bavarian jigsaws

Just after Alice was born, my husband was appointed artist in residence to the city of Munich for a few months. I’d never been to Germany, but I knew what to expect, a model of 21st century modernity, smooth-running german efficiency, and the heady scent of vorsprung durch teknik in the air.
But the forests and mountains of southern Bavaria have nothing in common with my preconcieved ideas. “Welcome to Tolzerland” reads the sign as we pull into the village of Feldafing after three days on the road. We look out over lake Starnberg, the silhouettes onion-dome tolzers on the churches stretch into the distance, with the forests of christmas trees, and the snow covered alps behind like a 2000 piece jigsaw puzzle. We find the apartment we’ve rented, above a barn full of curly horned cows, the walls covered with framed 2000 piece jigsaws of the view outside, so you can hardly tell if you’re looking at the wall or out of the window.
I love it. As a child I was fascinated by those sinister fairy stories with princesses who were forced to knit jumpers out of nettles, or live in pig sties, or had sheep’s heads put on them by the evil hen woman. I feel a bit guilty about being so soft that when I told them to Daisy, I gave them feel-good Hollywood endings, in which the little match girl got adopted by a wealthy family, and the Little Mermaid always got her man.We’ve arrived on New Years eve.
“The shops are all closed.” Our landlady tells us, she’s wearing a flowery apron and wooden clogs with legs like a three legged stool, her hair is in plaits, and I’m just waiting for her to give me an enchanted cow’s hoof or something.
“Oh, we’ll go tommorrow.”
“No, all the shops are closed until the 7th of january.” Huh ? What happened to the hard-work and efficiency?
After driving round the lake for an hour or so, we find a garage open. You can buy 27 kinds of champagne, King Ludwig II shnapps by the gallon and a shot of hard alcohol at the till” for the road.”

The whole place is like a crazy fairy tale, and the forests are full of ghosts, especially the ghosts the Bavarian royal family, who lived in Feldafing, created their own fairy tales, and finally fell victim to them.
The famously eccentric Ludwig II, the patron saint of kitsch, who used to ride around the forest at night on a golden sleigh, eating tangerines peeled by blindfolded servants. He sold his kingdom to pay for the fairytale castles he buil - Linderhof, Herrenchiemsee and Neuschanstein, the inspiration for the Disney castle and the image on a million jigsaws around the world. He commissioned Wagner’s operas, and when he could no longer cope with politics, he took refuge on the Rose island in the lake, acting in private performances of them, dressing himself as the Swan Prince of german heroic legends. He finally disappeared in the lake in mysterious circumstances.
“He drowned in the lake?” I ask the barman.
I’m in a tavern, drinking a Ludwig beer from a Ludwig glass on a Ludwig beermat.
“Maybe. Maybe not, some people say in the woods, at night, they hear the sound of his sleigh ……. Hahaha, that’s just a story of course.” he adds, not very convincingly.
He was buried with a sprig of jasmine in his hand, sent by his cousin Sissy.
Sissy became the Empress of Austria, but was happiest when she went and sang in the local bars with her father disguised as a gypsy, with her pet dancing bear. She grew her hair down to the ground and had a special servant to brush it, dressed in white in a white room, so she could see and label every hair she lost with the date when it fell out. When she married to Emperor, she escaped from court life by running away to Ireland where she became obsessed by fox-hunting, riding with her corsets laced so tight she was constantly falling off her horse in a swoon. She was murdered on the shore of lake geneva by a mad assasin.

Then there’s Lola Montes, who was one of Ludwig I mistresses, not a princess pretending to be a gypsy, but an Irish divorcée who re-invented herself as an impoverished Spanish noblewoman, who was forced to perform her “Spiderdance” to eat, but she showed a little too much leg for the Victorians, who were still covering up their mahogany table legs. She swept her way across Europe, leaving a trail of scandal and abandonned lovers in her wake until she reached Munich where she started an affair with the king. It ended in tears, he was forced to adbicate, and she fled to Sacramento where she made her fortune during the goldrush , playing herself on stage in a re-written story of her life. It’s California, no-one minds whether it’s true or not, as long as it has a happy ending…...
So, while Nick paints in a villa by the lakeside, I take the kids around the Bavarian countryside, looking for ghosts and fairy stories, feeding the swans on the beach, and collecting exotic food labels and beermats for my collages.
“Do we have to drink the Sissy special brew and the Ludwig schnapps all the time Wilma? I really like that Lowenbrau with the plain blue label.”
“Oh, drink up and stop fussing, I’m trying to finish a picture.”