Munich - What to see?
- Hema Siyag
- Mar 12, 2019
- 8 min read
Updated: Mar 26, 2019
The Bavarian capital of Munich is a very beautiful city. I went to Munich with my family on a 5-day trip in the spring of 2019. There are a lot of places to see in Munich and as expected we couldn't see all of those. Munich is full of museums, palaces, gardens (including Beer gardens), churches and other monuments. I had a lot of fun and an exciting time in Munich. As Munich is also the Bavarian capital, one can bet on finding the original Bavarian food in the restaurants in the city center.
When we first arrived in Munich, we bought the Munich city card for 5 days at the central station. The cost of the card was well below 100 euros for three people. The Munich city card is a very new scheme in which all the trams, metros and buses are included in the zone 1 of the Munich city. On top of that there are also some concessions along with the Munich city card in some of the museums. We also got some free drinks by showing the Munich city card in some restaurants for e.g. in Ratskeller.
Our purpose to visit Munich was certainly different than just tourism. Our main purpose to visit Munich to renew an old passport at the Consulate General of India in Munich. As we had to go to Munich to submit the passport renewal application, we decided to also the different places that Munich has to offer to the tourists as we were anyway travelling a long distance form Bonn to Munich. Therefore, the first thing that we did in Munich was to go to the Indian Consulate. When we visited the Indian embassy in Munich, we had mixed reactions. The address of the Indian embassy is Widenmayerstr. 15. It is easily reachable by metro. From the Munich central station one can take the metro U4 or U5 and reach the station Lehel. The Consulate is only a 5-10 minute walk from the station Lehel. When we went inside the Indian embassy, there was a long queue of people and we had to take a ticket and wait for our number to be called. But this is pretty normal here in Germany whenever we need to get an official document from an office. What we did not find normal was that we had a biometric photo taken especially for this passport application but they rejected the photo that we had. They said that dimensions of the photo were different than the dimensions required by the application. We have used the same biometric photo in all kinds of applications all over in Germany and no one has ever said that the photo is not valid because it is the standard size. But the Indian passport renewal application requires a special size of the photo and it is a 50 mm by 50 mm squarish photo. We acquired this information as we were waiting for our number to be called. It seemed as though all the other people waiting in the hall knew the size of the photo correctly and we were the only ones who had to go out again and get another passport photo clicked. We got the photo clicked the second time which fulfilled the requirements and it costed us double the amount of the standard photo size. We then again went to the embassy to submit the application and thankfully they did not find any faults this time. We also had to pay the exact amount of the application fee in cash. But that was really a hustle about something as simple as a passport photograph.
Our next destination in Munich was the Marienplatz. Marienplatz is the heart of the Munich city. It is the city center. It is busy all the time during the day and even during odd hours. At Marienplatz the first attraction is the new Rathaus (Town Hall). The new Rathaus itself is over a 100 years old. There is also an old Rathaus which is smaller than the new one and is on the left side of the new Rathaus.
The new Rathaus has one of the biggest Glockenspiel in Bavaria. The Glockenspiel starts each day at 11, 12 and 17 hours.
The new Rathaus has a big courtyard and in the courtyard there is a big restaurant named Ratskeller. We once had dinner there. The restaurant is very big and can accommodate hundreds of guests. The food is typically Bavarian.
In front of the Rathaus there is the St. Peter's church. People can also go on the top of the church for only 2 euros per person.
There is another church called the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) on the right of the new Rathaus. This church is a very simple one.
When we head straight ahead in front of the new Rathaus we would see there the Municipal Museum (Münchner Stadtmuseum) and the Jewish Museum. There is also the Viktualienmarkt where there are a lot of restaurants and eating places. In general the streets of the Marienplatz (Marien square) are lined with shops of all kinds (clothing, electronics etc.). Marienplatz is also a place where people gather to do demonstrations or events of all kinds for e.g. there was an event on the 8th of March 2019, International Women's Day, at the Marienplatz and a lot of people, generally women had gathered on the square for demonstrations and speeches. I also took part in the demonstration. Their motto was 'women', 'life', 'freedom'.
We also visited the Sea Life in Munich which is located in the Olympic park. The metro U3 and U8 go directly to the station Olympiazentrum. There are a lot of things to see in the Olympic park. One of them is Sea Life. It is located at a 2 minutes walk from the metro station.
Sea Life is a very good place for entertaining children for a day on the weekend or something. It is full of small and big aquariums with live, colorful and beautiful fishes. It is very big and it takes around 2 hours to see all of it.
After Sea Life we went on top of the Olympic tower in the Olympic park. We went around 200 m high on the tower. From the top it gives a very beautiful view of the whole Munich city.
There is also a BMW World museum in the Olympic park which is free of cost to visit. We went there and there was a large collection of antique and new BMW cars and motorcycles in the museum. People can sit in the cars and on the motorcycles to see how they feel. There are also other attractions in the Olympic park but we couldn't visit as we were short of time.
We spent around half a day visiting the Dachau concentration camp memorial site. To reach the Dachau concentration camp memorial we need to take the S2 in the direction of Petershausen or Altomünster and get down at station Dachau Bahnhof. We then need to the bus number 726 in the direction of Saubachsiedlung and get down at the stop KZ-Gedenkstätte. The concentration camp memorial site is quite big. We spent about 3 hours to see the whole site. At the memorial site the crimes of the Nazis against the prisoners are described. It is a very gruesome site and cause one to think why such events happened in the history. The prisoners were made to work in very bad conditions and were given very less food to eat. The prisoners were not given any freedom and were given severe and horrific punishments like stand in the cold for hours. At this moment the site has been converted to a memorial and tourists from all over the world come to see it.
One of the other things that we visited in Munich was the Nymphenburg Palace. To reach the Nymphenburg Palace one needs to go to to the station Laim from the Munich Central Station. From Laim we need to take the bus number 51 which goes directly to the Palace. Nymphenburg Palace is very large and beautiful. It used to be the summer residence of the Bavarian kings. The palace is supplemented with large gardens. There is also a big pond in front of the palace where white ducks were swimming.
The inside of the palace is also open for the visitors and is a museum of paintings. The inside of the palace is very spacious and royal and the walls are lined with large majestic paintings.
There are also other attractions at the Nympenburg Palace like the Museum Mensch and Natur (on the left of the palace) and the Botanical Gardens. But we couldn't visit those because of lack of time.
The other places that we visited in Munich were the museums - the Deutsche Museum (Science and Technology museum) and the museum Pinakothek der Moderne. To reach the Deutsche Museum we need to get down at the stop Isartor, which is next to the Marienplatz. The Deutsche Museum is a 5-minute walk from the station. The Deutsche Museum offers a rich collection of objects from all fields of science and technology. It is a 7 story museum which means a lot of time is consumed if people visit all of the stories. It includes branches like environment, marine engineering, electrical engineering, astronomy, medicine and many more.
The museum Pinakothek der Moderne is a museum of modern art. There is also Alte Pinakothek which is a museum of classical art. We couldn't visit both of them as we were short of time. To reach the museums Pinakothek, we need to take the metro U2 or U8 and get down at Königsplatz. From the station Königsplatz we need to take the bus number 100 and it goes directly to both the museums Pinakothek. In both the museums the entrance fee is reduced to 1 euro per person on Sundays, so Sunday is a good time to visit those. Here are some pictures from the paintings of the new Pinakothek museum (modern art).
One of the last things that we visited in Munich was the Theresienwiese garden. As we went in the month of March, there was no grass or trees. But our main purpose to visit the Theresienwiese garden was because the Oktoberfest is held in that area so we wanted to have a glimpse of what it looked like. To reach the Theresienwiese garden one can take the metro U4 or U5 from the Munich central station and get down at the stop which is itself called Theresienwise (one stop from the central station). In the Oktoberfest this big place is covered all over under large tents and people come in masses to drink beer there. The minimum amount of beer that one could have is 1 liter and the cost is around 10 euros. There is also the very famous English Garden in Munich which we didn't visit as there might not be any grass or greenery in the month of March.
Last but not the least, we also visited the Fly Station, which is not in zone 1 of Munich but a little outside Munich in the suburbs. To reach the Fly Station we need to take the S8 in the direction of Munich airport and get down at the stop Halbergmoos. From this stop the Fly Station is two stops away with the bus. At the Fly Station also known as Sky diving, a simulation of the sky diving is created. In a chamber a wind is blown at very high speed so that the person can almost feel like sky diving and can levitate in the air. The chargers to try sky diving a the Fly Station are very high. My husband did 2 minutes of sky diving. There is also a trainer in the air chamber who instructs on how to do the best sky diving. The trainer himself had done a real sky diving from a plane. There were also sports persons there who were very well trained in this area and could perform figures in the air like the following.
That brings us to the end of our 5-day Munich trip!
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