Yesterday Max accompanied me to a place that I have been intending to visit since the first week of my arrival. Upon arriving in Bayern I began a habit of drinking a very tasty series of brews from Andechs, each bottle having a picture of a church on them. As I came to find out only a few days later, Andechs is a very small village set in the hills of Bavaria that border the Swiss Alps, and it is quite near Munich. The village is little more than a monastery, a biergarten or two, and a brewery, but they are quite famous in the area.
Sielke, maybe you can help me on this one, but I have acquainted Andechs Bier with something like Shiner Bock. In Texas, Shiner Bock is found in most every bar, restaurant, grocery store..etc, but not so in every corner of America, and certainly not in every part of the world. I believe Andechs to be regional in this sense, but it is quite good, and if you should ever come across one, by all means enjoy it.
We took the S5 as far as it would take us, which runs along several lakes and forests of trees and greenery of differing kinds. It was not a particularly sunny day, but the sightly overcast skies only added to the scenery of rolling hills, tall, grassy farmland, and the occasional tiled, orange roof peaking out of a clearing in the woods. It is really a beautiful part of the world when one gets outside of the city here.
Upon leaving the train we followed the signs that indicated "Fuss weg zu Andechs" (footpath), and began our climb through the forest hills, or mountains, as we would call them in Texas. I had been told that it was a short walk through a forest, but it had not been clearly enough explained to me that this "short" walk was in fact an hour long trek up foot-worn paths. I am not complaining, because it was gorgeous, but the word-of-mouth advertising I had received was a bit exaggerated.
We took quite of few pictures, but this is just a sampling of what our hike consisted of, and then we came over a hill and stood at the entrance to the church. The outside of the church was nothing extraordinary, but the inside was magnificent, covered in gold and silver, murals and ikons covering most every space, and a feeling of quiet reverence was kept, even among the tourists. It made you wish you could attend mass there just to experience what it would be like. I have just a few pics from inside the church.
After our long hike I enjoyed 1 Litre of Andechs' finest double bock, ate some really, really superb Bavarian food, whose names I cannot remember, carried on a half-German, half-English conversation with a Swiss family, and then made our way back down the mountain trail. I am not sure I would have been able to successfully complete the trip down if I would have had more than that 1 Litre, because what they serve on the top of the mountain has something like 12-15 percent alcohol content....needless to say, one was plenty.
We met a young German couple on the way down, and we spent the remainder of the afternoon travelling with them back to Munich. It was a great day, wish some of you could have experienced it with me.
Sielke, maybe you can help me on this one, but I have acquainted Andechs Bier with something like Shiner Bock. In Texas, Shiner Bock is found in most every bar, restaurant, grocery store..etc, but not so in every corner of America, and certainly not in every part of the world. I believe Andechs to be regional in this sense, but it is quite good, and if you should ever come across one, by all means enjoy it.
We took the S5 as far as it would take us, which runs along several lakes and forests of trees and greenery of differing kinds. It was not a particularly sunny day, but the sightly overcast skies only added to the scenery of rolling hills, tall, grassy farmland, and the occasional tiled, orange roof peaking out of a clearing in the woods. It is really a beautiful part of the world when one gets outside of the city here.
Upon leaving the train we followed the signs that indicated "Fuss weg zu Andechs" (footpath), and began our climb through the forest hills, or mountains, as we would call them in Texas. I had been told that it was a short walk through a forest, but it had not been clearly enough explained to me that this "short" walk was in fact an hour long trek up foot-worn paths. I am not complaining, because it was gorgeous, but the word-of-mouth advertising I had received was a bit exaggerated.
We took quite of few pictures, but this is just a sampling of what our hike consisted of, and then we came over a hill and stood at the entrance to the church. The outside of the church was nothing extraordinary, but the inside was magnificent, covered in gold and silver, murals and ikons covering most every space, and a feeling of quiet reverence was kept, even among the tourists. It made you wish you could attend mass there just to experience what it would be like. I have just a few pics from inside the church.
After our long hike I enjoyed 1 Litre of Andechs' finest double bock, ate some really, really superb Bavarian food, whose names I cannot remember, carried on a half-German, half-English conversation with a Swiss family, and then made our way back down the mountain trail. I am not sure I would have been able to successfully complete the trip down if I would have had more than that 1 Litre, because what they serve on the top of the mountain has something like 12-15 percent alcohol content....needless to say, one was plenty.
We met a young German couple on the way down, and we spent the remainder of the afternoon travelling with them back to Munich. It was a great day, wish some of you could have experienced it with me.
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DAD