Hey everyone. It's Labor Day in the US and mskate and I decided to have a little get away to Frankenmuth Michigan. I used to go there all the time with my grandparents (both of them) and we went there for a little honeymoon the days after we got married. It's a fun little German community that has the largest Christmas store in the world (or something like that, Bronner's is huge) and 2 indoor water park resort things, and of course, the 2 chicken dinner restaurants Bavarian Inn and Zender's. When I was a kid the big thing was going to the Bavarian Inn Lodge (one of the resorts) and swimming in the pools, playing mini-golf, and enjoying the arcade, and for dinner going to the Bavarian Inn restaurant in the Grimm Brother's dining room for the chicken dinner (or grilled cheese for me) and watching the glockenspiel tell the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamlin. We'd also go to the castle shops in the basement of the Bavarian Inn and go to Bronner's at night to see the light show. Sometimes we would replace the Bavarian Inn Lodge with the Bavarian Inn Haus, which was a cheaper hotel that just had a normal pool and some arcade games, but the fun place was the Lodge. That did change when Zender's bought the hotel and put in an indoor water pack and called it "Zender's Splash Villiage," and we went there 2 or 3 times and it was really fun. We also occasionally replaced the Bavarian Inn with Zender's, which would also have chicken dinners (and kids menus for me) and gift shops in the basement, but it didn't have the glockenspiel show. That was mostly with my maternal grandparents, with my paternal grandparents it was primarily a day trip where we would go to the river place and play at the Bee Bee Arcade, and then have dinner at the Bavarian Inn in the Piper Alcove private room, and when they had wedding anniversary parties it would be at the big party room in the basement of Zender's. Despite being such a "large" small tourist city with lots of attractions, that was basically all we ever did though. When mskate and I went there for our wedding getaway we would have done a lot of other things, but it was still covid so we weren't able to do a whole lot and stayed in an airBNB that was just outside the city.
Anyway, this time we were going to do things a little differently, see a different side of Frankenmuth. Unlike all previous trips, we were going to stay at the Marv Herzog hotel in down town Frankenmuth (the big hotels are kind of outside the main city just due to how big they are), and we were going to explore a lot of the downtown shopping available. One of the main things we wanted to do was buy things for a raffle basket for our church's Octoberfest, doing a Frankenmuth themed basket with things from Bavarian Inn, Zender's, and other places like Cheese Haus and Kerns. Another thing we had to do was take the coocoo clock we "inherited" from my grandma (she's still alive but in memory care and we're cleaning out her house) to the clock repair shop since I know the hands didn't work properly and probably had some other problems (it's the same place they would take it to get repaired). We left mid-morning on Sunday, a little later than we would have wanted (because I stayed up late playing Lego Pirates of the Caribbean due to it being the last day to play on Luna with Prime Gaming), but still made it up in good time. We got up around noon and wanted to eat at the Bavarian Inn, and tried to find parking but since it was Labor Day weekend the place was packed, so we instead went to our hotel. It was before our room was ready but they let us park in the underground parking. I'll get to the details of the Marv Herzog hotel and why it's so interesting when we get our room, for now I'll just say that it's a 38 room hotel and the underground parking structure is like 1 level with multiple but not many parking spots under the hotel, that wasn't very good for our large vehicle.
Now the time is "a little after 12 noon," meaning the 12PM Bavarian Inn Glockenspiel Show has already started. The Marv Herzog hotel is in downtown Frankenmuth, but kind of on the opposite side of where the Bavarian Inn is. I knew it was a long shot, but I wanted to at least try to make part of the 12PM show. Unfortunately for me mskate and I just missed it and they started the German telling of the tale, which is just saying the tale in German, no figures coming out. It wasn't that bad though, there were still 3 other shows that day (3PM, 6PM, and 9PM) and I just need to see it once as part of my tradition (for which I'll give more details later). Seeing that we missed the show we just went to lunch at the restaurant. Even for it being a crowded holiday weekend we were seated really quickly, like I don't think we had to wait at all. We ended up sitting under the Cinderella mural. Mskate had a gluten free chicken lunch with mashed potatoes and ice cream as a substituted side, and I had a bratwurst and sauerkraut lunch with French fries. While we waited we had the special restaurant bread, mskate had gluten free white bread and I had the white bread and fruit bread called stolen bread. I had 3 pieces of each type of bread, and then got some more that we saved for later. I ended up taking the bread and some of my fries home, and mskate took some of her chicken home.
After lunch it was time for shopping. First things first, we're at the Bavarian Inn so we went to the castle shops in the basement. When I was a kid they had a console TV with couches and chairs around it for people to wait (probably men waiting for their wives to finish shopping in my guess, it was always a sports game after all, lol). Times change but they still have the couches and chairs just it's around a flat screen TV (that was showing a sports thing). We didn't watch it, I just wanted to say they still do that. We went to the candy store since it is like the first place, I got a DBZ candy tin and mskate got harry potter fruit snacks, nothing for our church basket though. We passed by the toy store since while we like toys and games and going to toy stores we didn't need to shop there right now. We went to the "everything gift store" looking for Frankenmuth branded things, and while we found some cool stuff it wasn't "quite right, maybe later but not now." We went to the bakery and found some good things; egg noodles like what they serve in the restaurant, chicken seasoning like what they have in the restaurant, pretzel mix, and spicy German mustard that's packaged in a beer mug style jar, all Bavarian Inn branded. We then started on our way back to the hotel with plans to do some shopping as we wait for the hotel to be ready. We went to a gift shop called "Frank's Muth" (obvious name is obvious) to see if there were any good things to put in the basket, but there wasn't (we almost bought "Franks mix" popcorn but that was too expensive, and probably wouldn't have kept that well). We also went to the Frankenmuth Historical museum gift shop but still nothing. Oh well.
Before we went to the hotel we went to the Cheese Haus, a large cheese store. This is a very iconic store, one with a large mouse inside a wedge of cheese as a statue. It sells like every kind of cheese, including their own special flavor of cheddar (which they had out for samples, and it was good), and chocolate cheese. It supposedly is good, but I'm not brave enough to try it. By the location to buy the cheese they also have a cheese fridge with glass windows where we could see the cheddar they were aging (they had some that was over 10 and 15 years old) and cheese sculptures. They also have "cheese accessories" like crackers and wine for sale, and candy and accessories. We got a wedge of Frankenmuth cheddar for ourselves and a Cheese Haus magnet/coaster for the basket. As we were leaving the store we saw the Cheese Haus figurinespiel, a show where they have carved characters come out of the tower of the store and talk about the cheeses from around the world. It was pretty cool, and I'm surprised I never knew about it until now given how much I liked the Bavarian Inn glockenspiel (I vaguely remember seeing it when driving past the store, but never actually watching it). There are 3 very plausible theories about why I first saw it when I was 31 instead of any of the other 26 years between now and when I first went to Frankenmuth; first is that it's a new show and wasn't around when I was 5-12 when the Bavarian Inn glockenspiel was "the biggest thing" to me (a sign suggests it was installed in 2018, and I couldn't find any information online of when it was installed), second is that we never really went to the cheese haus when I was a kid and therefore didn't know about it (we basically went to Bavarian Inn or Zender's, the big resort hotels we were staying at, and Broner's, and never really made it up that way), or my grandparents were so busy and burnt out with satisfying my desire to see go to the Bavarian Inn show and scheduling everything around seeing it that they didn't want to throw in another show to obsess over (Bavarian Inn is 9AM, 12PM, 3PM, 6PM, and 9PM, Cheese Haus is 9AM, 11AM, 2PM, 5PM, and 8PM). When I sent pictures and videos to my parents my mom said "this is the first I'm hearing about this show, I need to see it next time I go there."
It's now 2PM and our room was supposed to be ready at 3, but we figured we'd try anyway (we needed to drop off our purchases and it could be in the room or in the car). We got lucky and our room was ready early, so we checked in, got our room, and unloaded our purchases. This was good because we needed to keep the cheese and left overs cold and the hotel room had a refrigerator. Now that the food was in the fridge we went to Bronner's. Mskate REALLY likes Christmas and Christmas decorating, so this is like her favorite store. For those who don't know, it's basically all that Christmas has to offer, if they don't have it it probably doesn't exist. The place is sectioned into different areas for every category (artificial trees, tree lights, flags, ornaments by color, ornaments by country, ornaments by profession, ornaments by hobby, ornaments by pet, ornaments by occasion such as anniversary and baby and birthday, religious ornaments, ornaments meant for personalization, Christmas stockings some for personalization, Christmas tree skirts, sports team themed decorations, nativities, Christmas village pieces, precious moments figures, santa costumes, and so much more), so big that there are 3 different entrances. We had some things we needed to get; a little tree for my grandma in her new memory care apartment, an Octoberfest ornament for our church basket, and then see what other things would be good for people. We found a great 2 foot pre-lit tree for her, perfect for the few super special ornaments she'll have at her small apartment. We also found a good Octoberfest ornament in the Germany section of the ornaments. We wanted to find some Bavarian people in the personalization section so we could say "[church name] Octoberfest 2024" but we couldn't find it so we just got a beer stein that said "Octoberfest." We also found some ornaments for friends and family. When we made it to the back we explored the Hummel figure and Precious Moments figure collection. It was pretty cool, and the employee there was able to tell us some more about the figures and show us how they had some molds for the precious moments. It was pretty cool having someone who was into it. After that we checked out and then went onto the next thing.
I'm not exactly sure if this was "the exact next thing," but at some point mskate and I drove up past where our hotel was and went to the Rite Aid that was closing down (because the entire chain of pharmacies are bankrupt and closing down, and everything is on major clearance). We've found that mskate really likes the knock off pedialite electrolyte drink, and when it's so discounted it works so well to stock up on. It's also a good opportunity to pick up on stuff to donate; at some other rite aids I picked up a bunch of baby and toddler things for baby drives, and mskate found some things that she really likes and wanted to give to a parent in need, and I found a can of chili and beans that is great to give to people on the side of the road. Then we found some "purse antacids" (little rolls of them), which we needed since they're good to have in case you need them. We saved like $100 on the discounts on things that we'll use in the coming months or give away to different supply drives. Yay. After the Rite Aid we drove up even farther to see the Bavarian McDonalds that's up in the north part of town. I don't think there's anything super special about it, they just have some Bavarian architecture and a clock tower.
With everything unpacked we relaxed in the room for a little while, and then at 5PM we went down to the evening happy hour. This is when I was able to really explore the hotel. The Marv Herzog hotel is one of the original hotels in Frankenmuth, and that kind of shows with how there are only 38 rooms in the building, and even though it's definitely been renovated since then, it still feels old, particularly with all the rooms having small balconies. The hotel is also kind of themed after the founder, Marv Herzog. He's a famous accordion player and has one of his accordions on display with some other music accessories along with him celebrating Octoberfest and some other cool stuff, and in the convenience shop they had his music on CDs and cassette tape (yeah, cassette tape, some polka loving hipster is going to be super happy when he goes to the Marv Herzog hotel), and in our room there was a little history thing. For those who know the Drurry Inn, Marv was friends with the founder and they implemented a lot of similar things, most notably the happy hour snack times with 2 free alcoholic drinks and food. Drurry Inn typically gives you "real food" like baked potatoes and chicken, but Marv Herzog only offered cheese and crackers with summer sausage and pretzels. I ended up having enough cheese and summer sausage to have something close to a meal with my glass of wine. Mskate and I enjoyed our psudo-meal on the back patio as we overlooked the river. We saw 3 boats as we sat out there, one of which was the paddle boat tour along the river, and the other 2 were smaller things. It was a good little thing.
With dinner done mskate and I went out to do more shopping. We went to a fudge store that had gluten free fudge for mskate. We were going to get 2 things of fudge, but then saw it was buy 3 get 1 free, so we got a piece for each of our parents. I got Michigan pothole flavor, mskate got birthday cake flavor, my parents got chocolate and peanut butter, and her parents got mint chocolate chip. It was a pretty cool store, lots of different flavors. I also got some paper hat souvenirs, one for me, one for mskate, one for the basket. We also went to a country store that looked pretty cool, and even though they had lots of neat stuff the only things we got were a compact mirror for my grandma and a big pickle that can only be found in places like this. For the sake of "event consistency" I'll talk about the other stores we went to, the covered bridge shop and the Zender's basement shops. At the covered bridge shop we found a pocket knife with vikingpolak's name on it (not that, his real name), and we got that for his Christmas present. We went to the Zender's shops and found some seasonings, a vinegarette, and apple cherry butter, all Zender's brand. While in the basement I showed mskate where we had my grandparents anniversary parties, and when we went back up to the main dining room level I showed mskate how they have an old console TV cabinet with a flat pannel TV put in it for guests to watch while waiting. It's a pretty creative way to use the old technology as it has an "old time home feel" but is compatible with modern technology. Here's some video.
OK, now it's time for "what Frankenmuth was to me as a kid," the Bavarian Inn Glockenspiel where they tell the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin. When I was really little this was easily my favorite thing. It's a show where there are statues that act along with the story as it's being recited, and it's simple enough for a 4-5 year old to follow but not fully understand. I absolutely loved it and wanted to see it as often as I could, with my grandparents building their schedule around seeing the 9AM, 12 PM, 3PM, and 6PM show. One thing that I didn't understand as a small child is that the 2 that were left behind escaped the wrath of the piper, and was sad that they didn't get to be part of the fun, always saying "and 2 were left behind." The funny thing is that the recording is the same it's been for 25+ years, and there's an audio glitch on "disappeared from the city forever." It's just tradition at this point that I watch at least 1 performance. We got there right as the announcer was saying where the figures came from and the bells came from, and how it all works and what the story is. We didn't miss anything. The show was still the same, the piper showed up when Hamlin had the rat infestation and asked for a penny for each rat removed, he charmed the rats and lead them into a river where they drowned, the town was afraid that it was an act of witchcraft and refused to pay, the piper then took revenge by leading the children of the town into a mountain where they disappeared from the city forever, and 2 were left behind. When the 2 that were left behind came out I took a picture and sent it to my family group text as an in joke. If you go you have to see it.
It's now 6:45PM and we're now done with all the shopping for the day and were ready for a calm night. Since we made it back before the end of the happy hour mskate and I each had our second free glass of wine and a couple more snacks and just enjoyed in the room. We just hung out in the room watching some Paralympic coverage and Harry Potter Tournament of Houses episodes on demand. Since the happy hour wasn't "super filling" we had our left overs from lunch (mskate had her chicken, I had my fries and bread, cold since we didn't have any microwave safe dishes, but still good). At about 9PM we went to Bronner's to drive through the light displays. This was something my grandparents would take me to when we stayed over, it's a cool display of snow men, santas, elves, polar bears, nut crackers, and similar Christmas icons, some of which have limited animations like the snowman waving and a flag waving. A lot of the lights are the same things I saw as a kid, which is pretty cool. One of the funny things is if you drive close to the store and roll your window down you can hear the music they're playing. I didn't know they did that, probably because we generally didn't go when it was warm enough to open the windows. After that little outing we went back to the room and turned in for the night.
It's now Monday morning. Mskate and I go down to the lobby and have the continental breakfast. I have one and a half waffles and some breakfast potatoes. There wasn't really much for mskate, so we went across the street to a cafe that has gluten free breakfast sandwiches. It was pretty cool. I want to say the name was like "Coffee Haus," and it had some really cool theming. With sandwich in hand we went down to the shopping district to maybe get some popcorn for the basket, but unfortunately everything opens at 10 or 11AM. That was annoying because it's like 9AM, meaning we had an hour before things started opening up. Oh well, we watched the Cheese Haus Figurinespiel, which was fun. Afterwards we walked up past our hotel and looked at what else was there. We saw some little stores that had apartments above them, so the owners probably lived above the stores. We also walked past the record store, which is only open for like 3 hours on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It was in what looked to be an old courthouse or something with pillars, so I wonder how they can afford the rent by being open so little. We also walked by the Frankenmuth Brewery, a brewery that seems to have been converted into a restaurant. Might be a place to try out some time. We went back to the hotel and watched some more Tournament of Houses.
Once things opened up we checked out and went to Bronner's one last time, just because we needed to get a tree skirt for the mini tree and to see if there was any good garland that would be good to hang up in grandma's apartment. There wasn't any garland, but we did find a juice box ornament for mskate since she's all about her juice boxes. With that out of the way we went back to town and went to the river place for some end of trip shopping. Unfortunately they weren't open yet, but right across the street was Frankenmuth Clock and German Gift Co and they were open. I took the clock in and asked if they do repairs. I told them what I thought was wrong and the clock repair man had a look and said "your hour hand is just loose and 1 hour off, just a quick little tighten and it should be good to go." He set it 5 till and said "look around for 5 minutes and we'll see if it needs to stay for repair." This is when mskate and I looked around the store. Now I want you to think of "a clock store," a store that sells gravity powered coocoo clocks, battery powered modern clocks, and clock adjacent things like wind up music boxes. This place is that, wall to wall clocks of all varieties, standing cabinets of music boxes and old time German display pieces, and a couple free standing grandfather clocks. It was so cool. The times on the clocks were all incorrect and different so you don't have a giant blare of coocoos going off at the same time, but whatever. 5 minutes passed and our coocoo went off without a hitch. Since there wasn't any "real work" done we weren't charged, so we thanked them and said we'd definitely bring the clock back here when the time comes when it does need to be fixed. Such a cool store and really nice people, highly recommend checking them out.
It's 11PM and The River Place is now open. We checked the directory and these were the places we wanted to go:
- Zak and Mac's Chocolate Haus
- Tervis
- The Stadium
- River Place Game Room
- Bead Haven
- The Michigan Shoppe
- Sugar High bakery
- Hello Cats and Dogs
- La Crepe du Jour
We also stopped in Extra Virgin Olive Store, Pepper Place, and Popcorn Wagon Frankenmuth. Based on where we entered we went to Sugar High first. They have a wide variety of gluten free stuff which was good for mskate, and she got the last cake pop. It's a pretty cool store, looks really cool and has a wide variety of baked goods. Zak and Mac's Chocolate Haus was pretty close to Sugar High, and I wanted to go there since one time I got a half pound peanut butter cup from there. Unfortunately they didn't have those peanut butter cups anymore, but they had this automatic piano thing that was over 100 years old, and someone put in a quarter and I got to see it in use.
Next on our adventure was Bead Haven, Extra Virgin Olive Store, The Stadium, and River Place Game Room. Bead Haven was just a little thing to look for beads for friends for life friendship bracelets and a friend who's into crafting to see if it would be a good place for her. We didn't find any beads for next year's bracelets, but we do think it would be a good place for our friend who's crafty. Extra Virgin was an impulse, it was across from bead haven and I just wanted to look inside. I tried 2 of their vinegars and they were pretty good. If I knew what to use the flavored vinegars for I would get some, but I'm not sure what they're used for so I didn't get any. We also went to The Michigan Shoppe to see if they had any good Frankenmuth things for the basket, but alas no. Since we were close to the arcade we went there next. When I was a kid the place was huge, many arcade machines and this giant ball thing where you there are many different things to do with these nerf like balls. I don't really know how to describe it, but it was really fun. It's been downsized by a lot, now just some arcade machines, not that far off from what we find at chuck e cheese, and they don't have the Super Mario pinball machine anymore. If it was still a token system or used quarters and I could get like $1 of fun I would have played some games, but it needed a play card and it was kind of expensive so I'm like "I'll pass." When we went to The Stadium that's where things were successful. It's a "nerd game" store, a place that sells board games and trading card games, and some plushies and comic books. The staff was "what you'd expect" from modern nerds (I can say that because I'm just as much one if not more) and I feel like saying that because 2 video game stores by me are staffed by gym bro looking guys. We bought A Goofy Movie the Board Game, mostly just because we like the music and listen to the soundtrack regularly, and it'll make for a good present.
OK now for the fun lunch, a crepe at La Crepe du Jour. They had all sorts of different sweet and savory crepes available, some more hearty than others. I was going to get a pepperoni pizza crepe but then I saw the Bavarian crepe (bratwurst, sauerkraut, and spicy German mustard). I made my order and watched them make some crepes. It was kind of busy so it took 30 minutes for my crepe to be ready. While I waited mskate went to Cherry Republic and Hello Cats and Dogs by herself. It was really fun watching the crepes get made as there's some artistry to how to spread the batter, crack and spread the egg for the savory crepes, flipping, and folding the toppings in. There was an 8 year old boy watching with his dad, and I'm only now realizing that I was looking at me 22 years ago since I loved watching food get made at restaurants. Once mskate did her shopping we just sat down and played on our phones waiting for my name to get called. The crepe was well worth the wait, maybe it's just my German heritage that makes me really like bratwurst with sauerkraut and mustard, but boy oh boy did it taste good. The crepe base was pretty good and I could tell since the edges didn't have much filling, but when I got to the fillings oh man. Highly recommend.
We're now on the way back to the car. We stop in Popcorn Wagon Frankenmuth to see if there's any gourmet popcorn of interest, but there wasn't. I've had it before and it's kind of worth it, but we didn't see anything that looked good this time. We went to the Tervis mug store since we like their mugs and water bottles, making good gifts for my parents since they use their Tervis mugs all the time and end up breaking or losing it just with heavy use (and even if not it's good to have backups). We didn't find anything for my parents, but we did find a water bottle for mskate and a Frankenmuth mug for the basket. It was quite successful. Then before leaving I went to Pepper Place, a hot sauce store. I went in knowing I wouldn't buy any because I need to finish some of my bottles of hot sauce before I buy more, but it was still good to sample since I know I'll be back and ready to buy in the future. Afterwards my mouth was angry at me for eating the hot stuff, and the drive to our next place was a little uncomfortable.
Before heading home we stopped at Kerns, a grocery store on the way in that has a Bavarian guy holding a large sausage. It's like the first thing you see when getting to the main strip of the city (Broner's and Splash Village are kind of outside the city), so I figured it would be worth checking out. Unfortunately it was kind of "just a small grocery store;" boxes of cereal, cans of vegetables, fresh produce, a butcher counter, and the like. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't that. There is a cool story behind it though, like it's THE original grocery store in the city, operated by the Kerns family for 4 generations, the cashier's great grandpa was the founder. It's a pretty neat story, and a cool quaint grocery, but it's not necessarily "a destination."
We've now done everything in Frankenmuth that we want to on this visit, so we left and looked at things on the way out. There's a funky looking diner and a cool looking mini golf course right outside the city. I have faint memories of going to a diner with my grandparents that might have been that diner, and though I've played a lot of mini-golf over the years I have a memory that is similar to what I can see from the road. No certainty, but on one of our future trips I can see us going there. We went to Birch Run outlet mall right outside Frankenmuth so mskate could go to Lulu Lemon since she loves those clothes and the outlet makes it cheap. The store was kind of crowded so I found a bench outside and just watched youtube on my phone using the store wifi. Since I wanted a little more after my crepe I went to Wendy's and used my reward points and promo tag to get a free small fry and jr frosty, I almost went to Halo Burger since it's right there but they are so slow and I had the Wendy's rewards so everything was free (and I like free). Since mskate hadn't had lunch yet and we needed gas we went to the Pita Pit that's connected to a speedway. Mskate got her pita and I got gas, and after that we just went home. Really fun trip, and it makes for a great little get away that isn't super expensive. Next time we'll try some other things, like maybe that mini golf or diner, possibly staying at one of the resorts. Well this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.
Oh, and here's ALL the videos since many had difficulty uploading to the blogger server.
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