Easter Week in Bavaria: Why We Go Back to the Bauers Every Spring

German Easter is its own thing — Osterbrunnen, painted eggshells, and a host family that treats my American kids like honorary grandchildren.

By Anne Levine·

NJ schools take Easter week off, and we have settled into a pattern that I don't think we'll break until the kids are too old to want to come. We fly to Munich the Saturday before Easter, we spend the whole week with one foot at the Bauers' kitchen table, and we come home with two kids who think *Osterbrunnen* are normal.

The Bauers' grown sons are in their 20s now and live in Berlin and Hamburg. The Bauers, who fed me too much for fourteen months when I was 22, have very gracefully repurposed their grandparent energy onto Ella and Leo. It's a thing that works because of the age gap. If their grandkids were small, this would be a different trip. As it is, my kids are essentially the only small children in the Bauers' Easter, and the Bauers lean into it with both hands.

Osterbrunnen Are the Thing You've Never Heard Of

If you've never seen one: in much of Bavaria and Franconia, towns decorate their public fountains for Easter with garlands of painted eggs and pine boughs. Hundreds of eggs. The big ones in places like Bieberbach are famous; the small ones in Munich neighborhoods are charming.

We do an *Osterbrunnen* tour every year. Not the famous ones — the local ones in Bogenhausen and Schwabing and one out in Pasing that Frau Bauer insists on. The kids count eggs. Ella keeps a tally in a notebook. Leo gets distracted by every dog within fifty meters but mostly stays on task.

The Egg-Decorating Afternoon

Frau Bauer's kitchen, the Wednesday before Easter, is non-negotiable. She lays out blown eggshells (she does the blowing herself in the days before — I have offered to help, I have been waved off), watercolors, wax-resist tools, and a sheet of newspaper that does not adequately protect the table. The kids decorate eggs for two hours. Frau Bauer hangs the best ones on a small branch arrangement on her sideboard. Ella's are still up there from the previous two years.

This is the kind of activity that, if I tried to recreate it in New Jersey, would last fifteen minutes before someone got bored. In Frau Bauer's kitchen, with her watching, it lasts hours. I don't fully understand why. I'm not going to ask.

The Tegernsee Day Trip

One day every Easter trip we take the BOB train south to Tegernsee. The lake is an hour from Munich, smaller than you'd expect, surrounded by mountains and very small towns. We get off, walk the lake path until somebody gets tired (always Leo, always around the 25-minute mark), find a beer garden with a view, eat schnitzel, and take the boat partway back before catching the train home.

  • The Bayerische Oberlandbahn (BOB) from Munich Hauptbahnhof is direct and cheap. Buy tickets at the machine.
  • Bring layers. Lakeside in April is colder than the city.
  • The Bräustüberl Tegernsee is the obvious lunch spot. Park yourself outside if the weather permits.

Augustiner-Keller, Easter Edition

I keep recommending the Augustiner-Keller because it's the right answer. The Easter version: it'll be packed on Easter Sunday itself but very manageable on a Tuesday or Wednesday lunch. Outdoor tables under the chestnuts even in early April if the sun is out. Order the *Brez'n* basket immediately, do not wait, the kids will not survive otherwise.

Not Losing the Kids in a Volksfest

Munich's *Frühlingsfest* — the spring version of Oktoberfest — runs over Easter most years on the Theresienwiese. It is enormous, loud, and a real four-year-old's nightmare in the wrong moment and a real four-year-old's heaven in the right one. Some hard-won rules:

  • Go in the late afternoon, not the evening. The drunkenness curve is steep after 6 PM.
  • Pick one ride zone and stay there. The fest is too big to wander.
  • Write your phone number on the kid. I use a Sharpie on Leo's forearm. Frau Bauer thinks this is hilarious. It has not yet been needed and I'm not changing the policy.
  • One *Lebkuchenherz* per child. The big gingerbread heart on a ribbon. They'll wear it all night.

What I'd Tell a First-Time Easter-Munich Family

Don't try to do Easter Sunday Mass at the Frauenkirche unless you actually want to do Easter Sunday Mass. It's beautiful, it's hours, and your kids will not appreciate it. Do walk past it Sunday morning when the bells are ringing — that's the experience.

And: walk slowly. There's a small brass plaque set into the sidewalk on Prinzregentenstrasse — a *Stolperstein*, one of thousands across Germany — that I noticed for the first time on our Easter trip the year Ella turned five. I crouched and read the name out loud. Ella asked who it was. I told her, briefly, what I knew. We kept walking. That was the whole conversation. It was the right kind of small.

Frau Bauer puts a chocolate egg in each kid's shoe on Easter morning. Just one. The kids treat it like the Pope dropped by.

The Bauers will not always be here. I am increasingly aware of this — Herr Bauer turned 72 this year, Frau Bauer 70 — and every Easter I'm storing it. The kids will remember some of it. Ella, certainly. Leo, I hope. The rest is on me to remember for them, and I am, dutifully, every year.