Jennifer G.
Yelp
We had quite the experience getting to and from Andech's Monastery. We went on the recommendation of my travel hero, Rick Steves. Apparently we did not research carefully enough, but the time we took the S-Bahn all the way to Andechs, it was late afternoon and we caught the very last shuttle. Oh well, we had just traveled on train 45 minutes from downtown Munich, we would worry about our return trip later.
We originally went to the biergarten at the bottom of the hill, which was closing when we arrived. We were feeling very disappointed about traveling so far, at pretty significant expense on train. We gulped our liters quickly so as to not be an inconvenience to the employees trying to close up shop. We noticed that there were still people coming from the top of the monastery, so we traveled uphill a bit. THIS was what Rick was raving about. The view of the German farm countryside was absolutely beautiful. The beer, fresh out of oak barrels, was the second-best I had in Munich (the best being Ayinger). And the soft pretzel was the best I've ever had anywhere. Hot (which is unusual for Germany, in my experience), soft, salty, and filling. It was our dinner for the entire evening.
We still had to deal with the matter of getting back to the train station...it was about a 5 km walk downhill on a narrow, curvy road, and it was almost dusk. I would rather not walk. We tracked down a young German woman with a cell phone. She tried to call us a cab, but the earliest they could make it was 45 minutes. She offered to give us a ride to the train station. Hitchhiking through the German countryside...check that one off the bucket list! Thanks to the Andech's lager, we didn't much care about the supposed dangers, and just appreciated the Bavarian hospitality.
I highly recommend making the trip out to Andechs if you are in Munich for at least 3 days, as it does take at least half a day. Eat a pretzel for me!