Germany wasn’t high on our list when we were planning this trip.  We assumed it would be too expensive and that we could save it for a future vacation.  However, when we started looking at flights back to the continent from Ireland Munich was the cheapest option.  Plus our friend Sascha was kind enough to let us crash at his apartment.  It seemed like the stars were aligning and it was an easy decision to add Germany to our itinerary.

In addition to putting us up, Sascha was an awesome tour guide.  Munich was probably the easiest stop of this trip because he did most of the planning and made sure we got to see the best of the city.  Here are some of the highlights.

Beer Gardens

You can’t talk about Munich without talking about beer gardens – they are such a huge part of the culture of this city.  We made sure to visit a variety so we could get a real sense of this local institution.

They are located all over the city and, from what we could tell, they are all packed every day as soon as people get off work.  You might imagine that places that only sell beer by the liter would be full of drunks but they are actually true community gathering spaces.  At any given time you’ll find families, young professionals and retirees all gathered together to enjoy the warm summer evenings over a beer and some salty food.

The English Garden

The name of this park may conjure images of manicured flower beds but it is actually a huge sprawling green space in the middle of the city.  It seems appropriate to talk about the English Garden next because the first beer garden we visited was actually one of several located in the park – how awesome is that?

One of the coolest things about the English Garden are the canals that run through it.  One of them is quite deep and fast moving and actually contains two artificial waves for surfing.

In between the waves you can jump into the canal and float down the river.  We didn’t have our bathing suits the first time we visited the park but this looked so fun that we had to come back a second time and join in.  Getting out before the second wave was an interesting challenge but it was still an awesome experience.

Even on weekday afternoons the park was packed with people of all ages enjoying the sunshine.  The people of Munich really seem to know how to get the best out of summer.

World Class Museums

There was one rainy day during our time in Munich but luckily we had set aside a day to check out some of the city’s many museums.  We started with the NS-Dokumentationszentrum, a museum dedicated to the story of Munich’s role in the rise of Nazism, from the end of World War I through the conclusion of World War II.  Admission includes an audio tour and displays give detailed historical and personal accounts of this critical period in German history.  This is obviously not a pleasant topic to spend hours delving into but we felt it was important to expand our own historical knowledge and to see the way Germany presents and reckons with this horrible part of their past.  I thought it was particularly interesting that displays document anti-Semitic incidents up to the present day – a potent reminder that the fight for tolerance is not over.

With lots of food for thought, we next headed to the Alte Pinakothek, Munich’s repository of European art from the 14th to 18th centuries.  They have a lovely collection with some beautiful works by famous old masters (Rembrandt, Titian, Tintoretto and Rubens, just to name a few.) Unfortunately some of the works aren’t labeled, making the organization a little hard to follow.  I believe this is due to their recent reopening after renovations so hopefully it will be rectified soon.

We had hoped to make it to the Neue Pinaokothek to see some modern art but two big museums were enough for one day.  We’ll just have to make it back some day.

Olympiapark

Constructed for the 1972 Summer Olympics, the Olympiapark is another lovely swath of green space in the city.

The park is obviously home to the Olympic village and the various Olympic stadiums.  The Olympic Tower stands in the middle.  We went up to the tower’s observation deck from which we had an awesome view to admire the unique architecture of the sports complexes.

The roofs are made of hundreds of undulating glass panels. They were supposedly designed by stretching nylons over various support points and then recreating the effect.

Also located in the Olympiapark is BMW Welt, BMW’s showroom. Dan and I aren’t huge car people but when in Germany it seemed appropriate to check out some vehicles from this iconic brand.

We were only in Munich for a few days but my overall impression was that residents enjoy a high quality of life.  Their public transit was fast and easy to use. It is the most bike-friendly city I’ve ever been to with miles of protected bike lanes.  The beer gardens and parks offer community gathering spaces amid the urban sprawl.  And Munich has more green space than any other big city we’ve visited.  If we ever consider living in Europe Munich would be high on our list.