Munich

Tombs in the side wall of St. Peter's Church.

For all the nights I spent in Munich hotels on my recent trip to Europe (seven nights of nine total), I spent remarkably little time exploring the city of Munich itself. As a base for exploring the rest of Bavaria, Munich was perfect. It is about two hours by train or bus from the Alps, Salzburg and Kloster Andechs and it's even closer to significant brewing and historical sites. At night, the city offered us enough to do in the way of eating, exploring beer culture and people watching that it never got boring. I think I could have spent a couple more days in and around Munich but I had to cut it off somewhere. I mean at some point, money and getting back to work come in to play here.

So after all the day trips and overnight trips to all sorts of places around Munich, I reserved the last two days of my time this year in Europe to explore the city that had housed us. Even though we had strolled through the city's altstadt and visited the Hofbrauhaus for the first time the day we got to Munich and took a beer and food tour the very next day, the last two days, Friday and Saturday, of our trip were spent being tourists close to our hotel rooms. Here are three things I did in Munich that I'd recommend for anyone spending time in that corner of the world.

Olives! How did I ever not love olives?

The Viktualienmarkt

One of the things I love most about visiting Europe is the markets. Sure we have farmers' markets all over the United States but it's not the same cultural institution as a market in a European city. I mean this market has existed since 1807. It's not just a place to buy food; it's also a meeting place and an integral part of the city's culture. One of my fondest memories of Finland when I was there in 2000 was strolling through the market in each city we visited. I still have visions of stall after stall of chanterelles. They looked amazing.

Munich's Viktualienmarkt was no exception to my European market experience although this market of course distinguished itself from other cities' markets by the enormous beer garden right in the middle. We spent Saturday's lunch here roaming between butchers, cheese stalls and all manner of fruit and vegetable stands. Lunch consisted of some mozzarella and oil poached tomatoes on a stick followed by 100g (about a quarter of a pound) of citrus olives. I'm so deliberate about shopping for food and cooking that I know I could never do this, but I imagine how amazing it would be to grab fresh ingredients at random from the market and whip up something incredible at home. I could snack all day here.

The monk statue in the Paulaner Wirtshaus beer garden.

Paulaner Brewery and Wirtshaus (Beer Garden)

Modern Munich beer culture has been dominated by the big six breweries: Augustinerbrau, Hacker-Pschorr, Hofbrauhaus, Lowenbrau, Paulaner and Spaten. There are other smaller breweries in the country around Munich like Weihenstephaner, Eridinger and Ayinger but the big six are clearly dominant in Bavaria. One of my must sees in Munich was to take some kind of tour of at least one of these breweries in my time there. Surprisingly, this task proved pretty difficult, but I found decent tours at appropriate times for both Paulaner and Spaten.

I ultimately opted to go on the Paulaner tour for two reasons: I like Paulaner's wiessbeer a lot and Spaten is owned by InBev, a worldwide brewing consortium which now owns Stella Artois and Anheuser-Busch among other companies. Spaten was just too big. The Paulaner tour was nothing special; I've been on countless brewery tours in my life and the story they told was nothing unusual or different although admittedly the beer tasting definitely stood out since they served a whole meal with the tasting. But the beer garden after the tour was great. The brewery is a little out of the way of the city center so it was a little more peaceful and Paulaner was one of the few places in Munich where we found excellent beer. Definitely a good choice.

Ironically even though the narrative of the tour wasn't different than other brewery tours, this tour was special because it was in German. Of 20 or so total people on the tour, Mike, Bryan and I were the only three who didn't speak German, which meant that the few minutes the tour guide agreed to talk to us at each stop became a private tour of sorts. Pretty cool for a place this big.

Hang ten, dude! Surfing on the Isar (no, this is not me).

English Gardens

Just to the north of the Marienplatz or the main plaza in Munich is a large public garden called the Englisher Garten or English Gardens. The park was established in 1789 and was one of the first large scale public parks in the world.  The Garden was created by Sir Benjamin Thompson, an American who fought on the side of the English during the Revolutionary War. It was originally conceived as a military garden to be used by soldiers but soon after its establishment was changed to serve the population of Munich.

This place is huge. Areas of places, whether inside or outside, are something I struggle to grasp but the English Garden is about 15 percent larger than New York's Central Park, which in my mind makes it enormous. The park is designed in the English landscape style (hence the name) complete with meadows, lakes, winding paths and follies at strategic locations, all designed to look very natural. It's all in all a very European garden except for the surfing.

Yes, you read that right. A portion of the Isar river is diverted through the park and at several locations throughout the park, underwater baffles are placed below the river causing eddies and rapids in the river which are now used by surfers in Munich. And not just one or two. This is some serious business. There are lines of people waiting to surf from one side of the river before either being tossed aside or abandoning their wave. It's worth a trip to see the surfing alone. I wish I had visited the park earlier than the last day on my trip. There's (of course) a very large beer garden in the park. I think it would have been fun to knock back a liter or two there one night.

So those were my favorite three things I did in Munich in addition to spending a lot of time in beer gardens; visiting the BMW Museum; exploring the Oktoberfest museum as part of a food and beer tour; and watching the Glockenspiel on the Marienplatz. The Glockenspiel tells the story (much abbreviated I am sure) of the marriage of Duke Wilhelm V to Renata of Lorraine. The performance, which lasts about ten minutes, is conducted three times a day in summer in the tower of the New Town Hall on the Marienplatz. While not incredibly exciting (you have to watch closely to see the excitement in the joust), it's the ultimate tourist attraction in Munich and so is worth spending a quarter of an hour waiting and then watching.

The Rathaus, or New Town Hall on the Marienplatz.