BAVARIA AMERICAN STYLE : A village in the Pacific Northwest was given new life expressly to amazxe and delight its visitors with Old World sights and sound of music

Can someone tell me, is this Bavaria?

Why is that oompah band tooting away outside my window, and why is everyone milling about in dirndls and lederhosen? And what about the stranger who’s decked out like a cuckoo clock salesman from Garmisch-Partenkirchen? Well, it turns out he’s a dentist from Des Moines, Iowa, who freaks every time he hears a few lines from “Die Meistersinger.” So at the drop of an alpenstock he dresses up like an Alpine yodeler and zeros in on Leavenworth.

Only there are others.

Whenever Leavenworth stages a festival featuring the oompah bands, der sauerbraten und der schnitzels mit dumplings, these Bavaria look-alikes show up sporting their Old World threads and those quaint little green hats with all the medal pinnings.

It’s like a replay of “Sound of Music.” Only without a program it’s hard to tell a peddler passing out pretzels from a member of the Von Trapp family.

In Leavenworth the hills are alive with the sound of the alpenhorn.

As far as Leavenworth is concerned this is Bavaria, an impression that’s been created intentionally. The little village (it’s tucked away among mountains and forests on the eastern slopes of the Cascades, 120 miles beyond Seattle) appears like a movie version of a German Alpine hamlet--or some gingerbread blowup in Austria.

Gazing out my window at the Innsbrucker Motel, it occurs to me that this could be Salzburg without the Salzach, Garmisch without Partenkirchen or Oberammergau without its wood carvers.

With the mountains, the Old World buildings and sidewalks strewn with pots of geraniums, one gets the impression one has been spirited off to some Alpine village in Europe rather than cooling one’s heels in the Icicle Valley here in the Pacific Northwest.

As a result, if you can’t make it to Germany or Austria this summer, consider Leavenworth. Besides avoiding a dreadful case of jet lag, the scenery is strictly Bavarian: A-frames, waterfalls, rampaging rivers and a hotelier who insists on awakening his guests by tooting reveille on his alpenhorn each morning.

While a glockenspiel does its routine beneath the eaves of a Tirolean-style building on Leavenworth’s main drag, a block or so away Bavarian melodies and hot-spiced wine are served up nightly at Reiner’s Gasthaus. Its menu and those at the Edelweis and other Old World restaurants list pork link sausage with sauerkraut, wieners with German potato salad, schnitzels, pfeffersteak, sauerbraten, bratwurst, goulash, Bavarian-style dumplings und huchnerleber und champignons, which is to say chicken livers sauteed with mushrooms.

Shops peddle cuckoo clocks, Swiss watches, Erzgebirge nutcrackers, dirndls, Hummel dolls, Kaiser porcelain, Dresden figurines and German beer steins. The crowds spill over into Der Goldsmith, Der Sportsman and Das Spinnrod, the latter being a shop dealing in knits.

With the budding of birch trees in springtime, Leavenworth puts on a celebration that features parades, a Maypole dance and musical groups performing in a nifty bandstand in the park. Later, thousands arrive for Leavenworth’s Leafest, when buildings are sheathed with autumn leaves and visitors dance in the street to the melodies of oompah bands.

Old Whiskers Visits

During the holiday season 50,000 tiny lights sparkle throughout the village, and a sleigh drawn by Siberian horses carries Old Whiskers down the main drag. In the snowy quiet of evening, the haunting lyrics of “Silent Night” echo through the streets of Leavenworth.

Leavenworth is the town that refused to die. Even after the G2eat Northern Railroad pulled up tracks, the lumber mills shut down and the banks went bust. A mass exodus had begun. Stores stood vacant. Jobs were scarce.

Leavenworth had grown up around the railroad and the sawmill, its streets lined with saloons, boarding houses and cafes. Although in the ‘20s it became the largest city between Seattle and Spokane, by the ‘60s it was just another backwater burg slowly dying of neglect. This was the crisis that brought together Pauline Watson and a group of concerned residents to create--from scratch--a Bavarian village, an ocean and a continent removed from Europe.

Watson and her husband, Owen, remodeled a store along Front Street, put up a Bavarian facade, stocked the shop with gifts and named it Alpen Haus. After this came Tannenbaum’s Gift Shop, and later the Chickamun Hotel was given a face lift and renamed the Edelweiss.

Store Owners Invest

Other businesses followed: the Black Forest restaurant, the Tyrolean Inn, the Bavarian Meadows B&B;, Der Ritterhof Motor Inn, the Edelhaus Inn & Cafe, Das Oak Haus, Die Kunst Galleries & Antiques, Rumpelstiltskin’s and Katzenjammer’s.

Store owners invested their life savings while others borrowed to create the storybook village that now draws crowds year-round.

Heinz Ulbricht, a native Bavarian, provided other designs. The creation of Washington state’s Little Bavaria was accomplished without a nickel of federal aid. Leavenworth had no angels, no philanthropists. Only the determination of a few die-hards with a dream. And it worked.

Without question it’s the most prosperous village on the eastern slope of the Cascades. And even with its Bavarian theme, several years ago it won the title of “the nation’s All-American City.” At the same time, Leavenworth was awarded a $10,000 first prize in competition among garden clubs.

A Magical Town

It’s one of those magical towns so many search for and seldom find, a town without crime or a cop or a jail, where in summertime youngsters fish and dive off a bridge at Riverfront Park by a sign that reads: “No jumping or diving.”

Bees hum and the water carries rafters downstream along with others riding inner tubes through white water and shady glens. It’s a town where the school band entertains in a handsome gazebo facing the Hansel & Gretel Delicatessen (“Our sandwiches are the wurst kind”), the Ugly Duckling Gift Shop and Reiner’s Gasthaus.

Young girls in their summer frocks parade down Front Street, and a rare happiness is sensed by visitors from congested cities who come to feed the soul and clear the mind of ambitions that generate stress.

At the latest Maifest, boys in white shirts and slacks with red cummerbunds and suspenders and girls in bright red dresses sang in a scene that sparked memories of a moment when one’s own special world was less hurried and filled with life’s simple pleasures. Indeed, Leavenworth is a town where locals smile and say hello and “thanks for coming,” a welcome that seems genuinely sincere.

Fame in Old Country

This year the Bavarian village’s fame reached a West German flower exporter who dispatched 16,000 geranium plants as a gift. Along with its Old World Alpine architecture, Leavenworth is known as a showplace of flowers, many of which are displayed in hanging baskets and barrels.

Don May, who bolted from the rat race after turning in his ticket with a major cosmetics firm, wears the title “The Bavarian Caretaker.” As such, he tends the flowers and washes down the sidewalks at dawn. In the process he has discovered the contentment that eluded him in the lofty world of the executive suite. Meanwhile, a group of good-will ambassadors, the Royal Bavarians, all spiffied up in red vests and lederhosen, appear in parades from British Columbia to Honolulu.

In the heart of the village a 25-bell carillon provides Bavarian melodies, the glockenspiel pops off regularly and a snazzy group called the Marlin Handbell Ringers puts in appearances throughout the year.

Wood-Fire Oven

Fresh breads and pastries are produced at Homefires Bakery, where Richard Litzenberger, a former San Fernando Valley schoolteacher, presides over a wood-fire oven designed by a fifth-generation German stove mason. Meanwhile, Tiny’s, a stand on Washington State 2, stocks fresh fruit, berry preserves, smoked salmon, honey, aplets and catlets.

So what does one do in Leavenworth besides swimming and rafting in the Wenatchee and Icicle rivers, listening to oompah bands, studying the “art in the park” and quaffing steins of beer?

The Innsbrucker’s Ken Coffin smiles. “Relax,” says he.

Like May (the caretaker of the flowers), Laura Jobin abandoned the corporate world of high finance and high pressure, traded her sports car for a four-wheel-drive truck and now reigns as top kick at the Leavenworth Chamber of Commerce.

Miss the old life? “You gotta be kidding,” she says.

At last count, Leavenworth could accommodate guests in 337 rooms--hotels, motels, inns and B&Bs.; Its most ambitious shelter is Bob Johnson’s Enzian Motel. Facing Washington State 2, it serves a smashing European breakfast buffet, loans out cross-country skis to in winter and provides privacy for honeymooners in spacious suites with Jacuzzis facing fireplaces. As an aside, it is Johnson who puffs up each morning to blow reveille on his alpenhorn.

With Feather Comforters

Ten years ago Kathryn and Bob Harrild fled the city to open Haus Rohrbach, a charming, three-story Bavarian-style pension that features a dozen rooms, an old-fashioned wood stove, feather comforters and a balcony that faces a swimming pool and meadow where cows and goats graze and ducks paddle about on a pond.

The Harrilds, who describe Haus Rohrbach as a “little bit of Austria,” serve sourdough pancakes, cheesecake, cinnamon rolls, peanut butter pies and sundaes topped with strawberries, peaches, blackberries, plums and raspberries. During winter, guests take to the slopes, cross-country skiing, tobogganing, snowshoeing and sleigh riding.

At Brown’s Farm (host Wendi Brown is a former art teacher), guests share a huge country house with three bedrooms, three baths, a rock fireplace, a dog, a horse, a goat, sheep, three rabbits (at last count) and a rooster (with a full henhouse), plus Wendi’s youngsters--Peter, Jennifer and Emily.

Wendi says: “It all began with a dream when our family decided to build a log house in the woods that’d remind us of picnics in high mountain meadows and walks across the rocks of a tumbling stream.”

And a Wraparound Porch

Guests are welcomed in a log house with a three-gabled roof and a relaxing wraparound porch. Inside there’s a ragtime piano, a fireplace, loads of antiques, country wallpaper and quilts to snuggle under.

All-you-can-eat breakfasts at Brown’s feature French toast, fresh eggs, whole wheat pancakes, homemade jams and jellies, orange juice and coffee. High on a mountainside, Mountain Home Lodge provides a lounge with a fireplace, eight guest rooms, a swimming pool with a hot tub, loads of books, huge breakfasts, help-yourself lunches (homemade soups and sandwiches), hors d’oeuvres in the afternoon and country gourmet dinners. Deer and an occasional bear peer from the forest and eagles soar overhead in a setting as silent as the snowflakes that fall during winter.

Meanwhile, downhill in Leavenworth, the carillon echoes through the little Bavarian village, the glockenspiel does a final turn . . . and the sun slides behind Icicle Mountain.

--The Innsbrucker Motel, 703 Highway 2, Leavenworth, Wash. 98826. Telephone (509) 548-5401. Rates: $40, up.

--Enzian Motel, 590 Highway 2, Leavenworth, Wash. 98826. Telephone (509) 548-5269. Rates: $49/$98.

--Haus Rohrbach, 12882 Ranger Road, Leavenworth, Wash. 98826. Telephone (509) 548-7024. Rates: $55/$65.

--Brown’s Farm, 11150 Highway 209, Leavenworth, Wash. 98826. Telephone (509) 548-7863. Rates: $55/$60.

--Mountain Home Lodge, P.O. Box 687, Leavenworth, Wash. 98826. Telephone (509) 548-7077. Summer rates: $58/$78.

For a complete list of hotels, motels, inns and B&Bs;, plus other information, send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to the Leavenworth Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box 327, Leavenworth, Wash. 98826. Telephone (509) 548-5807.