Bavarian way of life Jun 12, 2017

Bavarian work-life balance: which one of you is going to take off into the air?

When work is over there are some days in the year when I jump onto my bike that I left in front of the office extremely energetically and pedal home just that little bit faster than usual. It’s the anticipation that spurs me on. The anticipation that dinner will have to wait for now today and the gap will have to be bridged with a few bananas because today I’m going to lose the ground from under my feet.

At home, I swap by shirt and leather shoes for a functional top and running trousers – it’s going to get sweaty. The others who are already waiting for me at the motorway junction south of Munich, with a big grin on their faces too, are also aware of this. We load all the backpacks into a car here and drive together towards the mountains, one of which we want to climb up today. But what we don’t want to do is climb down. Not because we’ve planned a bivouac, no, our sleeping bags and gas cookers are not in our backpacks today – what we do have though: paragliders!

The roughly 10 kg of equipment that we have stored in our backpacks in addition to our change of clothes and a few provisions well and truly digs into the thighs on the climb up but the view from a peak that you’ve climbed on foot is then just a little bit more beautiful as a result. As it is today too: we arrive at the take-off site in a wonderful warm evening light with a pleasant breeze coming towards us from the alpine foothills that promises a lovely start. Tegernsee lake sparkles in the valley before us and further away on the horizon we can see Munich and just imagine our colleagues rounding off the evening in the beer garden at the moment. Also a tempting thought. When we think of our colleagues in Nuremberg and the fried sausages we associate with them at the latest, our stomachs let us know that the bananas to bridge the gap slowly need to be followed by something decent now.

We therefore reluctantly drag ourselves away from the magical view, as only flying is more beautiful, and lay our gliders out on the meadow, sort out the lines and raise them in the wind with a few quick steps just before sunset. Just a few more steps down the slope and our weight is carried completely by the few kilos of fabric above us and we glide into the valley with the day’s last few rays of sun. Simply amazing.

Fancy a go?


If you want to settle here with your company and take a breather after your daily business in just the same way, the entire team at Invest in Bavaria will be happy to assist you further.

All you need is the licence: admittedly, you can’t complete the training overnight, it’s comparable to the driving licence, but there is no doubt that the effort is worth it.

You can find a database with all the flying schools here from the DHV (German Hanggliding Association). Most of them offer tandem flights too, which is the perfect introduction to the sport and an ideal way to find out whether you want to complete the training. The DHV also clearly lists where you can take off – so you can already daydream about which take off point is nearest