Pilgrimage to Marktl am Inn and Altötting (28-29 October 2023)

Click here for the Google Photos album for these two days – warning: there are a lot of pictures!

When I learned that I was going to Rome for the ACU/IRCI PhD Seminar, I immediately began planning my short Via Francigena pilgrimage ending at the tomb of Pope Benedict. Similarly, as soon as my research tour was expanded to include Munich and Regensburg, I knew that I had to visit Marktl am Inn, the birthplace of Joseph Ratzinger (I apologise to the Rahner devotees reading this – next time I will need to visit Freiburg im Bresgau and Innsbruck). In my research I discovered that Altötting – the medieval Marian shrine of Bavaria (and more recently a destination for “Brüder Konrad” devotees) – was within a convenient single day’s walk from Marktl. With the help of my favourite hiking app, GaiaGPS, I marked out two routes: a northern route through farmland and small villages, and a southern route through forest and the sizeable town of Emmerting. The plan was to get out of Munich on the weekend in the middle of my two week German course, to catch the train from Munich on Saturday morning, visit Pope Benedict’s Geburtshaus and St Oswald’s church (in which he was baptised on the day he was born, Easter Saturday 1927), and then walk the northern route to Altötting. I would stay the night, go to mass in the morning, and walk back to Marktl by the southern route through the forest. Then I invited my Norwegian friend Martin (technically, my “godson”, as I was his sponsor when he was received into the Catholic Church in Melbourne way back in 2009) to join me for the weekend adventure from his home in Münster. I had not seen Martin since Cathy and I holidayed with Martin and Natalia in Florence in March of 2017. Martin accepted, and so the plan was set in place. Just a week before, unfortunately, Martin came down with some version of the flu. He was recovering by the end of last week, but still not really fit enough to join me on a 50km+ jaunt. Nevertheless, he still planned to come with me to Marktl and Altötting – he would just take public transport instead of walking between the two towns. On Sunday (today) he also needed to leave immediately in morning to get back home for work on Monday. Still, there was plenty of time for us to catch up.

After Goethe Institut class on Friday therefore, I met Martin at his hotel. We had dinner in a pleasant local Bayerische watering hole which also did simple meals to go with their beer. I had a very tasty meatball/rissole type thing with mashed potatoes and followed this up with some kind of cheese dumpling in a pool of tasty melted butter. Very nice, and I didn’t worry about the calories as I was sure to walk them off over the next 48 hours. It was my first time eating out in Germany, as up to now I have been eating in my room with supplies from local markets and supermarkets. The best thing, however, was that this gave us several hours to catch up on our lives since “before covid”. There had been many changes, including his marriage, the birth of his twin boys, retraining and starting a new career, and recently buying a house. My life also, as most readers of “this ‘ere blog” (I haven’t said that in a long time!) will know, is into its third phase now. So a lot to talk about. Actually, when I woke up in the morning, I not only felt the effects of the litre or so of beer I had drunk (I only had two beers, but they came in 500ml glasses…), I also had a sore jaw! I realised that I had not talked so much since leaving Australia several weeks ago.

(I am writing this at 6:45pm on Sunday night, and the bells of St Wolfgang’s have just wound themselves up and are announcing that 7pm mass is starting in quarter of an hour. The chiming of bells is a bit like being in Turkey, where the calls to prayer punctuate the time. Today, it was 12noon as I walked into Emmerting – and the Angelus was being run from the main bell tower in the town.)

On Saturday morning Martin and I met at 8am at the big München Ost railway station about 5 minutes walk away to catch the 8:16 train for the hour and a half train ride to Marktl am Inn (there was a stop over in and change of trains in Mühldorf am Inn – the ticket was €22 – €44 return – easily bought in the DB app). I took only a little overnight backpack – the lightest I have ever packed for a pilgrimage – and Martin had his overnight bag, as he was going home directly from Altötting. Again, the long train journey gave us even more time for catch up. So we arrived in Marktl just before 10am, and walked into town. First thing we did was have “second breakfast” in the local Bakerei. Herr Behery had given me breakfast at 7am, half an hour earlier than breakfast is usually served, and had really fresh bread rolls, so I had kept one to take with me (he kindly gladwrapped it for me to take with). Together with a bit of cheese and some salami, that became my lunch pack for the day. But the coffee and pastry triangle in Marktl was very nice. We got water from the local supermarket, and then went directly around to the Pope Benedict site.

Marktl is generally a fairly modern town, but the old section to the east, between the main road through town and the River Inn, is old and traditional in style. The Papst Benedikt Geburtshaus is practically in the centre of town. Ratzinger’s father was the local policeman, and the house is quite substantial, right next to the Rathaus and the parish church of St Oswald’s. It is easy to see how Ratzinger Senior, an extremely pious Catholic of the best sort of piety, was moved immediately to take his new born infant to the parish church one minute’s walk away to be baptised practically as soon as he was born, given that the easter ceremonies and the blessing of the font would have only just taken place (I admit, I had always wondered about this!). Unfortunately the Ratzinger house was shut for renovations – from 5 October to next Easter – so we could not go inside. The well stocked (thanks to Pope Benedict) Joseph Ratzinger Museum was also shut – it has rather restricted opening hours. BUT the church was open, as indeed most German churches are. We immediately went inside. The little church, which dates back to the 13th century, has been rebuilt more than once in its lifetime (most recently in the 1950s in a very modern style), usually because of the limits of the size of the building (although once due to fire started by a lightening strike which destroyed a lot of the town). Thankfully lots of items of the original church have been incorporated into the new church, and the whole original sanctuary has been preserved as a side chapel. Today, this is basically a shrine to St (whoops), Pope Benedict. The font in which he was baptised is located immediately in front of the delightfully colourful 19th Century altar done in the medieval style. I was struck by the fact that the two main statues in this space were 1) St Joseph, and 2) St Benedict. Coincidence? There is a large portrait of our beloved Holy Father in this space. In fact, portraits or even statues of Benedict and John Paul II are every where around this area. Martin and I were almost surprised to finally find a picture of Pope Francis in the Church of St Mary Magdalene in Altötting this morning! I guess they both visited here, whereas Pope Francis has been more focused on the peripheries…

So now it was time for me to get going and Martin to catch the train. I won’t go into excessive detail on this journey – only to say that very early in the piece, I realised I was on a designated cycling trail called the “Sieben Kirchen Weg” (https://www.inn-salzach.com/a-sieben-kirchen-weg). I found this out when I entered the little village of Mittling, and saw the sign outside the medieval church of St Nicholas there. Now, this is the sort of thing I tend to latch onto. I realised that the trail was basically the equivalent of the walk that I was doing. I stress that this “Weg” is a *cycling* trail. There is nothing to suggest that anyone would be as daft as to try to *walk* all the way from Marktl to Altötting along this route. I will also confess that along the entire way, I didn’t stand still long enough to actually study the route or the churches that made up the “seven”, with the result that I walked right past one (the Heilige Geist Kirche in Neuötting – I was too busy looking at St Nicholas’ church in Neuötting – nb. there are *three* churches out of the seven dedicated to St Nicholas!), added two the list that are not even on the seven churches trail (a little private chapel in Mitterhausen and the Church of St John near Pfaffenöd), and completely missed (until today) another St Nicholas Church on the outskirts of Marktl on the other side of the river (but I picked that one up today). Anyway, I got it into my head to do all of these, and hence, when I found somewhere around the little one-Bauerhof locality of Lohner that I had missed a turn at Schefpfing, I tried to go cross country only to find my way blocked by another one-Bauerhof locality, a place called Bemburg. I should have been able to go around this, but the old Bauer sitting outside his Hof said in indignant tones “Geradeaus!” pointing down the track toward Neuötting, with the result that I added about another four kilometres doubling back to see the little church of St Margarethe at Untereschelbach. This church, like the church of St John with its onion-shaped dome on the way, was locked, but visiting the little locality gave me a much better idea of the sort of community that made up these little named places through which I was walking. Generally it appears that these places are made up of a major “Bauerhof” or farm. These farms consist of numerous buildings – a house, which might also be a part of the barn, and a number of what we would call “sheds” in Australia, but which are built with the same solidity and design as the houses. In Untereschelbach, I saw at close quarters that one of these “sheds” was clearly a place where animals lived. I actually saw no animals (except once – three cows) outdoors in paddocks. But the big building in Untereschelbach obviously housed animals. Around this Bauerhof, there were a number of other houses, perhaps six or seven, and, together with the church, this made up the village. Martin told me that the likelihood is that the owners of these farms and homes have had them in the family for centuries. It was very hard for me to get my head around that…

Earlier, I had stopped for a break in the town (it was the biggest place on the route but I don’t think I saw any substantial shops) of Alzgern. Here, their church yard was crowded with people working on maintaining the cemetery which surrounded the medieval church of Maria Himmelfahrt (the Assumption). I was blown away by the interior – which was the most extreme baroque style including most of the walls and ceiling being covered by frescoes. Some of these places are real treasures.

I forgot to mention – for anyone thinking of following my route – that the first section out of Marktl up to the river Alz is actually on the side of a main road. This isn’t very pleasant, but there are side trails that go through the forest. Here I encountered for the first time a sign that basically said “This is a private road, but if you are a forest worker or a cyclist, feel free to use it at your own risk”! No mention of walking pilgrims, but I think that covers us too. This little trail, as I mentioned, took me right up to the River Alz – right up to the edge of the small cliff with the river below (do not attempt this in the dark). Thankfully the road bridge over the river had a walker/bike space.

The only other thing I have to add about this walk is that I had to keep reminding myself that I was walking in through German countryside. That sounds silly – everything around me was screaming “Bavaria” like it was painted onto a souvenir plate – but the whole mundane process of putting one foot in front of the other on a trail that led through open countryside was so familiar that I felt right at home. But of course, it was completely alien. And this was never more the case when I came across one of the seven churches with their origins in the 12th or 13th centuries. I was utterly blessed with the weather. It was crisp and cool and sunny in a way that I didn’t get up much of a sweat, but was always refreshed with the breeze along the way. This was the case for the whole weekend. The other thing I will add is that if you are lucky enough to score such a couple of sunny days in succession as I was this weekend, autumn is ABSOLUTELY the best time to do a walk like this. We in Victoria think that a visit to Bright in autumn is pretty specky, but that doesn’t hold a candle to Bavaria in the autumn. The colours of the trees are so vivid. In fact, I changed the setting on my iphone camera to “vivid” a couple of times today because it simply wasn’t doing justice to the brilliance of the colours and the light that I was seeing..

Okay, so that brings me eventually to my arrival in Altötting. Martin had texted to me say something along the lines of “Oh my God, I wasn’t expecting THIS!”, which meant he had done no preparatory research about our pilgrimage destination. He had gotten off the train, walked to his rather nice authentically Bavarian Gasthaus (the Hotel Planktl – I highly recommend it), and then gone to explore the town. He was blown away when he entered the main pilgrimage plaza in the centre of town. And it really is something. When I arrived, I went immediately to the little “Gnadenkapelle”, which houses the tiny black madonna and child which is the object of devotion. There was the most gorgeous singing coming from inside (see videos in the Google Photos album), and the Blessed Sacrament was exposed on the altar. The little chapel is divided into two sections – and I barely got into the area where the Madonna and Child are on the main altar. This morning Martin and I attended the 7am mass in the little chapel, and we were in the nave of the chapel so we didn’t see anything of the mass that was being conducted in the inner sanctum until we went to communion, and then I wasn’t really concentrating on my surrounds, but rather on receiving the Lord, so you won’t find any actual pictures of the the interior in my Google Photos album.

Then I went to check into my accommodation. I was completely knackered, as I had walked almost 25km (remember – I had to double back to see all the seven churches!). I was staying at the Gockelwirt Pilgerpension above the cafe of the same name, and it took me a while to find my way in and the right people to talk too. But eventually I paid my €35 (not including breakfast) and was given the key to room 1, a double room overlooking the square. The room was quite spacious with its own basin, and all in quaint Bavarian style. The hallways were all decorated as if they had not been touched since 1925 – very traditional religious, with no pope represented more recently than John Paul II. The shared toilet/showers, however, were very substandard. For less than €30 more, Martin had very comfortable accommodation at Hotel Planktl – equally traditional if not more so – and breakfast included. He had invited me around to his place for dinner, and we had a very delightful evening. I had “Hirschgeschetzeltes” – venison stewed in a gravy served with cream – with spaetzle noodles and hot apfelkraut (yes – it is what is sounds like) – quite yummy. And more beer, this time local stuff. When I walked back to my accommodation, there were pilgrims returning home from devotions in the square carrying lighted candles. I decided to go for a little wander. Pilgrims were still gathered around the Gnadenskapelle (which was now locked), and there was a bishop with them in choir dress and biretta laughing and joking with them. It all looked very friendly. The moon was out, and so I got a good shot of the chapel and St Mary Magdalene’s church with the moon in between. There was supposed to be a solar eclipse on Saturday night, but when I woke at 2:33am and looked out of my window at the moon, I could see no evidence. I probably missed it by about an hour – last night was the end of daylight savings for the Europeans, so the clocks went back an hour.

Which was good, because I slept rather fitfully and woke up at about 6am to see the sky was already light (it hasn’t been so since I’ve been in Germany). Martin and I attended the 7am mass in the Gnadenkapelle, as I said. After this, we went for a bit of a Spaziergang, to see the Churches of St Mary Magdalene and to find the Church of Brother Konrad – the local saint who had been the porter in the Capuchin monastery. The church had once been named St Annes, but was now dedicated to the saint. We discovered that this building had very recently received a complete makeover, including the tomb of St Konrad himself in the sanctuary. I lighted a candle for my friend Hildegard at St Philips and for her departed husband Gottfried with whom I used to sing bass in the choir. She was the one who said to me on the last Sunday before I left, “you must visit Bruder Konrad and pray for me” – prior to this I had heard nothing of him. After this, Martin shouted me breakfast at his hotel. It was the best breakfast I have had in three weeks! More catching up with stories our lives. After breakfast, I went back to my room to pack up – but I was distracted by the fact that I had not yet been inside the main church in the central square, the “Stiftspfarrkirche”. Mass had just ended and the organist was still playing, so I went inside for a quick look – see photos. I also discovered the garden with the Stations of the Cross nearby. There was also a big market going on in the square. There were lots of lovely things to buy, but a) I couldn’t carry them, and b) they were made of wood and animal products that would no way pass muster at customs in Australia. One such product were Wanderungsstöcke – wooden hiking sticks – for only €12,50. I would have loved to have have bought one home for myself, but the chance of it being rejected at customs was too great, and also I would have to carry it with me on my walk today and thereafter (I have my normal hiking stocks with me).

At this point I realised that Martin was probably waiting for me, as it was approaching the time he had to catch the train, so I quickly went up to my room, packed and checked out, and went around to where Martin was waiting. We went straight to the station, chatted for a bit, then the train pulled up, and said goodbye until we meet again. I joked that I would be back in 7 years for my european book tour!

Then I set off on the southern forest route. There isn’t a lot to say here, other than that the forest was totally delightful. I kept taking pictures, trying to catch the experience, but new I never could because of the combination of the light and the smell and the fresh air and the colour of the leaves. For the first time on this whole journey, I listened to music as I walked, and it was an added dimension. I sometime sang, sometimes danced, sometimes wandered off to the side just to stand surrounded by these beautiful trees. At first there were plenty of others around me, but as I went on today, and especially on the afternoon section, I was quite alone. I will dare to say that I enjoyed today even better than yesterday. The first section to Emmerting took two hours of forest walking in the morning. I visited two churches in Emmerting – the big modern one built in the year of my birth and the smaller more ancient one on the hillside on the opposite side of the river. Just before the latter, as I was heading out of town and thinking “I haven’t found anywhere to have lunch”, I saw a sign to a “Biergarten” and discovered a REALLY real Bayerischen pub, the sort with four old men inside telling each other the same stories they have since they were boys over a few Pils. I ordered Schnitzel and chips and a small bottle of locally produced Pils bier.

After this there was more forest walking – including a children’s trail with carved forest animals along the way – and a bit of making my way through a little borough called Schützing, with another Bauerhof moment when the road led right up to a private farm, but this time the farmer let me walk through his yard to the forest beyond. Then more forest, and voila! I was back in Marktl. As I was approaching the town, I saw, on the eastern side of the river, another church tower, and discovered one of the Seven Churches – another “St Nicholas” – this one rebuilt in the early 1500’s with some a rather gruesome display of 19th skulls in the porch… I visited St Oswald’s again to say goodbye, and then caught the 4pm train back instead of waiting for the 5pm train one which I was booked. In all, I walked 22.75km from Altötting to Martkl, in 4hrs and 17 minutes walking time.

If ever you are finding yourself in this area, I would highly recommend trying to walk one or both of the two routes I took on this journey. It was a real spiritual boost, and delight to both body and soul. Tomorrow, I am going to try to visit the Karl Rahner Archives again, and see what more might turn up…

About Schütz

I am a PhD candidate & sessional academic at Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, Australia. After almost 10 years in ministry as a Lutheran pastor, I was received into the Catholic Church in 2003. I worked for the Archdiocese of Melbourne for 18 years in Ecumenism and Interfaith Relations. I have been editor of Gesher for the Council of Christians & Jews and am guest editor of the historical journal “Footprints”. I have a passion for pilgrimage and pioneered the MacKillop Woods Way.
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