Bernhard and Katharina Büchler have lived on the first floor of the Seeshaupter station building for over 30 years.
The couple told the local newspaper what it is like to live right next to the train tracks, whether it is very noisy and how the building is used in other ways.
Seeshaupt
- What is it like to live in a train station building? Bernhard Büchler and his wife Katharina can answer this question very precisely. The couple has lived at Bahnhofsplatz 1 in Seeshaupt for over 30 years. “For 30 years, a month and 8 days,” the 73-year-old specified at the beginning of October. On September 1, 1990, the family moved to the first floor of the reception building and still live there today.
The Büchler couple had come to the ground floor to reopen the kitchenz studio.
There is not much reminiscent of the former use of the 156-year-old house.
You can still see the platforms and the ticket machine through the window panes, but the waiting hall and the counter for train travelers inside the building have disappeared.
The old signal box was also removed.
Instead, you can now marvel at the kitchens of the Peitingen entrepreneur Christoph Hirschvogel.
Bernhard Büchler and his wife are happy.
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View from the former signal box of the railway tracks.
© EMANUEL GRONAU
“Our greatest fear was that a bar would come in here,” says the head of the lake.
Station bars would seldom close around eight o'clock in the evening.
"And the clientele there isn't exactly the best either."
Life shaped by Deutsche Bahn
It is not the first time that Büchler has lived directly at the train station. “I grew up in a train station,” he says. But not in Upper Bavaria, but in Pappenheim in Franconia. “Until I was around ten years old, we lived right next to the railroad tracks.” Because Bernhard Büchler comes from a family of railway workers - he says both his father and grandfather worked for Deutsche Bahn (DB). So it is not surprising that he too went to DB. Büchler worked in the telecommunications service sector for 38 years. He took over the troubleshooting and maintenance of the systems and was therefore on the road a lot in Bavaria. On his way to work he met his wife Katharina. And how could it be otherwise - they met on the train. "Back then we took the same train to Munich every day," he says. "Then it sparked at some point."
The couple had three children: Christine, Alexandra and Tobias.
The two daughters were no longer living at home when the family moved into the reception building at Seehaupter Bahnhof in 1990.
Only son Tobias lived in the 100 square meter apartment together with his parents.
Life is good at the train station
Today Bernhard and Katharina Büchler live alone on the first floor.
After more than 30 years, they no longer notice the train traffic.
“It's all much quieter than it used to be,” says Katharina Büchler.
“There aren't any whistling conductors either.” Life at the train station doesn't seem to be loud.
"Sometimes there are youngsters screaming at night," says the 71-year-old.
"But then you shout down that the police are being called and it's quiet again." The owner of the house also had soundproof windows built in.
Munich entrepreneur Nikolaus Beiler acquired the building in 2007 and gradually renovated it.
He lives with his family directly above the Büchlers on the second floor.
“He also had the balconies installed,” says Katharina Büchler.
“It was really great to have a balcony during the lockdown.” Because from there you also have the best view of the incoming and outgoing trains.
The garden that originally belonged to the apartment was sold years ago.
The Büchlers are overjoyed with their apartment.
"I never really let go of that from my childhood," says Bernhard Büchler.
“I just wanted to live next to the train tracks again.” This wish was granted to him.
Information on the history of the station building in Seeshaupt:
In 1865 the station building for the
first railway line from Tutzing to Penzberg was
built. The building is a so-called Bavarian cube - a typical early design for reception buildings in Bavaria.
Railway employees have always
lived in the apartments on the first and second floors,
and the originally four residential units have been converted into two over time - one apartment per floor. The brick building was plastered in the 1960s. The
Munich-based entrepreneur Nicholas Beiler
bought the house in 2007 and leased the ground floor to Deutsche Bahn (DB).
There was a waiting hall there until 2012, a DB counter until 2015 and the signal box installed in 1904 was in operation until 2018.
Since then, train traffic has been controlled fully electrically from Weilheim.
A
plaque on the
outside of the house commemorates
the death train of 1945
.
On April 30, US soldiers released 2,000 prisoners from a freight train that had come from the Mühldorf subcamp and was uncoupled in Seeshaupt.
About 80 people did not survive the train.