When I lived in München, I habitually took my bike on the S-Bahn out to the end of the line, in one direction or another, then rode all day, and ended up at another S-Bahn station for the trip home. This expanded the area I could explore by perhaps a factor of four! Here’s part of my diary from one such ride.
Learned later that there is a tradition about Maibäume. Once it’s all painted and ready to go, it’s kidnap bait, and has to be guarded 24 hours a day. If a neighboring village or a rival club succeeds in making off with it, the ransom is paid out in copious quantities of Bier.
Rainy this morning, but not raining hard, and I’m damned if I’ll waste a holiday moomphing around the house. So I dressed up in full winter gear, polypro, GoreTex, plastic pants and all, and rode out. Took the mountain bike, thinking it might be a little more surefooted in bad weather.
Had to wait at Marienplatz S-bahn for quite a while. I would have taken a train either to Kreuzstraße or Holzkirchen, since they’re only a few km apart; the Kreuzstraße train came first.
Just before reaching the end station, the train passed a Maibaum (maypole) procession, waiting at the crossing. Led by a four-man brass band, a horse-drawn pole, painted in a blue and white Bavarian spiral. People walking; others actually riding on the pole itself. All waved to the train. The train driver blew his whistle – first time I ever heard one of these guys make a noise.
Got off the train, did a quick map check, rode in the direction I thought the procession would have to take, thinking I’d at least get a photo as they went by. There were people putting out traffic cones and caution signs at the crossroad that gives the place its name; just as I got there, there were a couple of deafening reports. I went ’round the corner in time to see two guys with antique pistols, the size of small cannons, reloading and firing off another salvo.
This was to welcome the procession. The brass band dismissed themselves, went off to the gazebo in the Biergarten where they shortly resumed playing. The horses, decked out in their finest, were unhitched and led away. A Feuerwehr truck came through the crowd, past the pole, set up his station.
I wasn’t the only rubber-necker with a camera! A couple of young girls were going around selling little wooden disks to be worn around the neck on a ribbon. I couldn’t read them, but I imagine they were commemorative slices from the thin top end of the pole. A police car came; the officer watched for awhile. I think the police are distinct outsiders here – not sure whether that’s a good idea or not. On the one hand, I fully approve of people distrusting and disliking the government; on the other hand, it may actually promote high-handedness on the part of officials who are not of the people, and know it. In any event, the girls didn’t know about the taboo, went over to sell their wares to the policeman, somewhat to the amusement of the crowd. 
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With the willing help of a hundred volunteers, mostly dressed in traditional Bavarian costume, the pole was wheeled up to a preinstalled mounting in the front yard of the pub (indeed, and why not a pub, after all?). I've heard that TÜV requires a Maibaum to be replaced every five or six years, but the mounting for this one was a pair of steel I-beams planted in the ground; there’s no reason this particular Maibaum can’t be permanent, since it will be protected from rot.
The first step was to put an anchor bolt through the pole and a hole near the bottom of the mounting stand. While operations were being set up, the girls from the Inn went through the crowd offering free food, paper plates of something that looked like scrambled eggs, but probably wasn’t – likely Kaiserschmarrn like we got at Chiemsee with Peter Mößbauer. I declined, simply because I wasn’t yet hungry.
Big crowd, a couple hundred, of whom perhaps half were workers. A large proportion of them were dressed traditionally. I liked watching the old guys and the little kids. One of the fellows directing traffic was dressed absolutely traditionally – and wearing a bright orange safety vest!
This pole had a weathercock at the top; the guys installing it had a nice high-tech machined stainless steel sleeve for it to turn in, and were busy applying silicone lube as they installed it.
I had a vague idea they’d just push the pole upright and retire for a beer. Had I actually thought about it, of course, I would have realized that wasn’t possible, particularly since tradition dictates the whole thing be done with human muscle. The process took about two hours, and they were working all the time. Difficult, tricky business, and safety was clearly a priority; the entire crowd was within the falling radius of the pole, had it come down.
There was a boss for the project, who had clearly done it before (found out later that there is a formal training program for this). The idea is that, with the base anchored, you push the pole up. Of course, the damn thing weighs a ton (likely several tons), and after it gets started, it’s too high to just reach up and push. So they have poles to push with, a pair of poles, one on either side of the Maibaum, joined with a heavy rope – ship’s hawser kind of thing – that forms a sling around the Maibaum. |
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The rope, among other properties, provides enough friction against the Maibaum that it doesn’t slip. Everything thoroughly padded, so it won’t damage the paint job. |
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You get a crew of volunteers under the Maibaum and under the pusher-poles. You yell, “Drück!” The crew heaves, the Maibaum moves a little, and after about two seconds, you yell to rest; the crew braces the poles and waits for the next cycle.
As the Maibaum slowly rises, you need longer poles, and you bring them into play. These are all laid out ready in advance, of course – no small task to plan the logistics for something like this. Each time the Maibaum moves, the angles of the pusher poles change; eventually they become too vertical to provide effective pushing; and the rope could even slip if the angle got too oblique. So whenever necessary, one pair of pusher poles at a time is released and slid further down toward the base of the Maibaum to re-establish a pushing angle. |
By the time the Maibaum gets maybe 30° off the ground, there are about six sets of pusher poles. The longest pair of pusher poles requires, each pole, its own pair of pusher poles; even the second and third longest pairs can only be moved around with single separate pusher poles with a sharp trident fork. |
Very tricky; I developed a lot of respect watching these guys. Not a trivial operation by any means. |
Finally, finally, finally, the Maibaum was almost vertical. There was a retainer ring on the mounting base to keep it from falling over the other way, and the boss moved two pusher-pole gangs around to catch the pole if it came past vertical… and they pushed it upright. A big round of applause! and well deserved! |
So I started my day off with an ausgezeichneten adventure!
Getting well along; time to do some riding…