sobering reminder that the courtroom continues to resonate in modern debates about war crimes and justice.
The historical center of Nuremberg was restored to its former glory to celebrate the heritage of the city’s most famous son, Albrecht Dürer. The well-preserved city walls and half-timbered houses give the city a charm to counter its dark modern history. Try Lebkuchen, spiced soft nutty cookies, a tradition dating back to medieval monks who baked them on communion wafers to stop them sticking to their ovens. Turn them over to find an edible paper to this very day.
No city in Bavaria would be complete without beer. Nuremberg houses 20,000 sq.m. of underground beer cellars. The local specialty beer is rotbier (red beer), which has a particularly malty flavor and red-golden color. Fränk’ness restaurant by Michelin-starred chef Alexander Herrmann (more on him soon) has great beer and dinner served on three-foot-long wooden trays.
The next stop is Bayreuth, a city one hour north of Nuremberg. Famous as the home of notorious composer Richard Wagner, it also houses one of Germany’s most celebrated breweries, Maisel and Friends, which brews its beer in line with the Bavarian brewing purity laws, but uses modern techniques to produce award-winning beers, including alcohol-free beers that taste like the real thing.
The Bavarian Beer Purity Law (Reinheitsgebot) was enacted in 1516 by Duke Wilhelm IV, restricting beer ingredients to water, barley, and hops. The law’s main goals were to ensure food security by reserving wheat for bread, protect consumers from toxic ingredients, and prevent price gouging. Over time, yeast was added to the amber nectar.
The city is small, but its colorful houses give it a feel of Copenhagen or even Tobermory in Scotland. Interspersed among those residences are a number of grand buildings, such as the Eremitage and Margravial Opera House – gifts to satisfy Princess Wilhelmine and her lofty ambitions. She would have been Princess of Wales were it not for a Sliding Doors moment. Another building happens to be the oldest working synagogue in Germany, abutting the stunning Gothic opera house. It is believed that the only reason the building survived the November 1938 pogrom is that the SA officers ransacking the synagogue were too scared of burning down the opera house next door.
For a little Bavarian decadence, there is no better treat than a night out in Wirsberg’s two-Michelin-star restaurant, Aura, a 20-minute drive from Bayreuth. Headed by the aforementioned Herrmann and head chef Tobias Batz, the restaurant specializes in regional dishes, elevated by Herrmann’s experimental food laboratory, ANIMA. The lab is headed by food scout Joshi Osswald, who explains that ANIMA creates unique products using techniques such as fermentation and autolysis (enzymatic processing).
Hermann is a wizard in the kitchen, but then Bavaria is a land of wonder and make-believe. It’s vast, and this adventure is only the first chapter. The rest? That is another story, for another visit.
Mark and David present The Jerusalem Post Podcast Travel Edition (jpost.com/podcast/travel-edition). They were hosted by the German National Tourist Board (germany.travel/en)