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National Geographic : 1974 Mar
Contents
Wagner Festival; Garmisch-Partenkirchen, skiing in winter, a spa in summer; Lindau on Lake Constance, water sports and a gambling casino. But what I most enjoyed was finding little out-of-the-way places whose charms had not yet been publicized. One of these is the hamlet of Kreuzstrasse, 30 miles southeast of Munich in the foothills of the Alps. In Max Aichler's restaurant there, an early-morning folkfest was in progress. Nearly everyone was drinking a Gebirgler Friihschoppen, which can be translated as a "mountaineer's morning pint." Max invited me to sit at his table, a great honor because it is usually reserved for village elders: the mayor, the fire-brigade chief, the priest. We sat and drank Max's special concoction -half red wine, half mineral water, with a sprig of dwarf pine in it to add a resinous tang. We passed around a snuffbox, stoppered with a calf's-tail brush, while we watched dancers stomping merrily and listened to shouting music of clarinet, trumpet, guitar, accordion, and fliigelhorn. "This is the sunny-side band," someone at the table confided to me over the noise. "Max wanted the shady-side band, but one of the players was ill." "The sunny side... ?" I asked, puzzled. "Why, on every mountain there is a sunny side and a shady side, and our mountain has a band for each." Patrons Lend a Homey Ambience Max, a burly, bearded man in lederhosen beautifully embroidered with genuine pea cock feathers, told me he preferred only real Bavarian clientele in his establishment. "I look for three things in a man. That he wear working clothes, that he keep his hat on his head, and that he wear something green that's remindful of the woods. Then I know that we're all working people together. It makes for a cozy atmosphere." In this convivial land, beer enhances many a cozy atmosphere. Indeed, to Bavar ians beer is "liquid bread," and they have a saying, "Where there is a brewery there is no need for a bakery." They deem the brew so nutritious that I have even seen babes in arms offered tipples from their mothers' steins. Of course, for centuries beer has been Bavaria's most famous product. The first brewery was founded there in A.D. 1046; to day, of 1,725 German breweries, almost 1,200 are in Bavaria. One could have a Ba varian beer with his meals three times a day -and some do-for more than a year without drinking the same brand twice. What makes the beers of Bavaria so su perb? At Munich's Spatenbrauerei, founded in 1397 and now one of Germany's largest, the aptly named brewmaster, Dr. Georg Beer, showed me a well-worn copy of the Bavarian Purity Edict, written in 1516: "Above all," it commands, "we desire that henceforth throughout our cities and markets, and also in the country, no ingredients other than bar ley, hops, and water be used for the brewing of beer." "That edict is still obeyed," said Dr. Beer, "and that is why Bavarian beer is the best in all the world." In Bavaria, Chemicals and Brew Don't Mix As we stood dwarfed beside a towering, gleaming 800-barrel copper brew kettle, Dr. Beer explained: "We malt our barley-that is, we let it germinate and then lightly roast it. Beers of some other countries are made from what we call 'raw fruit'-unmalted barley or they contain some artificial ingredients. Some American beers contain a chemical additive to give them a good head of foam. Because we are so strict about using only natural ingredients and only malted barley, Bavarian beer is more digestible. Foreign visitors say they can drink stein after stein of our product, but only two or three glasses of their native beer." Almost every Bavarian community has at least one annual beer festival, but none can rival the Oktoberfest of Munich. This 16-day festival in the self-proclaimed beer capital of the world is roaring, rampageous, and rowdy (one year hundreds of people were injured in brawls), and chockablock with crowds and confusion-a vast beer binge, when millions of liters are guzzled. At this season Munich's city symbol is modified, from a monk with Reason to smile: Gigantic sugar beets bespeak the fertility of a land given to root crops, grains, and livestock. Farms remain traditionally small and family owned, but intensive cultivation enables them to double American per-acre yields of wheat and rye. National Geographic, March 1974 426
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