Simone and the Landhaus am Stein. How a fabric appointment became my third home

Some addresses you find in travel guides. The best ones you find through people. I owe my favourite address on Lake Tegernsee to a woman who walked into my shop in Winterhude many years ago, carrying fabric samples: Simone Schnoor.

It began with Designers Guild

During my years at Poelchaukamp I had fallen for Designers Guild, the English fabrics and wallpapers with their wonderful colours. Simone was the sales representative who visited me at my shop in Winterhude. We got along right away. Appointments turned into conversations, and over the years the conversations turned into a friendship.

On one of her visits she told me something that would change my travel life: her aunt owned a hotel in Bad Wiessee on Lake Tegernsee, and Simone was going to join the business.

A farewell and a beginning

I should add that Lake Tegernsee was already familiar ground for me. Since 1980 I had loved going to Rottach-Egern and staying at the Bachmair am See. When that beautifully situated house closed its doors, something was missing for me down there. So I was thrilled when Simone told me about her family’s hotel. On our first visit, the warmth of the house won us over immediately. The Landhaus am Stein has been our fixed quarters at the lake ever since, at least once a year, often more.

After some time Simone took over the house completely and shaped it to her own ideas. Warm and cosy, with a fine sense of quality. The bed linen, for instance, comes from Evelyn Kahle, the kind of fine textiles that I, as a shopkeeper, have to touch the moment I see them. You can feel in every room that someone with an interior background furnished this place. Today her husband supports her in the house, and at her side is Silke, Simone’s right hand, who anticipates our every wish. Most guests have been regulars for years, and almost all of the staff have been there for a long time. In the hotel world, that says a great deal.

Coffee and Rosi’s cake

When we arrive today, the first thing is always coffee and a slice of Rosi’s homemade cake. It is a tradition. We sit in the garden, Simone joins us, and we catch up on the news from the lake. Usually she has already booked a table for us, preferably the duck with red cabbage and dumplings at the Weissachalm, for me the best duck I know. Or she has a new restaurant tip, and we gladly follow it.

The tips, by the way, go both directions. Simone is a great fan of Italy, so I get the occasional supplier hint for my concept store from her. In return I bring her my discoveries from Paris. Two women who never quite stopped passing beautiful things to each other. That is how it was in the Designers Guild days, and that is how it still is.

Breakfast deserves its own chapter. After a morning swim in the indoor pool we look forward to it every single time, and it never disappoints.

Celebrating at the lake

Many of our family celebrations have taken place at Simone’s. One birthday I remember with particular fondness: we rented a bus, Chris drove it himself, he does hold a bus licence, and so we rolled from Hamburg to Lake Tegernsee with twelve friends. A whole weekend at the Landhaus, with a stop at the Weissachalm, a boat ride across the lake and, to finish, an evening at the Braeustueberl in Tegernsee.

We also celebrated my mother’s 70th birthday at the Landhaus, with the whole family: me with my family, my sister with hers, and of course my father. My sister and I had devised a scavenger hunt around the lake, and in the evening there was dinner at Simone’s hotel. Anyone who knows the house knows what that means: the Landhaus is a bed-and-breakfast hotel, a dinner there is a true exception. My mother raved about that weekend for years. That is what great hospitality feels like.

The heart at the bottom of the pool

While swimming I like to look at the mosaic on the floor of the pool: an interlaced double heart. For a long time I took it for a pretty ornament, until Simone explained that it is the Seelaub, the emblem of the Tegernsee valley. A stylised water lily leaf that adorned the founding coat of arms of Tegernsee Abbey more than 1250 years ago. It stands for the bond between the people of the valley and their lake. At the Landhaus it appears everywhere, on the breakfast cups, in the pool, on the rock in front of the house. Look closely and you can read the motto of the house in it: here, warmth is the coat of arms.

Football history in the guesthouse

One more anecdote, which I am especially fond of as the daughter of a footballer: the house was built in 1976 by Neudecker, then president of FC Bayern Munich, as the club’s guesthouse. Maier, Mueller, Hoeness and Beckenbauer stayed here during training camps. Where the Bayernstueberl is today, strategies were discussed and victories celebrated. It was only in 2001 that Simone, her aunt Christl and Margarethe came to the valley and turned the house into the Landhaus am Stein. The name, by the way, comes from their home address in Poppenhausen an der Wasserkuppe.

If you go

The Landhaus am Stein sits quietly on the edge of Bad Wiessee, a five-minute walk along the brook to the lakeshore. Twenty rooms, a fine spa with pool and a Swiss stone pine relaxation room, and the breakfast I mentioned. If you want to see more of the valley: I have written down my favourite places around the lake in my Tegernsee post, from the Gmund paper mill to the Freihaus Brenner.

Diesen Beitrag auf Deutsch lesen: Simone und das Landhaus am Stein. Wie aus einer Stoffmuster-Beratung meine dritte Heimat wurde

The three-homes series continues. Hamburg and Paris will follow in the coming weeks.

Until then, you can look behind the scenes of my bookbinding atelier, into the letterpress workshop and into the embossing studio in Hamburg-Lokstedt. And for the Paris bracket: how a Paris map is made in my atelier.

Personalised gifts and paper work from the atelier are available in the Concept Store.

Trixi Gronau has run her Concept Store in Hamburg-Lokstedt with its own print atelier since 1995. In the nineties a regular at Susanne Otto (then the only Chanel address in Hamburg, Milchstraße), at Boutique Amica run by Ina Gärtner, and at Chippis Bazar run by Mary Burose. Invited to vernissages at Galerie Levy (Pop Art and Surrealism, Hamburg-Pöseldorf).

Warmly, from Hamburg