Clarke's is a bastion of elegance against the bling

Given the BBC's abundant foodie programming, you'd be forgiving for thinking that every top-ranked fine dining establishment in London is run by a TV celebrity. Fact is, there are plenty of places perennially on the top restaurant lists with people who just ... shock! ... cook.

Exhibit A: Sally Clarke and her eponymous restaurant on Kensington Church Street.

I'd never heard of her, or of Clarke's, before meeting friends there for dinner last night. Which is probably something I should be embarrassed to admit, because Clarke has been cooking for the great and the good in this oh-so-posh part of London for more than 30 years. It was artist Lucian Freud's favourite restaurant and his art hangs on the walls; his colleague David Hockney was hosting some friends at the table next to us. Our other fellow diners were exquisitely-dressed, mature types who probably ran FTSE 500 companies before downshifting to manage their investment portfolios. And yet, this isn't a flashy place. None of the stomach-churning show offs that so tarnished our dinner at Zuma earlier this year. Clarke's has the feel of an elegant, quiet neighbourhood bistro. Albeit one with museum-quality art on the walls and seasonal white truffles (£1,500 a kilo) on display under a glass dome near the front door.

Clarke shocked the London dining scene, and made her reputation, back when I was a student tourist who could only afford burger vans and cheap chippies. She had the audacity to only offer a set menu. Eat was she was cooking, or go home. She was also an early proponent of the whole seasonal, farm-to-table concept we now take for granted. It was properly revolutionary in the '80s.

These days Clarke has expanded to a more traditional menu with multiple offerings, but she's still
front of house at the start of service welcoming diners and explaining the specials. It's a nice touch, and delightful to see someone who's still so enthusiastic about her restaurant 30 years after getting started.

For a place that started out resolutely British, the current menu is heavily Italian in flavour. It's peppered with words like porcini, radicchio tardivo and bresaola. The maitre d' brings around those fresh, seasonal truffles to give you a sniff, and provides a beguiling description of how they'd adorn scrambled eggs as a starter. Honestly, £60 a serving is a bit rich for my blood, though I suspect many of the locals would take that in their stride.

I opted to start with the burrata with fresh figs. This is a classic and simple salad, entirely dependant on the quality of its ingredients. Clearly, after three decades in business Sally has her suppliers sorted; this was as good as any version you'd have in a Southern Italian farm kitchen.

It's rare that I'm so torn on my decision for the main course. Sicilian tuna with bergamot and ginger, herbed fregola and baked Florence fennel sounded magnificent, but once my favourite fruit ... fig ... had wormed its way into my head, I decided to continue it through my night. Thus it was duck breast with baked purple figs and sage, accompanied by baked pumpkin, beetroots and carrot that appeared before me. It was delicious, but fairly standard duck breast I'd expect in any fine restaurant. I suspect I should have gone with the fish.

Four of us shared two desserts: apple, prune and bitter almond crumble with cinnamon ice cream, and baked quince in a vanilla pancake with ice cream. I far preferred the latter. The crumble was so sharp it only really worked alongside a sweet dessert wine (fortunately, I was drinking one) and the cinnamon in the ice cream was so subtle I didn't realise it was supposed to be in there until I referred to the menu after getting home. The quince, however, did an excellent job of shaking up a traditional dessert with the introduction of an under-used flavour.

Clarke's ticks plenty of London's fine dining boxes. Exquisite ingredients, sourced responsibly. Beautiful presentation. Sophisticated wine list. (My hostess selected, but the Champagne and Chablis we drank ... followed by a short but interesting list of digestifs ... indicated a fine sommelier.) Attentive staff, including the chef patron. Elegant dining room. The quiet, intimate atmosphere is perfect for a romantic evening or a catch-up with friends, but carries this off without feeling stuffy or formal.

There's a down-side, however. Clarke's is priced to match its neighbourhood. You'll need £50 just to cover your three basic courses, and that's before you add any drinks or side dishes. And I'm not sure it was exceptional enough to merit £80 or £100 per person. You can find similar food for less. But not in this neighbourhood. The last meal we had in this part of town was about the same price, and deeply average. I would have been delighted to nip around the corner to let Sally take care of us.

Increasingly the province of super-rich, showy foreigners, today's Kensington and Knightsbridge seems too often to be a triumph of conspicuous consumption over good taste. Clarke's seems to have hung on to the best of the traditional aspects of this neighbourhood. It's good to know that if I ever win a mega lottery and join the billionaire club, Sally Clarke will probably still be there, providing a local bistro that's a refuge of quality and understated elegance amongst the bling.

Welsh baritone invites a few special guests ... and us ... to his 50th

Every so often in the arts, you get lucky enough to be in the presence of greatness. To see or to hear people so remarkable it's simply an honour to share the same air and get to experience whatever it is they do.

Such it was last night with Bryn Terfel.

The world-famous Welsh bass-baritone is the aural equivalent of being bathed in warm honey. His voice seems to resonate within your body itself; I swear my veins were trembling to his thrilling low notes. Don't believe me? Take whatever opportunity presents itself and see him live. The you'll understand.

But Bryn himself was only half the pleasure of the evening. You see, we were guests at his 50th birthday party. Alongside the actor Michael Sheen and Sting. Oh, and 5,000 other punters who thought to book early enough to snag one of the seats in the Royal Albert Hall before it became a sell out.

It was a delightful evening very obviously crafted with enormous input from Terfel himself. His repertoire went from the expected operatic arias to American spirituals to Welsh hymns to show tunes to pop anthems. Terfel is well known for his range of interests, so if you've read anything about him this is no surprise.  He's also regularly lauded for supporting young artists, and he balanced his performances with up-and-comers like the men's a cappella group Only Men Aloud and the Welsh Folk band Calan.  (The last are the ones who have earned my next iTunes download. Toe-tapping delight.) A host of fellow opera professionals brought favourite tenor and soprano arias into the mix. It was all hosted by Sheen (another proud Welshman) with a humour and intimacy that made it feel like we really were friends at a medium-sized do rather than paying guests.

The most amazing part of the whole night, however, was the addition of another legend. It turns out Sting had asked Terfel to sing at his 50th, and now the Welshman was returning the favour. Those two stars doing an improvisational riff on Roxanne was one of the most astonishing things I've ever heard in a theatre.

They were filming and I expect that somewhere, sometime soon, this will turn up on TV. Don't miss it. Terfel's voice doesn't quite wrap itself around your heart over the screen as it does live (I know ... we've watched him in a lot of Wagner) but it will still be remarkable.

And a reminder for next time: You should ALWAYS book into one of the restaurants inside the Royal Albert Hall at the same time you book the tickets. This is a rare venue in that it's NOT surrounded by dining options; you really are stranded if you want to get something within a stone's throw. I thought we'd be clever and pick up something light at one of the bars that didn't require booking. There are few seats, the pre-packaged fare is indifferent and we still spent £68. (Half of that on wine, admittedly.) For perhaps £20 more we would have had proper food and civilised seating.

Austrian hotelier saves the day, and has best place, in our mostly Bavarian holiday

If your ideal hotel is all about old-world charm and traditional interiors, you're going to have a challenge in Bavaria. I find it ironic that a people who insisted on re-constructing their war-bombed cities back to renaissance, baroque and neo-classical are all about stripped-back modernity in their guest accommodation.  Whether reasonably priced or high
end, you'll probably find a similar style wherever you go:  lots of simple pedestal beds with a duvet-topped mattress upon them, wooden floors and unadorned furniture with sleek lines.

Bloberger Hof

The good news: the Germans and Austrians take their bedding very seriously. We didn't have a bad night's sleep.  This was the main reason we avoided the airbnb/apartment rental option; especially in Munich where our eight-night stay would have made it cost effective. The beds have let us down on a few of our past holidays, and we didn't want to risk it.  We chose well. The quality of mattresses, sheets, pillows and duvets was consistently excellent.

I'd happily return to -- and recommend -- four of our five hotels, though without the significant discount we enjoyed thanks to my husband's frequent guest programme with the Accor chain I think we'd probably question such a big expenditure in Munich.

Here, in order of preference from best to worst, is a roundup of hotels from our trip through southern Bavaria, Salzburg and Munich.

Bloberger Hof (Salzburg)
The gem of the trip, this family-owned Alpine chalet on the outskirts of Salzburg combines classic Tyrolean architecture with a superb location, mountain views, a great restaurant and staff who bent over backwards to make our visit wonderful. By the end of dinner the first night, we discovered that Bloberger Hof is a top pick in Rick Steve's guide to the region, and most guests had found the place through that dependable source.  We'd picked it based on location. Of three days in the area, we planned two to the west of Salzburg, making this better than a town centre location. Turns out the bus at the end of the lane ran right into central Salzburg in about 20 minutes. There are no restaurants or services within walking distance, but that really doesn't matter because the restaurant here is so good. (You'll also be treated to a hearty breakfast every morning.)

Just about everyone eats in here. Between two meals a day, a relatively small dining room and a mostly British or American clientele, you inevitably end up chatting. Our two nights dining in (theatre on a third made returning for food impossible) felt a bit like a big dinner party, with everyone sharing tips on local sightseeing.  This genial atmosphere was one of many reasons I could have very happily stayed for more nights.

The lovely Sylvia earned our affection early on by upgrading us to one of their apartments on the top floor, complete with a kitchen, a second bedroom and a geranium-lined balcony with views to Hohensalzburg Castle. It was far more space than we needed, and we never touched the kitchen, but I immediately put it on possible return list for a future girls' trip. Five days later she saved our whole holiday, when she rescued the passports we'd left behind and sent them to Munich by registered mail. Due to the immigration crisis the government had resumed passport checks at the border just after we crossed back into Germany, so we couldn't have returned to get them ourselves even if we'd wanted to take the time.  Sylvia and the Austrian Postal Service were the heroes of our holiday.

Sofitel Munich Bayerpost (Munich)
Within the neo-classical exterior of the old central post office you'll find a ruthlessly modern hotel clearly striving for a hip boutique appeal. Despite the fact its cost and chain affiliation put it clearly in the high-end business hotel category.  The lobby was probably a bit too austere, black and night-clubish for me ... I detested the celebrities as cartoons modern art ... and the public spaces were given over to corporate events for many evenings.   the rooms were marvellously luxurious and the ridiculously oversized bed a miracle of comfort.  This is one of those rooms designed so the bathroom and sleeping area flow as one space, with only a glass wall separating the large tub, and shower and toilet beyond, from the bedroom.  You can slide glass doors and lower blinds to create bathroom privacy.  It's a good thing the rooms are so great, because all that sharp modernity means there are no comfortable, cozy places to relax outside your room.  The notable exception is the pool; one of the best I've been to in a hotel.  It has a grotto feel about it, lined in black tiles and illuminated with blue light from beneath the water.  There's rectangular pool on one side and a watery passageway on the other that spirals into an oval pool with jacuzzi jets. King Ludwig would have approved.

The Sofitel Munich's grotto-like pool

We ate at the restaurant the first night, when we were too exhausted to wander out, but never repeated that choice. Food and drink here is clearly priced for people on expense accounts; service was great, food good but unexceptional. Breakfast was extra and a shocking fee; we brought stuff in or headed to nearby Starbucks and the like (the in-room Nespresso machine helped on that front.). These days I realise that one of the things you're paying for at his end of the cost spectrum is the concierge team, and they did a fabulous job. They magically procured a Michelin star restaurant table for our anniversary at limited notice, gave great advice on where to catch the Oktoberfest parade and were at the receiving end of our passport adventure, ready to help us work with the British consulate if the documents hadn't arrived.

The location next to the train station has its pros and cons.  Great for day trips, hopping on public transport and getting to the train station. A 15-minute walk got us to the city centre, about the same to the Oktoberfest grounds. But train stations are never the most salubrious places.  While the government was doing a great job whisking the Syrian refugees through, immigrants from earlier arrivals ... primarily packs of young men ... congregate on streets throughout the area, and there's a fair representation of homeless people. All are more noticeable at night when the commuters have ceased to flow. I was fine walking through the area with my husband but would have been jittery at night if a woman alone.

Stadthotel und Restaurant Convikt Dillingen an der Donau
In the unlikely event you find yourself a tourist here, this is a fine option.  This historic building was once part of one of the many religious communities that congregated here in the Jesuit heyday.  It's just one block over from the cathedral, two from the main street, so ideal for sightseeing. Perhaps evoking monastic traditions a bit too much ... I found the rooms a bit too sparse and lacking in comfortable chairs. There wasn't a lounge downstairs, either, so definitely not a place to do much more than sleep. I would not have wanted to spend more than our one night here.

Great restaurant, though. Best schnitzel of the trip, a beautiful desert, good advice on German wines and a nice touch with presentation that dressed up traditional fair and pushed it to a more gourmet place. While not worth a special trip to dine here, the quality of the restaurant was definitely the best feature of the hotel.

Novotel Munich Airport (Munich)
In order to maximise our holiday time, we flew out after work on Friday so we'd be on the ground and ready for action first thing Saturday. An airport hotel makes that strategy easy; we were checked in, hire car parked in the secure lot and settled at the bar for a late dinner within 90 minutes of touching down. There's German efficiency for you!

Purpose-built and modern, it's a typical airport hotel ... the only truly exceptional feature being a more complicated than usual security key system in the lift that made getting to our room the first couple of times a bit of a challenge.  Another upgrade here and free drinks upon arrival thanks to my husband's Club Accor status. Of the hotel programmes I'm familiar with, this one is a stand-out.

Hotel-Pension Neuschwanstein (Schwangau)
The hotel was cheap (in comparison to other places we stayed on the trip), clean and located just a five-minute drive from the No. 1 tourist attraction in Germany: Neuschwanstein. We booked well in advance and got a room with a substantial balcony and views direct to the castle.  But the decor was tired and the rooms furnished with little thought. I'd hoped for the personal touch which often comes with small hotels, but staff was curiously absent.  We only ever saw a rather dour older man and a maid who ducked into rooms whenever we came across her.  Nobody engaged us in conversation or offered any help. I assumed this was because our host couldn't speak much English, but that would be a rare thing in the tourist industry here.

There's no real lobby or welcoming public spaces. Breakfast the first morning was in a curiously silent, characterless room straight out of the 1970s. Unlike Bloberger Hof, there were few guests and people didn't talk to each other.  It was all a bit creepy.  The second morning they served breakfast in a beautiful dining room with expansive windows looking over the valley to Neuschwanstein.  Why this room wasn't used for breakfast every morning, and opened to guests regularly ... much less why they didn't offer dinners here ... is a mystery.  Overall, a place with great potential, but desperately in need of a makeover and friendlier management. In a region swamped with hotels, I felt I should have worked harder, or paid a little more, to find something nicer.

The beer drinkers' guide to Munich and Bavaria

For this entry I've given over the writing duties to my husband, Piers. He was the one who chose Bavaria for his birthday trip, and his taste for beer is a lot stronger than mine.  In fact, his taste in beer is sensitive enough to yield some excellent tasting notes for all the local variations we tried.  It was only fair to insist he shared them with you.

So, as a direct result of my demanding to go to Bavaria in search of my roots – and, I might add, to open Ellen’s eyes more to the wonders of Germanic culture – I fear, dear reader, that I have been imposed on your again.

A lot has been written about Bavaria and beer, so I shall only tell some of the history of weissbier, how it got around the German beer purity law and then move on to concentrate on the beers and our experiences of them. If I miss something out that you believe is important, please forgive me.

I hope that you know about how beer is made, as I won’t be covering that here. 

The Rheinheitsgebot (or German beer purity law) is over 500 years old and famously demanded that beer was made using barley, water and hops only. So what of weissbiers, I hear you cry? Aha! That is the point. Weissbiers are wheat beers and the Rehinheitsgebot was designed to restrict the use of wheat for bread -- not beer. A series of wheat harvest failures triggered legislation to ensure that the precious grain was saved for food rather than drink.

Now, by this time we have all heard of the Wittelsbach family (whaddya-mean-you-haven’t? You obviously need to read Ellen’s earlier Bavarian blogs). These glorious rulers of Bavaria were not just extravagant builders but also not beyond monopolising trade. In 1520, four years after the extension of the Rheinheitsgebot to all of Bavaria by the Wittelsbachs, they granted the sole right to brew Weissbier in Bavaria to a vassal family called the Degenbergs. For a significant sum. In 1602, the Duke of Degenberg died without heir and the title and all assets (including the right to brew weissbier) reverted to the Wittelsbachs. Duke Maximillian I, the then suzerain, kept the monopoly, extended his new right to all of his land and summoned the Degenbergs' master weissbier brewer to Munich to become his own. The brewer built a brewery in Munich on the site where the Hofbrauhaus now stands and got to work. Weissbier was as popular as ever and the profits went straight to the government (as the Hofbrauhaus profits still do today). They alone paid for the Bavarian army during the thirty years war against the Swedish, just 11 years later.

So, eventually, every town and village had its own Wittelsbach weissbier brewery. But even in conservative Bavaria, tastes eventually change. In the 18th Century drinking weissbier went out of fashion. As the value of the monopoly declined, from providing a third of all state revenue, the crown began to lease its breweries out to the locals. In 1798 it even decreed that any nobleman or monastery could brew weissbier. The decline lasted for about 160 years (have we mentioned how conservative the Bavarians are?), when it got a revival in the 1960s ... not just in Germany, but in the rest of the world as well.

“But enough about history, what about beer?” I hear you demand. Well, in our traipsing around Bavaria (and Austria) we drank more than a few pints (litres?) a day.  All in the name of research for you, dear reader. (It’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.)

Of the six major breweries in Munich, we drank at five of them. We missed Spaten, but few people remember them as a major brewery and neither did we. (Always leave something to go back for.) We also drank four of the five major varieties: Helles, Dunkel, Helles Weissbier and Dunkel Weissbier; we didn’t drink any Bock, but then I can’t remember having seen that on any menus. We did try the Oktoberfestbier or Marzen, unsurprising given the timing of our trip. We also tried the two varieties of shandy: Radler (Lemonade mixed with Helles) and Rus’n (Lemonade mixed with Weissbier) – more of which later.

Lowenbrau Original

This is supposed, by some, to have tobacco and smoke aromas and have a sweet, grassy, vanilla and metallic taste. It may have been the temperature that it was served at, but if there were smoke aromas, it was a dry smoke and the vanilla was swallowed by the metal. I found it thin, clean (ie: with little taste) and somewhat reminiscent of what could be called “euro fizz” or generic lager. In short, nothing to write home about, certainly compared to other beers drunk.

Franziskaner Hefe-Weissbier

‘The Franziskaner of my youth’: memories of the Franziskaner merry-go-round are raised by the reminders of my previous trip, the two quarter litre beer glasses on my shelf at home (it was all they served on the merry-go-round in 2004 on the Wieszen). One of my tasks, this year, was to find and have a drink on that Franziskaner merry-go-round. I have to report, dear reader, that I failed – not because it was lunchtime on the opening day and we had no chance of a drink on the Wieszen, it was more fundamental than that: they obviously rotate who gets to serve on the merry-go-round as this year it was HofBrau and not Franziskaner whose Weissbier was served there. Have no fear, Mike and crew, we raised a glass to you elsewhere.

But memories don’t get to tell you about this delightful brew. It is round and creamy, with a ‘tropical and grainy texture’ (according to one tasting note). I don’t know about tropical, I certainly got a bready flavour, but then it’s wheat beer so you would, wouldn’t you. I also got a taste of vanilla and lemon curd and a hint of warmth/spiciness.

Franziskaner Dunkels Weissbier

Don’t mistake this for a dark barley based beer; so far as we could see, Franziskaner only brews weissbier. This has a lovely round, malty, toffee and coffee flavour as well as the ‘normal’ creaminess of weissbier. It doesn’t really have that much bitterness, just enough to cut through the rest of the flavours. It was probably the most drunk beer of the trip (at least by me).

Hofbräu Munchener Sommer

I honestly didn’t think that Germans brewed Bluemoon, or drank it, yet this is the most similar taste that I could think of. Whilst it had more hoppy bitterness at the fore in the taste, I definitely got a deal of orange rather than a sharper citric taste of lemon (as in a Franziskaner Weissbier for example). This is still a barley based beer but it had a lot more roundness than the Lowenbrau Original.

Hofbräu Dunkel

This is a dark lager. It is supposed to have a toasty, malty and caramel flavour with the crispness of a lager. I found it to have the maltiness and toastiness described, but I didn’t find the caramel (or maybe the caramel had gone over). Having identified the tastes mentioned above, I found it to be thin and bitter – not something I would normally go towards just for drinking, but it may be better with food (possibly a curry?).

Hofbräu Rus’n

So to the first of the shandies, I had never tried weissbier shandy before. If this is indeed named after Russian emigres, I would suggest that it shows the disdain that Bavarians have for Russians. I found it to be incredibly sweet thick and almost like liquid honey, mass produced rather than a lavender or acacia honey. I wondered if this is what mead tastes like (and have yet to find out – so little time, so much to do).

Augustiner Brau Munchen Oktoberfestbier

Let this brewery not be mistaken for the Salzburg variant of the Augustinian brewers. We had several of the Munich variant’s excellent beers, stumbling upon a street party for the release of this beer, a day or so before the opening of the Oktoberfest proper.

This beer is medium weight, heavier and more rounded than a Helles lager but not as creamy as a weissbier. Not really that bitter, just enough to remind you that you are drinking a lager, it was also light but hoppy in taste. Whereas some Helles beers reminded me of the clean, metallic taste of many northern German lagers, this reminded me more of Czech lagers like Pilsner Urquell or Budvar (the lagers I would normally drink at home). In short, very nice indeed.

Augustiner Munchen Dunkel

A dark barley beer, which has the characteristic caramel hoppiness and burnt flavour of a Dunkel Helles beer, it was somewhat more rounded than many other Dunkels we tasted on the tour.

Tucher Helles Hefe Weizen

Just to prove that we didn’t just drink beer in Munich, this weissbier is from Nurnberg. Ellen though that this had a heavier weight in the mouth than other weissbiers and she noted a smoky bacon taste; I thought that this might have been there as an after taste, but I couldn’t find it in the body of the beer. I tasted a bitterish lemony flavour, which to me brought the hoppiness more to the fore than is usual in weissbiers.

König Ludwig Dunkels Wiessbier

We had this beer in the valley between Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein castles, rather appropriate really as the beer is actually brewed by the current Prince Luitpold and is also known as Prinzregent Luitpold Weissbier Dunkel. It has less of the creaminess of many weissbiers, tasting slightly drier and with a coffee taste coming through.

If I were to pick just one of the above to drink from now on, I would be caught in a cleft stick between the Franziskaner Dunkels Weissbier and the Augustiner Oktoberfestbier; I would probably have to come down on the side of the Franziskaner in the end, but it would be a struggle. The final argument would be down to volume, can I get it all year around and the Augustiner is only available as a seasonal beer.

I have come from this experience with the intention of trying other beers, possibly even ales and bitters which I have previously dismissed as I have always considered myself a lager drinker. Naturally, the above are only personal tasting notes on some of the beers we drank. Others may taste banana, cloves, coriander and other flavours. I hope that it has given you an idea of the ‘sheer hell’ we went through on your behalf and given you thoughts of trying some of them for yourself.

Go on, prove me wrong – although tasting is on the tongue and nose of the ‘beholder'.

Parade beats beer in our Oktoberfest initiation

Opinion amongst my Munich insiders was fairly consistent: Oktoberfest, unless you can score some corporate hospitality, is over-rated.

It's a magnet for foreigners to descend upon Munich to drink themselves silly; like an American college Spring Break, but with an international crowd in Bavarian costume.  It's so packed that the main beer tents are almost impossible to get inside after 10 am, thus you probably can't experience more than one a day, if you get in any at all. The city is stuffed to bursting, everyone raises the prices of everything and hotels book up a year in advance. It's not, the locals sighed, what it used to be.

Thus we scheduled our holiday to end on the day Oktoberfest opened. We broke out the dirndl and lederhosen, saw the opening parade and drank in the atmosphere of the fairground before heading to the airport ... avoiding the price crunch and the worst of the crowds.  This was generally a good solution, though it meant we didn't get into any of the beer tents.  Since they only serve beer to people seated at tables, it means that, ironically, we went to Oktoberfest but didn't get a drink. Despite the fact that the main pavilions seat almost 100,000 people. But we tasted the atmosphere, and decamped to the nearby Hacker Pschorr beer garden for refreshments.

The mobile beer ban was just one of many surprises that made me realise that I actually didn't know that much about the mother of all Oktoberfests. Here are some key points, for others amongst the uninitiated.

• The festival has a rich historical legacy.  It started as a wedding celebration in 1810 when the prince who would become King Ludwig I and his bride Princess Therese decided to include the people in their festivities. The merriment took place in fields outside of the city centre, renamed Theresa's Meadow in the princess' honour. The area is still officially known as Theresienwiese, though almost everyone shortens it to the Wiesn. I found a pleasant continuity in the fact that the man who left the most enduring architectural legacy on the city was also the one responsible for starting its greatest festival.

• Oktoberfest feels a lot like an American state fair.  The Wiesn is a big fairground set aside specifically for the purpose, there's an enormous strip of carnival rides (akin to an American fair midway) and loads of traditional food. The beer tents are fabulous temporary constructions, rising like a stage-set city for the duration of the event.

• Pretty much everyone comes in costume. You'd think you'd feel a bit odd, being a foreigner putting on a local costume ... but you'd feel a lot stranger in regular street clothes. Everyone dresses up, adding to the magic of the scene. The shopkeepers of Munich know this, and make it easy for you. Whether it's a cheap, Chinese-made Holloween costume purchased from a stall outside the train station, a basic outfit from a department store, mix and match from a traditional clothing warehouse or high-end pieces from specialist shops, there are options for every taste and budget.

• Locals have a different experience, and you can spot them easily. Evidently, most of the seats inside the tents can be reserved, and these reservations belong to either corporate hospitality or private clubs and organisations. As with most big events, there's a separate track for well-connected locals, who weave through the Wiesn crowds to take their rightful places.  Their clothing is exquisite. The great and the good's lederhosen might be accented with embroidery and tends to be longer; outfits are  accessorised with knives, badges, boar bristles and other bits and pieces that look like they've been passed down for generations. Women's dirndls are exquisitely tailored with fine detailing, probably from the posh department store Loden Frey. (Even if you have no intention of buying anything, it's great fun to wander through the traditional clothing section here to see what's possible.)

The parade's a big deal for the local kids

• There are two blockbuster parades worth making an effort to see. The first, on the opening Saturday, is a procession of beer wagons heading towards each tent, interspersed with marching bands. Coaches and more wagons filled with well-dressed locals follow the beer wagons; presumably more of the great and the good on their way to those reserved tables.  Getting to the route near the Wiesn entrance about an hour before starting time meant that we had a front row view as the spectacle unfurled. For more than two hours. It was glorious. And it's supposedly the inferior parade.  Sunday's, which is longer and has more than 8,000 marchers, is devoted to celebrating the identity of regions throughout Bavaria, celebrating variations of local costume. The problem with the parades, of course, is that if you stay on the street to watch them you give up your chance of nabbing a seat in any of the beer tents. After the Rose Bowl Parade, the opening day of Oktoberfest was the best parade I've ever seen. I think we made the right choice.

• Talk to people. The festival brings the ethos of the beer gardens to the streets. There are no strangers, only friends you haven't met yet. We struck up a conversation with the American couple we stood next to at the parade, and ended up spending the rest of the day with them. We had a blast, and the company made the day even better.

I liked our Oktoberfest approach, but if I had it to do again, I'd vary our schedule slightly.  I'd put Munich in the centre of our holiday, and I'd stay through the first Monday night of the festival.  I'd go to both parades, decamping to beer gardens off the Wiesn afterwards for lunch and celebration. On Monday, I'd get to the Wiesn early so I could get into a tent. And, maybe, try for two.  Then I'd head down to Schwangau, where the Bavarian Palace Department takes advantage of the influx of tourists to run a short season of concerts in the minstrel's hall at Neuschwanstein. 

Sounds heavenly. That's the plan for next time.

Beer and comfort food underpin any Bavarian culture tour

Carbohydrates and pork are the sacred duo of traditional Bavarian cuisine. It's pure comfort food, consumed in a place created to encapsulate that feeling of warmth and good fellowship: the beer garden. They even have a specific word for the combined aura of food, beer and company.

Gemütlichkeit.

It's a lot like Danish hygge, but practiced in public and without so many candles.  Who knows? Maybe the enduring legacy of battling through long, cold winters is the elevation of cozy fellowship to its own word. Whatever the origin, it's one of the best things about Bavaria.  I've now filled eight blog entries with the historic, cultural and artistic highlights of this trip.  But truth be told, we probably spent as much time, cumulatively, drinking and eating in beer gardens and halls while chatting to our neighbours as we did at cultural attractions. Because these are cultural attractions.  And no trip to Bavaria would be complete without a steady diet of them ... even though you risk putting on at least a pound a day.

First things first. Don't even attempt dieting. The standard traditional menu will have something called a wurst salat, but it's still loads of pork with some notional greens.  Vegetarian? It's easier than you'd think, but you'll be eating a lot of dumpling variants. Proper vegetables (as in ... not potatoes ... are few and far between.)

Get ready to drink beer. Lots of it. Even if you don't think you like it. Because (1) it tastes better in Bavaria and (2) it's cheaper than water.  Seriously. The Bavarians don't seem to do tap water.  On average, a one litre bottle of mineral water was €3.50. A litre of beer was €3.20.  What would you do?

The decor and atmosphere of beer halls and gardens varies greatly, but the menus don't.  We found them all almost identical, the food uniformly tasty if not memorable or elegant.  Everyone tries to out-do the others with claims of the best schnitzel (meat fillets pounded flat, lightly breaded and fried). The most resolutely traditional is served with a red berry compote and fried potatoes; I confess to finding that a bit dry and loving the version served with mushroom cream sauce. Schweinshaxe is the queen of all the pork dishes ... a whole pork knuckle encircled by lush crackling ... but you'll find pork prepared a variety of ways on every menu. Pork includes sausages, of course, and you could spend a lifetime learning to differentiate the varieties.  My own favourite is weisswurst. This disconcertingly anaemic veal sausage is traditionally served in pairs in a dish of steaming water. You're supposed to carve it out of its skin and eat it with pretzels and sweet mustard. You're also supposed to only eat them before noon but I think they're far too tasty to be limited to mornings.  Fortunately, most beer halls now share that view. I occasionally went off the porcine piste for some beef goulash, but rarely saw and was never tempted by chicken or fish.

They do meat well, but the Bavarians reach epic levels of comfort food when they start working with carbohydrates.  Soft, bready brezn ... the classic Bavarian pretzel ... differs slightly at every establishment and is the perfect warm up for any meal.  This is a meal in itself when served with obatzda, a soft ball of a cream-cheese based concoction mixed with various flavours and served with thinly sliced red onions.  (There are as many variations on obatzda as there are on brezn.)  Moving on to the potatoes ... a single dumpling the size of a child's fist, smothered in dark pork gravy, often upstages the meat beside it.  Spinat knodel is an adaptation of Italian spinach gnocchi and, as I argued about rococo architecture, it's just possible the Germans upstage the inventors. But the pinnacle of Bavarian starchy treats, the king of carbohydrates, the most comfortable of all comfort foods, is Käsespätzle.

Spätzle are little flour and egg dumplings created by running the dough over a grater-like press so the tear-drops of starchy goodness drop directly into boiling water. Removed when hot, fluffy and pillowy, they're then tossed with emmenthaler cheese, given a topping of deep fried onions and flashed under a grill to crisp everything up. This is possibly in the top 10 most unhealthy dishes of all time but, sweet Jesus, it's delicious.

And, of course, there's the beer to wash it all down. I have a guest blogger coming soon to cover that in another entry.

We worked our way through most of the Telegraph's list of the top 10 beer gardens in Munich, and sought out regional versions outside of town. My Munchener friends were actually a bit horrified. "We don't eat like that every day!" they exclaimed. "That traditional stuff is for Sundays and special occasions." Evidently they eat plenty of vegetables and foreign food at home. Certainly, we experienced the joys of modern German cooking at Geisels Werneckhof. But for the rest of the visit we stayed resolutely traditional, always seeking the elusive pinnacle of Gemütlichkeit. Here are some of our favourite spots. All are in Munich except when specifically noted otherwise.

Best Surprise - Westenriederstrasse Street Festival

The Saturday before the official opening of Oktoberfest, we were wandering aimlessly around Munich when we stumbled upon a festival in a small street near the Isartor.  Relentlessly local, we heard little English and watched with delight as locals in full Bavarian dress settled in for a sunny afternoon. We dubbed the older man behind us the mayor of the street; crowned with an impressive boar-bristle flourish in his hat, he graciously accepted the greetings of a stream natives coming to pay their respects.  An excellent local band called Wies n Buam gave traditional oompah an injection of youthful cool, and a festively-decorated wagon drawn by glossy black draught horses rolled in mid-afternoon for the ceremonial delivery of the Augustiner Bier.  This is one of our fondest memories of the whole trip, enhanced by the pure serendipity of stumbling upon it.  You can't schedule stuff like this, but it should be remembered: a planned afternoon of sightseeing is worth throwing out the proverbial window when you stumble upon unexpected local delights.

Best Atmosphere - Hofbrauhaus
It's the one beer hall in Munich that everyone has heard of, and nobody can imagine visiting the city without dropping by. You'd think that would turn it into a tourist trap. In fact, it ensures that there's always a buzz about the place, there's non-stop Bavarian music and you're generally sharing a table with someone who can speak English. Since part of the appeal of these places is hanging out for hours making new friends, that's useful. In other places across the week, we found weekday lunches to be dead and nights early in the week to be equally slow.  The less touristy a place is, the more likely it is to only be crowded and offer entertainment around the weekends. The Hofbrauhaus is consistent from Monday afternoon through to Sunday lunch. The high, vaulted ceilings with their  paintings along the theme of the good things in life and long tables beneath them with dark wooden benches deliver the quintessential picture of a beer hall. There's a warren of rooms and a large enclosed courtyard with tables beneath the trees, meaning you can get as close to or far from the music as you want. Girls in dirndls stroll around selling fresh brezn ... the best we had in Bavaria. Trip Advisor reviews aren't keen on the food, but we thought it was in line with most other places. Only two negatives: service can be ridiculously slow, and the congenial atmosphere is sometimes broken by bus tours walking through to take pictures without stopping for a beer. Tragic.

Best for View - Hohensalzburg Castle (Salzburg)
There are a couple of restaurants up here, and one has a beer garden in the northwest corner of the castle ramparts.  The views are spectacular. From one side, Salzburg spreads beneath you like one of those toy towns beneath a Christmas tree. On the other, leafy suburbs give way to farm fields before the mountains of Berchtesgaden (story here) rear out of the valley floor.  Beware: even on a sunny day, the stiff wind can make it chilly up here. Memorable spinach dumplings.

Best for the Local Experience - Chinesischer Turm
Perhaps the finest example of the Bavarians' delight at borrowing foreign styles to create festive backdrops, this faux Chinese pagoda sits in the middle of the Englischer Garten, a sprawling urban park based on 18th-century English landscape design principles.  Capability Brown would be proud, though he might be a bit perplexed by the dichotomy of a Bavarian brass band blasting out Ein Prosit from beneath the Oriental geegawgery of the tower.  Hundreds of tables spread out from this wonderfully preposterous centrepiece, shaded by venerable old chestnuts.  Beyond them is a ring of booths selling beer and food. It's a fantastic outing for a Sunday, when it's packed with families and friends getting together.

Best Architecture - Zum Augustiner
One of the few Art Nouveau buildings in Munich, this is an architectural fantasy on the theme of Bavaria. Dark panelling, traditional murals, sweeping arches, plenty of antlers, dramatic light fixtures. Don't miss the chandelier that brings the cooper's dance (part of the show on the nearby town hall clock) to life.  It's a warren of rooms, all with different architectural highlights to explore.  The glass-domed Muschelsaal, or Mussel Hall, is so named because its walls are decorated, grotto like, with the shells. I wish we'd had time to return for a sunny afternoon in the Arcade Garden. Tucked away in the back, it evokes the medieval monasteries where the local brewing tradition started. Zum Augustiner is on Neuhauser Strasse, the main drag between the train station and the Marianplatz; impossible to miss.

Best for Oktoberfest - Hacker Pschorr
Getting a seat inside any of the beer tents inside the official Oktoberfest grounds (the Wiesen) can be challenging. And, unfortunately, you can't get a beer unless you're sitting down. Hacker Pschorr provides a great alternative. It's located on a rise just across the street from the fairgrounds. Have a wander, then stroll over to this place to drink and eat.  It's a modern building with several vast halls inside and a big garden overlooking the Wiesen. Faux stonework, a maypole and massive copper brewing kettles give the interior a bit of charm, but on the whole it feels more like a big American sports bar than a Bavarian Beer Hall. A mood exacerbated on a Monday night when we found it empty, dimly lit and a bit spooky. Five days later, at the height of the Oktoberfest crush, there was still room here, and once populated the atmosphere picked up. That bit of local knowledge saved our day from disaster.

Best Rural Retreat - Hirschgarten
Reputed to be the largest beer garden in the world, 8,000 people can find seats here. But you'd never know, because the tables stretch out into heavily forested parkland. Deer graze in an enclosure to one side, children gambol in meadows on another.  It's fronted by a long, low-slung building with multiple dining rooms should the weather not be clement enough for outdoor dining. Ideally incorporated into a day out at Nymphenburg Palace, the 15-minute stroll through the surrounding leafy suburbs will give you a taste of where you might choose to live in Munich if you had a particularly good compensation package. Best Käsespätzle of the trip.

Best Escape from the Crowds - Ratskeller
The Ratskeller saved us on two occasions when crowds were queuing everywhere else in the town centre. It takes up the entire basement underneath the New Town Hall, so you can't get more central. I'm not sure why the crowds don't find their way here, as well, but both our experience and guide books hint you can usually find room here. Maybe it's the subtle signage, or the fact that you're retreating underground in a world where people love their beer gardens. Classic decor, traditional food, no-nonsense servers who seem to be lifers. It's nominally a beer hall on one side, and a wine hall on the other, but the menu is consistent in either place.

The Rest
We didn't find any of these spots to be particularly exceptional, but they all have their merits if, like us, you're on a mission to visit as many beer halls as possible.

Schlossbräustüberl (Hohenschwangau) - Crouched in the valley between Ludwig's two castles here), it's the perfect place to grab lunch before your ascent to Neuschwanstein. Classic decor and food, somewhat diminished by bus tours and the rapid turnover of tourists in a hurry. The house brewery is still owned by the Wittlesbach family.
(described

Schlossbräuhaus (Schwangau) - Considering the fact it's the closest, decent-sized tourist town to Germany's most popular tourist attraction, Neuschwanstein, Schwangau is curiously short on evening possibilities. Maybe it's because the majority of tourists are day-trippers; maybe it's seasonal. (At least three restaurants on the main street weren't open.) Thus we ended up at this place twice. Modern and efficient, complete with salad bar and adjoining mini-golf course, were it not for the German speakers and the resolutely Bavarian menu, it could have been a micro-brewery in an American shopping mall. Resolutely average, but a better option than the hassle of getting in a car to seek out something better.

Augustiner Keller, Löwenbräukeller, Paulaner am Nockherberg - Much of a muchness, this trio of traditional beer gardens are all outside of the central ring of Munich town centre. The first two are fairly close to the main train station, the last out beyond the Deutsches Museum. All have both big buildings for indoor drinking and large gardens stretching away beneath chestnut trees; standard traditional menus across the board.  The first two are clearly older with more traditional architecture and atmosphere. Paulaner is in a modern stretch of offices and industrial buildings (our fellow diners were mostly office workers grabbing lunch), but probably had the best service of the three and there's a stunning view over the rooftops of Munich as you climb up here.  Löwenbräu was the biggest disappointment, with rotten service and the only place on the whole holiday that served short measures.

Nuremberg fights to recover glorious history from Nazi shadows

I ended the last entry talking about the strange juxtaposition of idyllic German scenery with the Nazi evil that went on there.  The contrast deepens in Nuremberg, which is forced to balance its picture-postcard medieval cityscape with the dubious legacy of being at the heart of the Nazi PR machine.

We took a bus tour from Munich so that we could explore with the benefit of a guide.  (For details and whether it was worth the money, see the logistics entry at the bottom.)  It makes for a strange day.  The Nazi sites are grimly fascinating and emotionally difficult.  The town centre is visually rich and robustly cheerful. The tour wisely covered the Nazi history first.

We started out at the Nazi Party Rally Grounds.  Like most people, I'd seen the films of the massive gatherings dominated by Hitler's messianic preaching.  I knew the drama of these events was a major plank in the Party's marketing offensive. I knew they were big. I didn't realise how big. This wasn't just a single parade ground, but something more like an Olympic Park for Nazi Party festivals with a whole range of stadia, rally grounds and cultural facilities. People came here for days to drink in the intoxicating liquor of success and national pride in fellowship with thousands just like them.  Most of these buildings have been torn down and the land given over to other things, but the main marching ground (the Zeppelinfeld) and the Congress Hall remain.  They're now put to effective use in an earnest educational programme across Germany to remind people of the horror in an attempt to stop history from repeating itself.

There's no denying that architect Albert Speer was a genius at using architecture to manipulate emotion. Even in its ruined state, it's easy to see how the main stand with its Roman Imperial styling, soaring white walls and noble columns would inspire reverence. Between photos and our guide's descriptions, we learned how the organisers used the stage set and powerful lighting to create a quasi-religious experience. Step to the front of the plinth from which Hitler once addressed the crowds, take in the weeds growing through the cracking concrete and the school groups learning the history, and most people will have a sense of grim satisfaction. Sic mundi gloria transit. The glory of the world is fleeting. And nobody deserved it to flee faster than this lot.

Not for the faint-hearted
Things get even more thought provoking inside the Congress Hall.  More mock Roman architecture here: a massive half-circle of a building with a three-tiered, Colosseum-copying façade. Today you'll find the Documentation Centre here, a museum that provides a powerful, no-holds-barred exploration of what happened in Nuremberg, and why. The building itself makes a dramatic statement, designed so that some of the galleries jut from the original edifice in glass and steel extensions designed to look like stakes driven through this architectural heart of Nazism.  Inside, audio guides come in a wide variety of languages so nobody is left out.  Displays explained the environment that allowed the rise of the Nazi party, how they went about claiming power, and then how they manipulated everything to keep it. Here, of course, is where there are several specific rooms about Nuremberg's place in the story. The Nazis were trying to appropriate aura of this imperial capital from Germany's medieval glory days.

The designers of the Documentation Centre manipulate emotions just as efficiently as Albert Speer once did, though can be forgiven considering their purpose.  As the story gets darker, so does the lighting. Prejudice, concentration camps and genocide come near the end.  You enter the gallery that lays out the worst of the crimes through a dim brick tunnel that slants slightly downward.  Other tunnels stretch away on the sides and, at the end of each, near life-sized photos of piles of emaciated dead bodies fill archways. It's an emotional punch in the gut, and not for the faint hearted.  Your stomach will churn further as you reach the Nuremberg Trials section and see how little remorse any of these men felt for their crimes. Most, in fact, didn't even acknowledge they'd done anything wrong. The designers grant you some respite here, allowing you to step outdoors to look down on the open, decaying amphitheatre of the former Congress Hall. 

I thought I'd composed myself, stepped back in, and was greeted by the final display.  Behind a glass wall, two lines made of neon light ... clearly meant to represent train tracks ... stretch to the distance. The names of the death camps line the wall. It takes a while for your eyes to adjust, and then you see that the tracks are laid not onto the usual white rocks, but onto thousands of ID labels each containing the name of someone taken to a camp to be murdered by the Nazis. At this point all the horror caught up with me and I confess I broke into some fairly substantial tears as I made my way out of the building. I've never been so emotionally overwhelmed by a museum. Which is, I think, the whole point of the place.

The Documentation Centre left an indelible mark on me, as I'm sure it does to each visitor.  I'd like to think such efforts have pushed Western society past any possibility of a repeat. But there was plenty in the Documentation Centre that reminded me too much of the present.  A widening gulf between rich and poor created tensions the Nazis exploited.  People worried about their futures were drawn to glamour, celebrity and easy answers. Fractious political parties, unable to get along, opened the door for a dangerous outsider.  Circumstances made it acceptable to criticise one religious group.
Sound familiar? I couldn't help thinking about how completely normal it seems to have become in America to levy broad-brush criticisms of Muslims. On the other side of the religious divide, anti-Semitism is rising.  And we've seen plenty of genocide in the news in the past few decades.  The Germans are doing a noble job trying to warn the world not to repeat history. I'm not sure it's working.

Fantasy on the Pegnitz
Emotionally drained, I needed a complete change of pace. Nuremberg town centre, with its streets plucked straight from Disney's Fantasy Land, does the job. Most of the town was flattened by bombs at the end of the war. The modern reconstruction accounts for the pristine condition and bright colours.

Local architecture features a lot of tall houses with complex half timbering. Some buildings are enhanced by beautiful paintings. Ornate wrought iron signs, statues of saints on plinths, bloom-heavy window boxes and fanciful towers and rooflines add variety.  Two austere early gothic churches tower over the centre of town, the heart of which is a big market square filled with a great variety of market stalls featuring many fine craftsmen. The Christmas market here is supposed to be one of the best in Europe. Seeing how good the market was on an unremarkable day in September, I'd love to get back for the main event. 

The town is circled by medieval walls and bisected by the river Pegnitz that offers plenty of charming waterfronts. It's all overlooked by a striking castle on a hill. This was one of the great capitals of the Holy Roman Empire in the middle ages, and the Imperial Palace is one of the blockbuster sights here. We climbed up to it and admired its impressive bastions, picturesque roofline and the great views from its ramparts, but didn't have time to get inside.

Nor did we have time for any of the museums, of which there are many. This was a celebrated centre of humanistic learning. No wonder it gave birth to Albrecht Durer, whose house you can tour. On a more frivolous note, one of the best toy museums in the world is here ... celebrating centuries at the heart of toy production.

We did try both of the local culinary specialities. Nuremberger sausages are longer and thinner than the usual. Tasty, though I'm not sure I'd say they were that much better than others. The local gingerbread, or lebkuchen, is much celebrated. I admit I was underwhelmed, finding it dry and lacking in flavour ... even though I went out of my way to acquire it from Schmidt's, which the locals all swear is the best.  (My own gingerbread recipe is dark, moist and chewy from lashings of molasses and studded with chopped, candied ginger, so I wasn't likely to appreciate the German version's subtlety.)

While I don't hunger to return to the cuisine, one taste of Nuremberg's city centre was not enough.  It deserves two full days on its own. A long weekend including the Christmas market is now on my bucket list.

LOGISTICS

We took the Gray Line bus tour from Munich station, which left at 8:30 and had us back in town around 5:30.  On the plus side, it included guided sightseeing on the way out of town and commentary on a range of topics as we drove.  The Rally Grounds and the Documentation Centre are some way out of town, so it was helpful to have transport.  Nuremberg's also much bigger than I expected, so the bus allowed us to see a run of city walls and buildings around the periphery we wouldn't have passed on foot. With just a few hours in town, only a guided tour could ensure that you laid eyes on all the key sights.

But with advance planning, we could have done a better job on our own for about the same price.  Express trains from Munich take about an hour each way, half of the time you spend on the bus. We would have needed to take taxis to the Nazi sites, but could then have spent more time exploring the Documentation Centre.  Most importantly, we could have spent more time in the town centre. The walking tour was exhausting, covering several miles at a rapid pace and including steep climbs up to and down from the castle.  The guide was often so far ahead of us we couldn't hear much of her commentary. We might not have seen as much, but we'd have been better on our own with a guidebook. Liberated from the tyranny of the bus schedule, we could have stayed much longer than the three hours we had in the town centre.

We should have taken the train.

Zugspitze, Berchtesgaden provide Alpine thrills ... and darkness

Growing up in the American Midwest, you tended to be either a Mountain Family or a Beach Family.  Most parents had only 10 days of vacation time a year, so doing both was rare.  Some of my classmates went skiing.  We went to Florida.

I was 20 before I set foot on my first proper mountain. (I'm not counting the low, but technically mountainous, Ozarks or Appalachians. I'm talking about peaks that rise above a tree line.)  50 years later, I haven't moved my tally for the big stuff much over five.  To me, mountains are the most alien of all Earth's landscapes, and more than a bit frightening in their awe-inspiring size.  Thus our holiday's two mountain adventures probably ranked disproportionately high on my excitement scale.

Alpine veterans might say that the €52 cost of ascending the Zugspitze to walk around a 1960's-era
concrete block complex with limited services isn't worth the money.  I doubt I'd do it a second time, but with my limited experience there was a thrill for every euro.

The Zugspitze is Germany's highest peak. Right on the border with Austria, you can ascend from either country and there was once a little border control between the buildings at the top.  We went up the German side, starting from a complex you'll find after about 20 minutes of picturesque woodland driving beyond Garmish Partenkirchen. You have two choices for ascent: cable car all the way, or cog railway up to the edge of the local glacier, then a shorter hop in a different cable car.  We opted for the direct route. Having never been in a cable car I was balancing excitement with terror, the latter managed by my faith in German engineering.  Other than the stomach-churning swaying induced by the towers that hold up the cables at intervals, it's a remarkably smooth ride.  If I hadn't been holding my breath already as we rose, I would have forgotten to breathe as the scene spread out beneath us.  The car park, pine forests, lakes, foothills, Garmish-Partenkirchen all quickly growing smaller.  It was actually a lot like taking off in an airplane, but with bigger windows and almost no noise.  Stepping out at the top was nerve-inducing as the car swung in its dock, gap between car and platform showing a sheer drop.  But that was nothing to the first few minutes on the outdoor viewing platforms, nothing but a railing separating you from 9,717 feet of air between you and the valley floor.

It only took a few minutes to get my bearings, however, and then it was off to explore.  Both Germany and Austria have viewing platforms and buildings up here, linked by a bridge that once held passport control.  The German side is a bit bigger, but it's worth exploring it all because the views change from every angle.  Here, the Alpine valley stretches like a model train board dotted with sapphire lakes and doll-like villages.  There, the line of the Alps stretches in jagged teeth to the horizon.  From one angle, you're right up against other mountains, looking down into a desolate scree of granite and ice.  You can look down at a glacier, depressingly shrunk in these days of global warming.

In several spots you can watch the various cable cars come up and down.  The best entertainment, however, is watching people climb up to the actual summit on the German side.  It's supposed to be a fairly easy scramble for any experienced climber, and there are safety lines along the way as they climb down from the starting point, then up a ladder-like set of footholds before rounding the final outcrop and ending up below a giant golden cross.  I was perfectly content to live vicariously through those going the extra metres.

Germany's highest beer garden is here. We had a typical lunch of sausage, sauerkraut and beer while watching the clouds slip over the neighbouring peaks.  One minute we'd be basking in sun, the next freezing and enveloped in mist.  The indoor tables would probably have been wiser, but as a first time visitor I thought al fresco dining was part of the whole experience.

History, rather than height, brought us to Berchtesgaden. This isn't a single peak but a mountainous national park tucked in to the southeast corner of Germany, named after the resort town that serves as its gateway.  (Berchtesgaden town is only about half an hour from Salzburg, so many visitors stay in Austria rather than coming down from Munich.) We noticed quickly, and had it confirmed by a tour guide, that visitors tend to fall into one of two groups.  Americans and a handful of history buffs come for the WW2 tour.  Everyone else is here for the great outdoors.

And thus it was that we joined more Americans than we've seen in one place since our last Chicago holiday to clamber aboard a bus and dig into the holiday habits of the Third Reich.  We signed on for the four-hour Eagle's Nest Historical Tour.  Your €53 gets you bus transportation, all admission fees and ... most critically ... tremendously informed guides who are bona fide specialists on the time period.  (One of them, quite literally, "wrote the book" on the area.)

Outside the Eagle's Nest

The Eagle's Nest itself is a traditional chalet built at the top of one of the highest peaks in the park,
accessible from below by a luxurious lift.  It was Hitler's 50th birthday present from his party's inner circle and is one of the few buildings from the era to stand intact. Someone made the call that the taint of Nazi history would be washed away by the footfall of tourists coming here for tea, cake and views.  Most of the rest of the architecture around here didn't fare so well.  Much of this tour is imagining what once stood there.

That doesn't take away from the impact or the education.  The Eagle's Nest might be the headline attraction, but historically it was insignificant compared to the party roots and physical facilities that once dug through this mountain.

As a young man, Hitler had retreated to this area and holed up in a humble hut to finish Mein Kampf. The PR geniuses latched onto this, and extended their spin by exploiting scenes of Hitler in the local German perfection of charming chalets, attractive natives in traditional dress and majestic landscapes.  Clearly, the boss didn't mind as he spent up to a third of his time down here.  All of his other cronies followed, building their own country retreats nearby.  The mountainside became a second capital, where plenty of work was getting done along with the Bavarian leisure.

As time went on, the real story got darker ... and so did what happened on the mountain above Berchtesgaden.  First, they put up a security cordon and kept the real people out.  (Ironic, since one of the big buildings up here was a resort hotel originally built with the intent of giving every German a free Alpine holiday on the party.  That promise never delivered.) Administrators and soldiers moved in.  With them came barracks, offices and miles of underground bunkers.  If everything went wrong, this is where they were all supposed to hole up, Bond-villain like, to continue pushing their evil plan. It never came to that.  Most of the bad guys were caught in Berlin, leaving fairly junior types to defend (or run) as the allied troops came marching through.

Inside the tunnels

The tour includes the Documentation Centre, a museum that goes into what happened here and ... more importantly ... tries to come to grips with why.  We could have spent more time here, but even with four hours of detail there wasn't enough.  Below the centre you can explore part of the remaining network of tunnels.  Now bare and gutted of any fittings, they still impress with their size and durability.  I found myself wondering if we won the war just that little bit faster because so many resources were diverted to this mad lair. And, of course, there's the Eagle's Nest itself, from which you can contemplate the irony of one of the world's greatest evils taking root and flourishing in a landscape of gingerbread houses and Christmas card scenes.

Even without the history, the time was well-spent taking in the views.  This is a spectacularly beautiful part of the world, and a soul soothing one if you don't think about what's gone on here.  Ironically, the super-luxury Kempinski spa hotel now occupies the site of Goering's house.  Can hot rock massages and jacuzzis erase the pain of the past?  I understand why so many people skip the history in favour of Alpine hikes and boat trips on the lake below.  We're programmed to think that evil and violence come from ugly places. like bomb-fractured war zones or violent ghettos.  Not from Disney landscapes populated by extras from a fairy tale film.  It is profoundly disturbing to confront this truth.  But I'm glad we did it, and more people should.

Bavarians know how to rock the rococo

What adjectives spring to mind when I say "German"? Precise. Efficient. Logical. Controlled. Now, let's think about the words usually associated with the artistic movement called rococo: Frivolous. Bombastic. Playful. Extreme. Put two and two together, and you'd assume the Germans would have nothing to do with the ornate, late-18th century decorative style born in France and Italy.

You'd be wrong. Very wrong. Indeed, if you want to see rococo at its peak, my latest travels have convinced me you need to go to Bavaria.

Often working with Italian artists, and usually funded by the deep pockets of ambitious Wittelsbach rulers eager to make a splash on the world stage, German craftsmen took the style to a whole new level.  In religious spaces, they created lip-smackingly succulent visions of heaven, populated by gorgeous saints and frolicking putti wreathed in gold.  Secular versions are downright sexy, often swapping the Catholic stalwarts for scantily-clad Greco-Roman deities getting up to no good.  It's all riotously over-the-top, and tends to divide opinion.  If you're a sober-minded fan of clean lines and uncluttered spaces, Bavarian rococo may push you towards nausea.  I confess to loving it. I can't remember a holiday during which I've had so many instances where the simple act of walking into a room kindles pure joy, triggered by the playfully gleeful scene before me.

Let me take you on a tour of my favourite spots.

We'll start at Munich's Asamkirche, officially the church of St. Johann Nepomuk. This is technically late baroque, just on the threshold of rococo.  Gold, silver and marble, everything soaring upward to a painted vision of heaven ... it's all the glory of Rome's St. Peter's distilled into an architectural stock cube.  Unbelievably, this was a private chapel built by two craftsman brothers who lived next door; they could peek in on mass through a window in the upper story.  The Asams were multi-disciplinary builders (design, plasterwork, decorative paintings, etc.) who used the church to show off their skills.  Clearly, they did very well at their trade, because this is as lavish as any royal commission.  The brothers were masterful with their use of light and colour.  The dark wood pews sit in shadow mirroring life in this world. The higher your eye moves, the brighter things get, until you're emotionally sucked in to the swirling saints and sunshine of heaven above.  If I only had one hour in Munich, this is what I'd see.

The Bavarian Rococo hits its full, glorious stride in the Wieskirche, a pilgrimage church in the countryside south of Munich.  (Pictured top) In a region most famous for the royal residences of Neuschwanstein and Linderhof, this is what UNESCO flagged as a World Heritage site. You'll understand as soon as you walk through the door, and your jaw drops at the confection displayed before you.  While the Asams and the baroque played with light and dark, full rococo does away with the latter altogether.  This is a world of bright whites, frothy pastels and lashings of sunlight. Ironically, this is officially the Church of the Scourged Saviour, and there is a dark, medieval, pathos-filled statue of the bleeding Christ at the centre of worship here.  But he's totally upstaged. This isn't about the pain and suffering needed to get to heaven. It's giving you a moment in which you're already there. The church is essentially round, with a bit extending off the far end for the towering flourish of an altar. The shape exacerbates your feeling of floating, as if you're joining the saints and angels floating up the columns around you.

The outside is as beautiful as in, but in a totally different way. Plain cream walls rise out of a green field, topped with trademark Eastern European domes. A few quintessentially Bavarian buildings cluster nearby to provide services to pilgrims and tourists, but otherwise it's meadow, farm fields and forest stretching to a ring of high hills that cuts the valley off from any sign of "civilisation".  Peace permeates the place. It's a feeling you'll take home, as long as you can dodge the busloads of chattering tourists.

Next stop: Dillingen an der Donau, home territory of the Bencard family and well off the beaten tourist track.  It's worth an hour's detour just to see the Goldener Saal, or Golden Hall, here.  This was the main audience chamber of the powerful Jesuit university that once dominated the city, and it makes one hell of a statement.  Like so much of rococo architecture, it relies on the surprise of contrast. You'll approach up a fairly sedate staircase, white walls only moderately decorated with some gold stucco work. The more ornate doors hint at what's inside, but once you're through them all restraint disappears beneath the towering vision of heaven rising above.

Once again, dawn-lit clouds swirl to infinity as saints and the great and good convene. But in this partially secular space they mix more with the human world.  The building you're in rises on one side of the painted ceiling, the building across the street on the other.  Scenes of hunting and everyday life take up the lower edges, mixed with all sorts of neoclassical allegory.  In what we came to understand is a classic feature of the Bavarian rococo, bits of the scenes ... a snake's head, a horn, a dirty foot ... are modelled in plaster and jut out from the painting, making the illusion of depth and reality even better.  This is the best trompe l'oeil ceiling I've ever seen.  We spent ages debating whether certain elements were real or painted, and it was hard to believe that the ceiling didn't extend upwards for multiple stories.  Unfortunately, because it's little known and inside a working university, opening hours are limited and there's no tourist information in English.  I would have loved to know more about all the symbolism and the messages going on up there, but we could only guess.  Don't leave without going to the end of the block to poke your head into the Student's Church, an early rococo gem that's credited with inspiring churches all over Germany because of its influence on all the priests who studied here.

I think rococo reaches its greatest glory in secular buildings where, free from religious constraints, it can indulge in the frivolity and sensuality it does so well. And there was no better place to see this on our trip than at Nymphenburg Palace.  The Palace itself is classified as baroque, has many ornate rooms, an expansive folly-dotted park and is worth several hours of exploration.  It's just two bits I'll call out in my rococo ramblings: the main hall or Steinerner Saal and the Amalienburg hunting lodge.

The former is the first thing you see on your tour. It's a soaring, three-story, light-drenched space. Like the Wieskirche, the decoration is fairly restrained and mostly white on the lower levels, forcing your eye upwards for an explosion of colour.  But in this domestic space we can have scenes of hedonistic indulgence.  Apollo drives his chariot across the sky. Romantic trysts play out in multiple spots. Scantily clad nymphs (after which the palace is named) cavort with abandon.  All wreathed with sinuous gilded plasterwork and refracted through numerous crystal chandeliers.  My first reaction was, quite simply, to giggle with glee.

Even more childishly, once inside the Amalienburg I wanted to dance.  That's what rococo does to me.  I believe it's an essentially feminine style, which is perhaps why this lodge built for a holy Roman empress, Maria Amalia, reaches the climax of the style.  I saw many halls of mirrors on this trip but none beat the one here, an oval concoction of powder blue, white and silver flooded with light from arched floor-to ceiling windows reflected in the mirrors.  It's the silver that makes this place so unique, lightening the tone even more than the usual gold. You're overlooked by scantily-clad neoclassical figures who are modelled in high relief, silvered and set to frolic around the tops of the walls.  This was a place built for joyful partying, and every element of the decor reinforces it.

Side rooms continue on the same themes in different shades of Easter egg pastel, all maintaining the silver gilt.  The best rooms after the main hall are the two most functional ones.  The Delft tile kitchen is a riot of European Chinoiserie, made even crazier by the fact that the tilers messed up the installation so many of the flowers and animals don't go together quite as they should.  The empress must have liked the effect, however, because it remained.  Even more delightful is the kennel room.  A glorious blue-and-white number, here the decoration is delicately painted hunting trophies on wooden paneling.  It's a room fit for an empress, but it's meant for the hunting dogs who could bed down in a series of niches built into the walls. (See below) I'd wager a large bet they all had collars in pastel shades covered with silver filigree.

This was just the tip of the rococo sightseeing iceberg.  The guidebook offered many more star attractions in Bavaria than we could fit into our two weeks.  I enjoyed everything we did: the castles, the mountains, the beer gardens.  But on the top of my list for reasons to return?  The Bavarian Rococo.

Better than Versailles: Ludwig's palaces improve on originals

Continuing from the last post, we move from Ludwig II's mythic German castles to his French retro palaces...

While Neuschwanstein is the most famous of Ludwig II's residences, it's Linderhof that gives you the best sense of the man behind the myth.

It's a place of contradictions. It's opulent in decor yet modest in size, palatial in design but solitary in intent.  Most oddly, it's sitting in the most quintessentially Bavarian landscape you can imagine yet completely foreign in its architecture.  A French palace sits in Italian gardens accompanied by Middle Eastern garden follies.  Wonderful, if deeply bizarre. This is the only castle Ludwig ever finished, and the one he actually lived in for many years.  If you're going to claim any understanding of the man, you'll get it here.  And I suspect all those odd contradictions get right to the heart of his character.

Linderhof is an escapist fantasy. Pushed out of any active role in government, socially alienated and a dreamer from birth, Ludwig took refuge in a dream of the past. Specifically, the height of absolute monarchy under France's Louis XIV.  Linderhof re-creates its rococo splendour with curvaceous, gilded plaster, inlaid marble, lush tapestries and huge mirrors.  The attention to detail is staggering, though you'll barely have time to notice on your half-hour tour.  From the solid ivory chandelier, festooned with intricate carving, to the enormous Meissen porcelain floral centrepiece, so real you have to do a double-take to confirm they're not fresh flowers, every item here is a masterpiece.

Aside from the opulence, the main thing you notice is that it's not very big.  There are just six main rooms, and only the bedroom of a size you'd actually call "palatial".  Linked by small ante-chambers, they flow in a continuous circle around a grand entry stair.  It's easy to imagine Ludwig alone here, wandering from room to room and contemplating what might have been.  In the dining room, you'll see the famous dumb-waiter table, which could be raised and lowered into the kitchen below.  This allowed Ludwig to announce "tischlein deck dich" (table, lay yourself) and have a kingly banquet materialise without the need to see another human being.  He dined alone, while reportedly chatting to busts of Louis XV, Madame du Pompadour and Marie Antoinette.

Admittedly, this does give credence to the "madness" claim.  And it's not hard to imagine how this place could drive you more than a little loopy.  The bedroom copies the vast stage set of the "morning levee" from Versailles.  Sleeping alone in this echoing space could only compound loneliness.  As Ludwig aged, he became increasingly nocturnal. He would have wandered these halls with heavy curtains drawn, cocooned in candlelight and brocade.  In the hall of mirrors ... essentially a throne room ... reflective walls set opposite each other repeat your image to infinity.  Alone, at 3 am, I think that room's beauty could slide into nightmare.  I was ready to get outside.

The grounds at Linderhof are as good as the main building, and your visit would be incomplete without a thorough wander.  Leave yourself two hours to do it properly.  Most impressive is the artificial grotto tucked into the hill above the house.  It re-creates the underground lair of Venus from the first Act of Tannhauser, brought to life with creepy rock formations, lake with swan boat and dramatic mood lighting.  Everyone talks about Neuschwanstein inspiring Disney on the castle front; I'd bet my mouse ears this place inspired the first bit of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.  Ludwig used to climb up here from the house for a bit of variety.  With generous advanced warning, there was even central heating to warm up the air and turn that lake into a comfortable, heated indoor swimming pool.  Sadly, the envisioned performance of even a bit of Wagner never took place, undoubtably because the hermit king would have needed to allow others into his subterranean kingdom.

For a complete change of pace, there's a Moorish Kiosk and a Moroccan House, both of which look as if a genie from Arabian Nights had picked up a pasha's love nest and dropped it on the Alpine hillside.  They're ornate, picture-perfect in detail and utterly ridiculous.  But great fun.  At a further distance from the main house there Hundig's Hut (a German feasting hall and another Wagnerian stage set), Gurnemanz' Hermitage (more Wagner) and a music pavilion.  Moving between these outrageous garden follies, you'll be hiking through Alpine meadows and along woodland paths past which waterfalls rush from the peaks above.  Remove every scrap of architecture and the valley would be worth seeing on its own for its natural splendour.  Which Ludwig helped along close to the house, of course, with formal flower beds, terraces and water cascades.

The glories of Linderhof, however, are just a warm-up for Ludwig's Francophile main event:  Herrenchiemsee.  This is the one all the foreign tourists miss.  You've probably never heard of it, but I guarantee you've seen it.  If you're making a historical film set in Versailles, you'll shoot here.  It's a close copy in some places, more "in the spirit of" in others, but it's all grand, huge and Louis XIV would be instantly at home.

Location is certainly one of the reasons for its relative lack of renown.  Unlike the close cluster of Linderhof, Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau, Herrenchiemsee sits alone.  It's about half way between Munich and Salzburg, on an island in Bavaria's largest lake, the Chiemsee.  You'll either need to get a train or drive to Prien, then you'll have the boat ride, and then a 20-30 minute walk to the palace.  If you want to see it, you're making a day trip for it alone.  No wonder this was the only Ludwig II site at which our fellow tourists were mostly German.  Foreigners should make more of an effort; it's worth it.

The impressive baroque exterior and lavish fountain-scape does, indeed, take you to Versailles.  On a smaller scale, and with a fraction of the tourists.  The interior is equally impressive, but there's enough space to appreciate it.  My last visit to Versailles was one of the worst sightseeing experiences of my life. (Story here.) It was like being packed into a London rush hour train for two hours with a cacophony of clashing accents under an ornamental ceiling.  Here, you can appreciate the Boulle cabinetry, the wall paintings, the grand portraits, the intricate clocks, the ethereal ceiling paintings and the crystal chandeliers.  The hall of mirrors at Herrenchiemsee is actually much better than the original it mimics because you can see it: they rope off two thirds of it and you get to look down an empty stretch to get the full effect. And the mirrors are in much better reflective shape.

And yet, like the rest of Ludwig's buildings, Herrenchiemsee is a stage set.  The marbles of the great staircase are actually paint effects, and all the luxury is a thin veneer over a modern brick frame.  Most of the palace was unfinished at his death and stayed that way.  It's a fascinating comparison to walk through the unfinished areas.  The photo I most wanted to take was a quick glimpse of some of that bare shell seen through an open door in the opulent marble hall.  (Sadly, photos aren't allowed within the palace, so no chance of that.  I've pulled the interior illustrations here from the internet.)

Just like Linderhof, Ludwig meant to wander this vastness alone.  Unlike Versailles, he never intended the rooms to see crowds of courtiers.  The few nights he stayed here before his death were spent in isolation. There's another levitating table here to allow invisible service, and another vast bedroom that would never see company.  Every dancing putti is secretly weeping for the loneliness of his creator.

Once you're finished with the palace, there's an excellent museum here of all things Ludwig.  It dives into his life and his passions, illustrated with objets d'art, models, photographs and furniture moved here from other properties.  Unlike the palace interiors, where you're rushed along at pace, you can linger here as long as you wish to really take in the detail.  There's a magnificent room focusing on his relationship with Wagner, filled with models of opera houses (both built and imagined) and detailed production models of the original stage sets.  Another highlight is a film composed of computer animations of the Ludwigian architectural projects still on the drawing board at his death. The Chinese palace would have been the wackiest, most amazing one yet.  And you also get a glimpse of what the world lost: Ludwig built a lavish greenhouse running along the roof of the Residenz in Munich that they chose not to resurrect after the war.

Tragedy and opulence, drama and loneliness, exquisite beauty and overkill verging on tackiness ... Ludwig's architectural legacy has it all.  They say that the last words of the Emperor Nero as he bled out after he stabbed himself were "what an artist dies with me."  It would have been completely appropriate for Ludwig to say the same thing as he sunk beneath the waters of Lake Starnberg.  But we'll never know.  Whether it was suicide or murder, there were no witnesses.  Only the buildings are left to stand as his legacy.  And a fine one they are.