Haus Mannenberg

We open the door to one of the four rooms. A freshly picked bunch of meadow flowers is waiting on the desk, and more of them in front of the windows. Nordic ease, linear forms, and a small to-do list on the table that sharpens the point: here you write down what you will not be needing for the next few days. What you do want is out there, through the window.

The bed sits at the centre of the room, and that is what this is about. Good sleep. Really good sleep. The bed linen is a dream. So is the shower in the morning: as the sunlight tickles the green grass on the mountain awake, we open the window and look out from under the water. The Susanne Kaufmann products scent the room, and mix with the smell of the wooden boards. Then something else drifts in through the mountain air.

Fresh sourdough. Maria is already outside, baking bread from a recipe she developed herself with some obsession. She treats the bread the way she treats her coffee: precision. The beans come from Mame Zurich, which brings Japanese culture into the roast. After all, she is still an East London girl glowing with energy and her dream of that house. A small boutique continues the story, filled with curated products, books and objects that are easy to imagine back home.

Inside, we leave our shoes by the door. These floorboards have carried footsteps for more than three centuries. Up the stairs, a curious look around the corner, and we like what opens up. The cosy fireplace, a generous kitchen, every surface in black, wood and concrete. The old structure and the minimal interior get along well.

Taking a seat around the large table, we’re looking onto another one. Another scene. It’s 1968, the Rolling Stones are sitting around. A staged feast, cherries, stuffed animals and Mick Jagger in costume. It’s a colourised photograph from the Beggars Banquet era, brought from a gallery in Hampstead, and it lands exactly right on this wall. The La Marzocco coffee machine gleams at us from the counter.

They are always around if needed. Whether it’s a Susanne Kaufmann treatment downstairs, dinner nearby or a six-hour hike worth taking, they will make sure nothing is missed – neither inside the house nor beyond it.

With hosts Maria and Max, we spent hours in conversation. About their travels across the world – Japan, Russia, England, Switzerland – the various places where they found their calling, and all of them show in the way these rooms are put together today. Max’s grandfather was a hot-air balloonist, if that adds anything to the story. Between them, they have given this long table its purpose.