CHAPTER 4

Wamping

In the Bavarian community of Wamping below the Weisswurst equator and close to the Watzmann mountain, you could hear the clinking of mugs and glasses on this beautiful late summer evening, as is so often the case. In the idyllic Zur Wilden Sau beer garden, which is so highly regarded and loved by the locals, things were usually less wild by name and more civilized, but cheerful, almost always wet and cheerful.

But that evening was different. Not in terms of the damp arrangement, it was the cheerfulness that was missing. At least at Table 6, the regulars' table of regulars' tables. Mayor Alois Bichlmeier had had enough of being mobbed by his regulars' table friends and neighbors. He slammed his tankard onto the oval oak table!

"Baggage, saublede! Sake cement crucifix noamal! Where were you when we were discussing for hours last week?"

The gentlemen present had not expected so much anger in their stomachs.

"Calm down now, Alois," replied Josef. And Alois found his way back to the German language.

"Oh, I come up with something every year and then you come along and say: That was nothing! I've had it up to my eyeballs." He took a good swig down his throat.

The Machinger brothers Josef and Fred, the local brewers who enjoyed supremacy in the region with the Almenbräu brand, were also at the regulars' table alongside the mayor. Anton, the somewhat shy tourism expert, who made you wonder why he of all people should be an expert in the field of communication. And old Peter, who nobody really knew how old he actually was. 85 was in the air, 90 had already been offered. His trademark was his pipe, which he always chewed on blissfully. His piercing, observant gaze always suggested that something was brewing behind his bushy eyebrows and that he was about to intervene. But that rarely happened. When he did say something, it usually had substance, which was not always the case with the others at the table.

But why did Mayor Alois Bichlmeier go so berserk? The reason: there had been problems in the municipality of Wamping for many years. There had been no snow for a long time, which kept the winter tourists away, and other communities were also much smarter in summer. They had long had summer toboggan runs, celebrity mountain huts and traditional music and shooting festivals that thrilled the crowds. And that's exactly what was missing in Wamping! Few tourists, little turnover and even less confidence among the citizens that this could ever change. All this led to the fall of the last mayor, Max Mockenhaupt.

But then came Bichlmeier, Alois Bichlmeier. The 58-year-old, burly representative of the Bavarian way of life, whose ancestors had had a decisive influence on the town for centuries and who had worked hard over the last 20 years to build up his handsome protuberance below the pectoral muscle. He set out four years ago to change that. In the year1 after Mockenhaupt, however, nothing h