Geitau and Osterhofen

1. 1Geitau Chapel▶ Audio
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   You're standing in front of an unremarkable little wooden shed. You could walk right past it.

   And that's exactly the trick.

   Because the chronicler of Bayrischzell called this very shed the oldest, most interesting, and most valuable chapel in the entire parish. From the outside, he wrote, a shabby wooden building. Inside, a true jewel box.

   What opens up in there doesn't really belong here. Large oil paintings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one saint beside the next, a splendor you simply wouldn't expect in a village chapel this size.

   And there's a reason it doesn't fit: it wasn't originally meant to be here at all. These paintings came from the monastery in Fischbachau. When the monasteries were dissolved a good two hundred years ago, their treasures scattered to the four winds, and some of them ended up here, in this little wooden chapel. A bit of monastery gold, stranded in a mountain village.

   Let your eyes wander across the paintings behind the grille. Look at Saint Martin, high on his horse. But notice who's sitting there at his feet: not a beggar in ancient robes, the way you usually see him in pictures like this, but a man in tattered mountain garb, in short trousers with a rucksack, as if he'd just come through the valley himself.

   Now look to the right, into the corner by the altar.

   There stands a small, delicate little Baroque altar. Take a moment and read what's written on it. The words are almost two hundred years old, and they still land today.

   It reads:

   I live, and know not for how long.

   I die, and know not when.

   I journey, and know not where.

   It's a wonder I'm still so cheerful.

   Let that sit for a moment.

   Some person had that written here, in the year eighteen thirty-seven. Someone who knew as little about what life had in store as we do today, and who was cheerful anyway, or maybe because of it.

   This little wooden shed, the one you almost walked past, hands you something that would take others a whole book to say.

   Go ahead and step back again. But that verse, take it with you.

2. 2Rote Wand Post Inn▶ Audio
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   Let me jump in here myself for a second, Michi from Treffpunkt. I'd rather tell you about this stop personally, because I really know the place.

   The Rote Wand inn. My family and I come here to eat all the time, and I'll tell you right now: this house has lived through more than most people ever will.

   But before you go in, turn around one more time and take a good look at it. Because this was far from always an inn.

   It all started around nineteen hundred, with a little general store and a bottled-beer trade. A few years later they built the actual inn you see in front of you today. For over a hundred years it's been in the same family. Four generations.

   And in those hundred years, plenty has happened here that you'd never guess from this cozy building today.

   In the Second World War, the Rote Wand served as a field hospital, a shelter for the wounded and for people who had lost their homes. And just before that, in nineteen forty, it even housed a school. Eight classes, all under this one roof.

   But what really makes this place what it is today is a very personal story, and it's my favorite part. The younger generation took over, and the son faced a real choice. He was on his way into competitive skiing, could have made a career of it. Instead, he chose the inn. The kitchen. This house.

   And believe me, you can taste it. Down-to-earth, honest, really good. A kitchen cooked by someone who chose it, deliberately.

   So: go in. Sit down. Enjoy your meal. And while you're sitting there, take a moment to think about everyone who came before you in this place.

   Some houses are just an inn. And some are the memory of an entire village.

3. 3Hasenöhrlhof▶ Audio
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   Here stands a farmhouse older than almost anything you know today.

   Take a look at it. At first glance: a beautifully kept old farm. But this building has stood here since the year fifteen sixteen.

   Let that number sink in for a moment. Fifteen sixteen. That's over five hundred years ago. When the first beam was laid here, Martin Luther was still alive, hardly anyone in Europe had heard of America, and the Thirty Years' War was still more than a century away. Since then, this farm has stood. It has outlasted wars, famines, whole centuries. And it's still standing.

   For a long time it was an ordinary farm, livestock, fields, hard work. Since the year two thousand it has belonged to a family that gently brought it back to life. And the beautiful thing is how they did it: they didn't hide the old, they used it. Where cows once stood in the barn, festivities and events now take place. The cow barn has become a room for people, the old walls still stand, they've just been given a new job.

   And now something the farm itself doesn't reveal, but its name does.

   This farm isn't actually called the Hasenöhrlhof at all. Its old farmstead name is "Unteröstner." And that name tells you exactly where you're standing. "Östner" means: in the east of Geitau. And "Unter," lower, because there are two of them: the lower and the upper Östner farm. The upper one is right nearby and is known today as the Storrhof.

   That's how they named the farms around here in the old days, not by street and house number, which didn't even exist yet. But by their location, by the compass direction, by the family. For centuries, the farmstead name was the real address. And many of these names live on today, even though other families have long since lived on the farms.

   So the next time you're in an old village and hear a farmstead name that doesn't match the family living there at all, now you'll know: there's a story behind it. Often one older than any history book.

   And sometimes, like here, older than half a millennium.

4. 4Lourdes Chapel▶ Audio
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   You're standing in front of a little chapel that, by rights, shouldn't exist at all.

   It all began with a will. A farmer here in Dorf left money for the building of a chapel, but with one condition: if nothing happened within fifteen years, everything would go to the parish church down in Bayrischzell.

   And then, nothing happened.

   The deadline ran out, the bequest was gone. The chapel had died before it ever existed. Until someone said: then I'll just pay for it myself. The village mayor had it built at his own expense, in honor of Our Lady of Lourdes. The four farmers of Dorf helped out with their horse teams, entirely for free. And so it finally stood there, in the year eighteen eighty-four, not built by the church, not by the municipality, but by one man and his neighbors.

   Now go inside, if you're lucky enough to find it open. Because the chapel is often locked.

   The altar isn't a carved wooden showpiece. It's a grotto of real dripstone, modeled on the French Lourdes, where Our Lady is said to have appeared to a simple girl. A piece of miracle-faith, right in the middle of the Bavarian Alps.

   And now comes the reason I sent you here.

   Look the Madonna straight in the face. Take a moment.

   She looks young. Peaceful. Almost untroubled.

   Now step a few paces to the side, back into the corner. Turn around once more, and look at her from there.

   The face has changed. From back here it looks pained. Sorrowful. Youth from the front, sorrow from the side, one and the same face.

   This is no trick of the light. It was noticed soon after she was installed, and people even asked the workshop about it. The answer: not even the artist himself could explain it. It might come down to a single brushstroke, one brushstroke between youth and sorrow.

   The people here trusted this Madonna deeply from the very start. The votive tablets on the wall bear witness to it to this day: small, often hand-painted pictures. A thank-you for surviving an illness, for a son who came home, for a prayer that was answered. The most private hopes of generations from this valley, some over a hundred years old.

   This chapel never had a great patron to make it famous. It has something rarer: a village that never let it fall in nearly a hundred and forty years.

   And in the middle of it all, this Madonna, keeping her secret to herself to this day.

5. 5Osterhofen Chapel▶ Audio
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   This chapel here in Osterhofen is unremarkable from the outside, but up on the ceiling it holds a secret you'll find almost nowhere else.

   And here's the good part: unlike some of the other chapels around here, it's usually open in the summer. So go ahead and step inside.

   It was built in the year seventeen ninety-eight, and not by a construction company, and not by the church. The people of the village built it themselves, in the evenings, after the workday was done. After a long day's work they'd come here and set stone upon stone. All of it was paid for with donations collected in the village.

   And now, the reason to tip your head back.

   Look up. At the ceiling.

   Up there you'll see a painted picture, and on it, a ship.

   Look at who's sitting in that ship. They're not saints. Not angels. They're the people who built and paid for this chapel, the donors, the patrons, the workers. Right up front among them: an innkeeper's daughter from the village, one of the most generous donors of all.

   Let that sink in for a moment. The people who hauled stones here in the evenings after work had themselves painted onto the ceiling. Not out of vanity, but because they wanted to say: we built this. Together.

   And the ship is no accident. A ship is an ancient image for a community that holds together, everyone in the same boat, through calm times and rough ones. Here, an entire village took that image quite literally.

   By the way, the same hand that painted up here also created the Stations of the Cross in the chapel in Geitau. It was a small world back then. People knew one another, they helped one another, the same names turn up everywhere.

   On your way out, the altar is worth one more look. It has stood here since the very first day, for over two hundred years, unchanged. While generations came and went outside, it simply stayed.

   Just like the ship on the ceiling. With a crew that went ashore long ago, but sits together in one boat forever.

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