Nine beds, one suitcase
This was the trip that tested whether a different bed every night is a feature or a cost. The answer, by the sixth move, was cost — but the compensation was that each village brewery was a place you slept in, not a place you visited.
Essing set the tone: a hotel built into the rock above the Danube gorge, with the brewery tap downstairs and nothing to do after dark but drink. Traunstein and Nesselwang followed the same logic, smaller and quieter.
The Allgäu leg was the surprise. Missen-Wilhams and Nesselwang are not on any beer route; they are villages with a brewery and a guesthouse, and the beer is better than it has any right to be at that scale.
The Munich week
Seven nights in Munich at the end was the correction to 2020. Instead of a new town, a new list: Andechs, Freising and Weihenstephan, Wildbräu in Grafing, Schweiger in Markt Schwaben, the Forschungsbrauerei in Perlach, and the ordinary Munich rooms — Augustiner, Schneider, Paulaner, the Viktualienmarkt.
October turning into November is the best week for this: the beer gardens are still open on the good days, the chestnuts are roasting, and the city has not yet started Christmas.