Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Bavarian Culture & Traditions
Regional Identity
Few other states in Germany can claim as dis-
tinct an identity as Bavaria. The country's
southernmost state has always been a crossroads
of trading routes to the Mediterranean and
southeast Europe, and as the Alps never formed
a truly impassable barrier, Bavaria absorbed the
influences of Mediterranean culture early on.
This gave the Bavarian character an easygoing outlook but one tempered with a Germanic
respect for law and order. Patriotic feeling runs high, and at any hint of an affront, Bavari-
ans close ranks, at least until the next party or festival. People here claim to be Bavarians
first, Germans second, though this feeling weakens the further north into Franconia you
head.
For outsiders the marriage of traditional rural Bavaria with modern-day industrial effi-
ciency and wealth are hard to see as one entity - the two just don't seem to fit together. A
popular slogan once coined by the state government dubbed Bavaria 'the land of leder-
hosen and laptops', conjuring up images of farmers and computer scientists happily work-
ing hand-in-virtual-hand. Modern Bavaria is indeed the land of Oktoberfest, beer and tradi-
tion, but it's also about cutting-edge glass-and-steel architecture, bright-lights nightlife,
hipster fashion, sophisticated dining and world-class sport. It's youthful and almost com-
pletely without the brooding introspection you may encounter elsewhere in Germany.
Indigenous Bavarians still strongly identify with
their tribal heritage and call everyone not born in
this neck of the
Wald a Zuagroaste
('newcomer' in
Bavarian dialect).
Lifestyle
So who exactly is the average Bavarian? Statist-
ically speaking, he (or she) is in his early
thirties, white and married, has at least some
higher education and lives in a 90-sq-metre ren-
ted apartment in a midsize town. He and his
partner drive a midsize car, but use public trans-
port to commute to work in the service industry,
where he earns about €3000 per month. About
40% of that evaporates in tax and social security
deductions. Our average Bavarian tends to vote conservative, but would not rule out giving
Catholic Bavaria has produced few Jewish writers
of note. A major exception is Jakob Wassermann
(1873-1934), a popular novelist of the early 20th
century. Many of his works grapple with Jewish
identity, but he's best known for his sentimental
take on Kaspar Hauser.
