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I still picture Bavaria like this

Years ago, I came to Germany on a brief trip with my high school. I don’t think the trip was even 2 weeks long, and it was designed to provide a general image of Germany, so we stayed in several major cities at most 2 or 3 days. I had an absolute blast, and my German was crap back then.

Toward the end of the tour—at least, I think it was toward the end—we cruised through Bavaria and the tip of Austria. The pictures I took down there, with an old, rather beaten-up 35mm which my girlfriend at the time had lent me for the trip, are still the iconic pictures of Bavaria for me.

Years later, but still years in the past, I went to Bavaria again, this time just for a week-long stay. I had been offered a scholarship to study in Munich for a year (one which I declined—later, the scholarship I’m now taking advantage of fell into my lap, and I couldn’t say no again), and this brief stay was meant to be an introduction and a tease for what was to come.

We of course took a trip to the Alps, my second.

Even now, after having actually lived here for the better part of a year, these pictures still come to mind whenever I need to think abstractly about Bavaria. Nothing helps more to understand the Bavarian people than to take a look at these few glimpses of the landscapes. As I mused in an earlier post,

I’ve often noticed that Bavarians aren’t always looking over their shoulders at the revenant of the war, that they remember instead the cobalt blue of the Alps in the distance on that one day when autumn came so quickly.

I’m no de Tocqueville, but I stand by those words all these months (and Maßes) later.

I hope you now know at least a little better what it feels like to live here. The weather is changing. It now rains for two days and then is sunny for one. More pictures to come, I hope.