Lunner in the Abbey

 

Last week I told you about our stop in Vipiteno/Sterzing on the last day of our short trip. After we had left this charming little town in Südtirol, we crossed Brennerpass into Austria and from there drove via Innsbruck back to Bavaria. It was a lovely drive in splendind weather with gorgeous views. We passed the beautiful lakes Walchensee and Kochelsee which were pretty crowded since it was a public holiday (Ascension Day). We finally reached Kloster Benediktbeuern (Benediktbeuern Abbey) where we decided to have "lunner" - a name that we gave to a warm meal that is between lunch and dinner when we have neither of the two. We often do this while traveling.

Benediktbeuern Abbey is a monastery of the Salesians of Don Bosco, but was originally a monastery of the Benedictine Order. It was founded around 739/740. During the secularisation of Bavaria in 1803 the abbey was dissolved and during the course of the disposal of the library and archives the manuscript of the Carmina Burana was found, a 13th century collection of songs by wandering scholars. This manuscript is now in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in München together with many priceless manuscripts and charters from the abbey's library and archives. 24 of the poems of the Carmina Burana were set to music by Carl Orff in 1935/36. If you're not familiar with this music, listen in to "O Fortuna":

The site is huge and now among others also houses a university, a "Centre for Environment and Culture" and is home to an extended herb garden. The brewery - what is a monastery without its own brewery? - unfortunately was closed in 1925.

I am always very fond of the baroque church towers that you can find in Bavaria with their remarkable onion shape.

There were gates. as well - I always love gates.

But our main reason to stop here was the Klosterbraustüberl, named after the old brewery. It has a restaurant and a big beer garden. Since it was a holiday, the beer garden was crowded and we had to wait for our food quite a while, but spent the time with people watching. And we did see some "real Bavarians" in the traditional Bavarian costume.

The food we had I had already shown you in this post, but since this is for Elizabeth and Bleubeard's T Tuesday, please join me for the wonderful Weißbier we had here.

 After we had eaten our "lunner", we started out to the very last leg of our trip, returning to München through the beautiful Upper Bavarian region.

If you are in the US, I wish you a very happy Thanksgiving. Despite the current state of the world, there is much to be thankful for. We shouldn't limit that to just one day in the year.