How should one work here?
You should actually look out the window all day, the view is so beautiful.
A visit to a carpenter's workshop with a dream view.
Jakobsbaiern -
Franz Xaver Riedl, master carpenter, stands in front of his carpentry shop with his hands buried in his jacket pockets and looks for miles into the blue.
The wind ruffles through his hair.
Below him, in the valley, green meadows, brown fields and autumn forests roll out into a colorful patchwork quilt.
Behind the little church of Großhöhenrain on the next hill rises, as if it were directly behind it, the Alpine chain.
Riedl takes a deep breath.
“Anyone who has such a beautiful view also builds beautiful furniture,” says the 48-year-old.
A customer once said that to him.
The saying stuck.
Sawing, planing, gluing in a postcard idyll
Where he does a carpenter, next to the lonely church tower of Jakobsbaiern in the municipality of Baiern, there could just as well be a panorama hotel.
Instead, Riedl, the senior carpenter Sepp Eglseder, the journeyman Christian Hellmair and the apprentice Jakob Litsch have the amazing view for themselves.
The quartet saws, planes and glues in a postcard idyll.
Franz Xaver Riedl left the damp November cold outside on this day and strolled into the joinery, where the wood chip heating provides warmth.
There is enough heating material.
The sun shines through the windows.
Their light floods the entire workshop.
It falls over the workbenches in the south-facing windows onto the wooden planks leaning against the wall, the wide-belt sander, the glue stand.
There are not many machines in the workshop.
“But the basic equipment,” says Riedl.
Caribbean flair in Jakobsbaiern
Wood dust wafts through the sun-soaked air as a thin, yellowish mist.
Rupert Holmes sings “If you like Piña Colada” from the radio on the shelf - a bit of Caribbean flair in Jakobsbaiern, which apparently also caught the bikini bathing beauties who loll on the wall on the calendar sheets of a tool manufacturer.
Riedl has no eye for her right now.
He runs his fingertips over metal drawer handles and panels made of solid wild oak.
He is currently working on a cloakroom facility.
Cupboard, seat and drawers.
Customization is his business, regardless of whether it's kitchens, corner benches or wall coverings.
His workshop colleague, Sepp Eglseder (63), is standing next to him and nods in appreciation.
“This is the only way you can keep up with the big ones,” he says.
The senior carpenter has leased the workshop to his younger colleagues, but still works in it himself.
“Smaller things,” he says and laughs.
"So that I don't get in the way."
Dream scenery leads to strange business
The bespoke joinery against a dream backdrop has already led to strange deals, says master joiner Riedl.
A customer from Mainz (Rhineland-Palatinate) called him once, saying she absolutely wanted a solid wood kitchen from Bavaria, Jakobsbaiern, more precisely.
At first he declined with thanks, the Rhineland was too far for him.
A few days later another call: the woman had booked a hotel room in Munich, did not give up and finally got her kitchen.
“She fell in love with the area,” says Riedl.
"That was huge."
This is not only the case for Mainz kitchen fans.
There is a lively surge of hikers, walkers and picnickers around the joinery, especially on weekends.
“It's like at Tegernsee,” says Riedl.
The sensational view, plus the ensemble with the church tower and the surrounding farms, is Upper Bavaria idyll on the verge of overdose.
Hardly any more space at the snack bar
On their snack bench on the south side of the joiner's workshop, the carpenters hardly have any more space to make a snack: the craftsmen observe up to ten "table changes" per day from inside.
“We look through the window at the plate,” says the carpenter with a smile.
The fact that the bank squatters no longer even ask if they can squat down - they have come to terms with that.
Many prospect-mad people come from Munich.
Riedl suspects that his snack bank somehow ended up as an insider tip in an online travel guide.
And with public insider tips it's just that kind of thing.
Somehow the four craftsmen understand that people make a pilgrimage to them in the Bairer Winkl.
"When the mountains are right there at Föhn, that's something very special," says Christian Hellmaier (45), the journeyman who has been lifting, grinding and screwing in Jakobsbaiern for 21 years.
From the workbench he looks at the Wendelstein.
And on November days like this, a sea of fog sometimes billows beneath him in the valley that he feels like he is above the clouds.
Those who work in paradise don't need to move on.
If the carpenters get hold of a place on their snack bench for a half-time after work, the view doesn't get boring for them.
The shadows, the sunset, the clouds, the leaves and the mountains: “Every day is different,” says Riedl.
He lives only a few meters away, has been the leaseholder of the workshop for exactly 20 years - and still can't get enough of the daily roar of the picture-perfect Upper Bavaria.
Our home visit to Grafing's ex-mayor Rudolf Heiler
Our home visit to former District Administrator Gottlieb Fauth
Collaboration: Raffael Scherer