Trip Back to Germany - Day 6 (Oberammergau and Garmisch-Partenkirchen)

 In my attempt to have us do a few things that we had never done before, we decided to take the 25 minute or so drive to Oberammergau for the day!

First up though, breakfast, which was free at the hotel! 

Breakfast in Germany varies by the hotel, but there's usually tea and coffee...

...Meats, cheeses, yogurts and jams.

Plenty of meats in fact, including fish, cheeses, cucumbers, tomatoes - you can literally make an amazing sandwich for breakfast!

I don't know who invented this butter, but it's so incredible. They even had almond milk for me to put in my coffee (the same kind I used to buy at Edeka when I lived in Germany!)

Here they had some eggs and plenty of breads!  The crusty rolls were the BEST I think I have ever had here. And that's saying something because I have had a million of these rolls over the years.

The morning looked like this, but there wasn't a ton of rain so that was good!

We have always driven by these two churches on our way to Garmisch, and always liked them. The one in the foreground is the Heilandkirche Oberau, or the Church of the Redeemer and it is an evangelical church while St. George up on the hill is a 18th century church.

We made it to Oberammergau in one piece (despite the crazy, winding roads) and went immediately to the Oberammergauer Passionstheater.

They have put on the Passion Play 42 times since 1633, when the residents of Oberammergau promised God that they would perform the play depicting the life, suffering and death of Jesus every 10 years if God would spare the town from the Plague. Since then, no one has died from the Plague, so they continue to make good on their promise.

The costumes are all hand sewn by the locals - and are just INCREDIBLE. 

You can pretend you're an angel! This one is about 75% angelic.

Angel number two! More or less the same as angel #1 above.

Not really an angel. More like an angle.

A true saint, also known as Saint Todd.

Once you learn a bit about this history of the Passion Play, you can go visit the actual stage!  Over 2,000 actors put on this play every decade - or roughly every decade. I find it really funny (?!) that the 2020 Passion Play was postponed to 2022 due to... a pandemic!

This is the picture of the three of them that I got after I had to ask Grant to put his hands down (he wanted the 0.5 feature on the iPhone to make his hands look insanely long and weird.)

I think one of the most interesting things that I learned here at the Passionstheater is that married women (and unmarried women over the age of 45) were only allowed in the play for the first time in 1990 (!!!) and those living in Oberammergau who were not Christian or German were only allowed to participate in the play in the year 2000!

There was still plenty of snow left on this mountain to the east-northeast of Oberammergau!

Me and my taller-than-me babies in Oberammergau.

The buildings of Oberammergau have beautiful lüftlmalerei - like this one by Sebastian Pfeffer, who did many of these in the Garmisch-Partenkirchen area as well.

This one, of course, also by Sebastian Pfeffer, depicts the people of Oberammergau making their promise to hold the Passion Play if the people of the town were spared from the plague.

These weirdos kept trying to make weird hands with the iPhone 0.5x feature in front of the Hotel Alte Post, which interestingly dates back to 1612!

Just about everyone in this small town of about 5,400 people participates in the Passion Play.  The owners of this hotel since the late 1800s, the Preisinger family even have a history with the play - their website says, "In the Oberammergau Passion Plays put on in 1950 and 1960, Grandfather Preisinger played Christ, the father Pilatus, and the son Judas!"

I always love the fake painted window frames on these buildings.  This building was built after a fire destroyed it in 1774, but the lüftlmalerei have been here since 1778!  They were renovated in 1991, however.

If you look closely, you can see a bronze statue of a guy swinging a golf club. Which doesn't really make sense because the building it stands next to is a woodcarving shop!  Woodcarving is a VERY big deal in this town, as you will see later.

In fact, this is currently ANOTHER woodcarving company!  This building is home to the Georg Lang selig Erben - (that translates to George Lang Blessed Inheritance) wood company which has been around since 1775.  (More on him in a bit!) Life in Bavaria in the 1800s is depicted in this Lüftlmalerei which basically shows people woodcarving, eating and celebrating.

Our tickets to the Passion Play Theater also allowed us "free" entry to the Oberammergau Museum which features many INCREDIBLE wood carvings, most of them depicting religious scenes like this one, which shows the Wedding Feast at Cana where Jesus turned water into wine.

The detail on these carvings is exquisite!

I can't imagine how long it took to make these.

There is also a really beautiful scene depicting the Census of the Kings. The dolls/figures were made from linden and spruce wood in the latter half of the 1700s through the late 1800s.

The same large scene also depicts the birth of Jesus, which of course, coincided with the census and is why he was born in Bethlehem instead of Nazareth!

These are the oldest existing costumes from the Passion Play which date back to the mid 18th century! They are the costumes of the High Priest Caiaphas and the High Priest Annas.

And this Dromedary was used as a prop in the play until about 1890! The kids found this one really fascinating.

There is a small but really cool little section of the museum dedicated to the discoveries from the time the Romans occupied the Oberammergau area too.  Here we have four spear heads (one is a copy but the rest are authentic) and two spear butts from the Döttenbichl archaeological site of Oberammergau.  Although these weapons date back to the Roman times (they were here around 15 BC at the time of Emperor Augustus), people had actually already been here for around 10,000 years. It's believed that these weapons were left here after a conflict between the Romans and the Celts (who also lived here at the time). 

One of my favorite things in this museum is a wooden depiction of the very first Oktoberfest!  This celebrated the marriage of Ludwig I to his bride Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen.  And here they are!

Once again, Todd did not fit in this old building in Germany.  I also LOVE the green ceramic woodstove/fireplace on the left!

In one room, Todd just started sawing away at some wood.  I'm like, "Should you be doing that?"  I couldn't tell if it was something the guests could play with or an example of how a woodcarvers room might have looked!

After we left the Oberammergau Museum, we were hungry!  And if you've been reading closely, this is a VERY small town.  Not many restaurants were open, so we spent some time looking cute and looking for a restaurant.

We wandered around, past the buildings with the beautiful Lüftlmalerei.

I had a MAJOR flashback when I saw these flowers.  I haven't seen anything like them in Massachusetts but I also haven't really thought about them until I saw them again. So pretty!

We finally found a place that was open and Natalie and I had one of the best meals of the trip at s'Wirtshaus - the mustard horseradish schnitzel!

After lunch, we stopped by the famous church of St. Peter and St. Paul. Going back to our visit to the Passion Play theater - originally, the Passion Play was performed right here in the cemetery of this Catholic church. The church was too small, so they played it here, near the graves of those who had actually died of the plague.  There is a small registry of those who died in the plague which was thought to have been brought down to this part of Bavaria by soldiers in the Swedish (!!!) Army when they invaded during the Thirty Years War.

The play was held here until about 1815 (!!!) when they simply outgrew it and they moved to a nearby field where they continued to hold the play every 10 years.  In 1890, they finally moved to the current location several blocks north of this church.

And THIS is a church that should NOT be missed!  SWOON! First of all... the PINK!  Second of all.. the GOLD! 

Full stop on this. Are there are SUNFLOWERS up there!?  Well, they're pretty yellow flowers, anyway!

Dare I say this is a top 5 church for me???

It's ridiculous but I just love the colors in here.

This beautiful chandelier is blocking it a bit, but the central dome is showing Peter and Paul being released from their imprisonment to become the martyrs that they are now known to be.

The church is not any less beautiful toward the back where the organ is!

All of the headstones in the church cemetery are so beautiful and well taken care of.  Many family members are buried in the same plot.

Hey look! It's the family plot of George Lang and his family!  (We saw the building where his woodcarving company is still in business and has been since 1775.)

Finally, it was time to head back to the hotel down in Partenkirchen, but not before stopping to frolic near the base of the hills (which were, of course, alive with the sound of Griswold!)

One day, we will swing in to see the beautiful Ettal Abbey, which was founded in 1330!  But we simply didn't have time today.  (And I have heard it's spectacular inside! Gimme all the Rococo churches!)

These three continued to frolic at the base of the mountains. While we were currently at about 860 meters, the tops of these mountains (which you can't see very well) are around 1,700 meters.  Compare that to the Zugspitze, the highest mountain in Germany which is 2,962 meters!  Meanwhile, Mont Blanc in Switzerland stands at a gigantic 4,807 meters!  That is the highest mountain in Europe outside of Russia and the Caucasus.

The mountains didn't look so huge to me until Grant sprinted off for several minutes and was only a speck in the distance!

Back in Partenkirchen that bright ball in the sky was lighting up the town! Whaaat???

The kids didn't want to explore and Todd and I were looking for a restaurant for dinner, so we headed out for another lovely couple of child-free hours. But first, I had to take a picture of the AMAZING wardrobe. If I could have put this in my suitcase and taken it with me, I would have!

He didn't seem thrilled that I wanted to take his picture at the sign!

What time of year is it? OH YES! It's Spargel season!

We were able to find a restaurant and make a reservation before walking back down Ludwigstraße where we spotted another Lebenmittelautomat!  This one was looking a bit empty.

But you could still get some Leberkäse!  There was also still some Pressack Rot, some Lamb Bolognese, some more traditional sausages, some butter, some Apfelschorle, some Red Bull and Ritter Sport chocolates!

This bakery had THE cutest sign!

But we were still kind of chilly and looking for a beverage so we stopped at this cute little cafe called Das Ludwig I Kaffee Bar.

Time to warm up!

But then of course, we had to grab a local beer.

Oh THERE I am.

HALT!  It's time for dinner! We ran back to the hotel, grabbed the kids and headed off to THE busiest restaurant I think I've ever been in.  We had reservations and we STILL had to wait! That's almost unheard of in Germany (or at least this part of Germany.)

I had a nice carbonara at Pizzeria Renzo (which was a nice change from the literal pounds of schnitzel that I've eaten on this trip!)

Until next time, Oberammergau and Garmisch-Partenkirchen! You'll always be one of our favorite parts of the world!

Trip Back to Germany - Day 5 (Garmisch-Partenkirchen)

 We just love the Alps - although we don't love the Alps quite as much when we can't actually SEE the Alps!

First, we said goodbye to Nuremberg (the view from our hotel window, HA!) and drove about 3 hours south to the border town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

München, this way!

These kiddos crashed HARD on the way to Garmisch. And as you can see, I cannot see out of the back of this dinky little BMW!

Things look a little different here than they do in the cities!  This is the view from our hotel window (the cute little Hotel Drei Moran which was in Partenkirchen.)  

This hotel was literally the cutest thing ever.  Grant declared it felt like someone's grandmother's house - I can't remember exactly what he said but it had something to do with the hotel feeling very old. I love that - it's so much more personal than a chain hotel! 

Natalie even got her own little bedroom!

We decided to go on a little walk in between the raindrops around the Partenkirchen side of town, where we were staying. We hadn't explored this part of town when we lived here, but it's REALLY cute!  We eventually walked toward Garmisch so we could make a reservation for dinner.

Every building looks like this, too.  This particular building was built in 1811, but most of the mural was done in 1999 by Gerhard Ester.

The Sebastianskirche was apparently built in the 17th century on the site of the graves of those who died of the plague during the Thirty Years War.  People were so afraid of the plague and how contagious it was, that they didn't bury those who died of it near the Parish church. Instead, they buried them here (far away from the actual Parish church!) In 1925, it was converted to a WWI memorial.

You could walk for literally an hour and find nothing but these pretty buildings.  More on these lüftlmalerei murals in a bit, but if you squint real hard, you can see a butcher (and a cow) symbolizing that this is a butcher shop.

We strolled up toward the Kankerbach on our way to Garmisch. This is interesting floodplain management. I wonder if this floods?

Oh heeeyyyy there Verkaufsautomat, anyone want a snack?

The Partnach absolutely floods, as it comes down from the Gorge.

We needed to stop at Zum Wildschütz so that we could get reservations for later that night. Restaurants in Germany almost always require a reservation (particularly in smaller towns), and if you want that Schweinshaxe, you DEFINITELY need a reservation because they need several hours to make it!  This has always been our favorite restaurant in Garmisch!

After we made reservations, we moved on, but by now it was raining and annoying. At least the flowers were pretty in the Marienplatz!

We strolled around Garmisch stopping at Müller to buy umbrellas, which was really funny because Natalie had one with peaches on it that spelled it "peachs."  CLASSIC! We finally got Grant a good Garmisch Partenkirchen hoodie, we stopped for ice cream and coffee, and we picked up a few souvenirs and cosmetics along the way. But it was rainy and miserable and the kids wanted to go back to the hotel. So we did, passing the Partnach River again along the way.

Grant made friends with this guy in the lobby of our hotel.

We went upstairs to sit for a bit before Todd and I wanted to head out again and check out the Partenkirchen side of the town. I took this picture from this cool window in our room!

This town is a storybook, I tell ya. Ludwigstraße is the most famous street in town, and rightfully so with it's beautifully decorated buildings and colorful façades.

It was pretty chilly but we still wanted to stroll along the Ludwigstraße, which of course, is named for my favorite dude - Ludwig II.

Since 1935, the Augustiner Brau Munich Brewery has owned this and operated this restaurant and inn (but not a brewery!) known as the Werdenfelser Hof. A bit ironically, it was an inn and a brewery way back in the 1500s. 

The "Lüftlmalerei" are special Bavarian mural paintings that adorn the façade of the structures.  They may have Biblical representations, or they may tell you a bit about what the owners do or what the building is used for. This building was an old bakery called zum Langer-Beck back in 1466 (although the decorative façade was completed between 1925 and 1935.) If you look closely at the pictures in between the windows, the (babies?) all appear to be doing the work that needs to be done in order to make bread.

In 1811 and 1865, fires destroyed this part of town, so most of the façade on these buildings are relatively new. You can see that some of these buildings have a façade that is in the Trompe-l'œil artistic perspective.

Back in the day, most people could not read, so visual signs such as this one hung so that the people of the community would know where to get their goods and services. If you're interested, I highly recommend checking out this website to learn more about the Lüftlmalerei and the history of Ludwigstraße: Ludwigstrasse - Lüftlmalerei

This is the Rassen Gasthof, which was named after Saint Rasso of Andechs (whom you can see in the center of the building painted by Gerhard Ester in 1988.) These lüftlmalerei are beautiful, and all very new! There were no lüftlmalerei here in 1927, with some popping up in the 1930s and 1950s before Ester renovated it in the late 1980s.

We swung into the Pfarrkirche Mariä Himmelfahrt Partenkirchen, also known as the Blessed Virgin Mary Church in Partenkirchen.  This structure was one of the victims of the 1865 fire, but was rebuilt started in 1868.

 What a pretty little church! 

 Can I get an Amen for the wallpaper?

As we made our way to the exit, we discovered this.  SO unlike America. Lit, totally unsupervised candles in a church that has already burned down at least once! Seems like a good idea!

Back out on Ludwigstraße, I learned from this building that the Old Bavarian word for girl is "dirndl!"  That is, of course, now the word for the traditional Bavarian dress of women (that you might see everyone wearing at Oktoberfest!)  What the man and woman depicted here are leaning on is the coat of arms for the town of Freising - which we have been to many times.  It's near the Munich airport and the home to the Bräustüberl Weihenstephan, which is the oldest brewery in the world!

The best part about this building, known as Haus Baudrexl is that I did not get a picture of the side of the building which has the phrase, "Mit jedem Tag den ich älter werde, mächst die Zahl derer, die mich am Arsch lecken können!"  And of course, that translates to, "Every day older I pass, increases the number who can kiss my ass!” This phrase is painted on the side of the building on the left, facing the brown building (where apparently at one point the owner got into a fight with the owner of that building - or maybe the building on another on that side of him, and the phrase was stenciled on there on purpose!)

They painted an advertisement for Paulaner bier Festgespann, or "festival teams" on the side of this Gasthof.

Well, I mean... I HAD to take a picture of this place because I spy with my little eye LUDWIG II! The most eccentric King of Bavaria EVER!  This lüftlmalerei of Ludwig was only painted in 1987 (but it was modeled after one of the most famous portraits that was painted of him in 1879). 

The beauty of these buildings never ends!

Believe it or not, there IS an "oldest house" - and it's this one, located at Ludwigstraße 8.  The sign above the door reads, "The Old House, called the Kistner-Hof, partly renovated from the Barbarossa period AD 1772. Rebuilt in its current form by the BECKER brothers from Munich and Nuremberg, 1922."

The date 1772 is carved into the building on this side, although many believe the former farmhouse is actually older than this. It survived the great market fire of 1865 unscathed. It has been a place of business since 1920 when the great grandfather of the current owner acquired the building.

I like that they have a radar gun right there in front of Das Alte Haus!

The rain picked up again when I was outside of Gasthof Frauendorfer - but don't worry. Ludwig has his eye on me!

This amazing building, which is one that was destroyed (completely) in the market fire of 1865, depicts a wedding scene!    

 There has been a structure at the Gasthof Frauerdorfer location since at least the 1400s. It's currently connected to another pretty building known for it's cheese - and it's depiction of Jesus, Mary and Joseph heading for Egypt after King Herrod's orders to murder all of the baby boys.  You can see that at the very top of the building on the right.

I love the Zodiac sign on this building!  And what is that in the upper left? Is that supposed to be an illuminati???  The owner of this house was very into Greek Mythology so a lot of that was incorporated into the murals along with various Bible scenes. The center piece is modeled after Rafael's "The Vision of Ezekiel" which he painted in 1518. 

We walked back down Ludwigstraße and passed the Pfarrkirche Mariä Himmelfahrt before we stopped for some yummy pralinen at Chocolaterie Amelie (which we most certainly did NOT share with the kids who didn't want to come exploring with us!)

The rain picked up again and I realized I left my wet umbrella at the Chocolaterie, so I had to run back to get it.

We grabbed the kids and went out for dinner where we had made reservations much earlier in the day at Zum Wildschütz. Look at this beautiful schweinebraten in the dark beer sauce with the Knödel! 

And of course, Todd got his favorite Schweinshaxe! 

Grant gobbled up both a potato dumpling AND a bread dumpling. He said both were good, but he preferred the potato dumpling (now we know!)

I still love how Germany has no problem with dogs in restaurants. This little guy was at the table next to us and was hoping one of my kids would drop him a little nibble!  No such luck for him, though!

Until next time, Garmish Partenkirchen!