Europe 2018: Munich

July 11, 2019

Europe 2018: Munich

Europe 2018 Trip

Amsterdam --> Berlin --> Dresden --> Prague --> Munich --> Nuremberg --> Brussels --> Liege --> Bruges --> Amsterdam

Tayler's thoughts are in blue, Rebecca's thoughts in black.

MUNICH

I think the best part about Munich was the city center, the Marienplatz, where there is a large government building and at the top, the Rathaus-Glockenspiel. The center was packed with people milling around and rimmed, of course with outside restaurant seating. We love all of the outside restaurant seating in European cities. It’s such a romantic image--sitting under an awning or umbrella enjoying a dinner while watching people come and go across the plaza. It’s a setting we’ve seen repeated over and over across the cities we’ve visited. Maybe a little sad that we haven’t sat down at any(?!) of those restaurants to relax and enjoy. So often, we’re go-go-go or aren’t willing to pay for a more expensive restaurant experience like that.
There was some really interesting history to listen to as we walked parts of the city. We had no idea before going that it was such a large city, but it seems to really sprawl out from the center, much farther than we realized at first. It wasn’t until the end of our stay there that we even made it out to some of the parts of the city with famous WWII landmarks.
We also visited Nymphenburg Palace, a summer residence of the former rulers of Bavaria. (Bavaria is the name for the southern region of Germany). It was nice to relax and enjoy a delicious peanut butter and jelly sandwich on some benches in the shade. It was really hot the days we were in Munich. Our apartment was on the fifth or sixth floor, so we had all the windows open at night trying to get a cross breeze through the place.
If I went back to Munich again, I think I would pick one or two museums to visit. We kind of blitzed through on our second day without a lot of time, and we walked past a few museums that sounded pretty interesting. I was also sad that when we crossed by the Frauenkirche cathedral, unique because of its two matching bell towers, the cathedral was already closed for the evening. I’m sure inside it was much like other cathedrals we’ve seen, but the two towers were really pretty.
I think by far our favorite stop in Bavaria was Neuschwanstein Castle. The castle is about an hour north of Nuremberg by train, but well worth the detour. We were warned that it was a tourist trap, but we felt like it absolutely deserved the attention. It’s too bad that pictures aren’t allowed anywhere inside the castle, but I don’t blame them for making that rule. The woodwork was very ornate, and there were some fantastic rooms, like an old-fashioned throne room. Apparently the castle was commissioned by Ludwig II of Bavaria, and Ludwig II was quite a fan of the arts. Despite his love of the arts and his creation of the beautiful castle, he rarely had visitors, and used the one room designed for theatrical performances only to pretend he himself was an actor, if I remember correctly. Only a dozen or so rooms in the castle were ever finished, and the tour is limited to those rooms.

Even more than the castle itself, we loved the view of the surrounding landscape from the castle windows. You could see for miles around these beautiful hills to one side with cute little towns and farms. To the other side, you looked out on the edge of the Austrian Alps. Before even getting into the castle, we walked to a bridge suspended across the canyon and looked down on the mountain. It’s an incredible image, and one that I hope I’ll remember for a long time.
The biggest surprise of the day was that even though we were warned to arrive early for tickets, we had no idea how quickly they would sell. If I remember right, we got there at 9 or so, and weren’t able to tour until the afternoon. The wait turned into a very happy surprise because there is a beautiful lake right next to the hiking trail up to the castle and we had a wonderful time walking around part of the lake before finding a shady place to slow down, talk and enjoy the view.

Munich was lovely. I loved the feel of the city, old mixed with new. Our Airbnb was between the train station into Munich and the center of town, so we just had about a 10-15 minute walk from where we stayed into the city. Our Airbnb area was just fine, but not especially pretty. Looked more like Berlin (recently older buildings).
Walking into the city, we walked past a fancy mall into the main square where our podcast started. There was an absolutely beautiful, very large building in the square (I don’t remember if it was a city building or what) and it had a large clock that, around twice a day, would have figures pop out and dance around it. Sadly, we could never time our walking around the city right to see it (the podcast always took us somewhere else and we didn’t want to walk all the way back, near our apartment, just for the clock and then have to go back, further away from our apartment, to resume the podcast.
We tried to have an authentic german-food experience and ended up in a restaurant that I didn’t love. Tayler ordered sausage, and I ordered some sort of meat and a potato dumpling. I thought the potato dumpling would be more of a dumpling with potatoes in it, but I was wrong! It was like a rice pudding gelatin dome, and it was soooo nasty. I was trying to eat it because it was a more expensive restaurant, and I was hungry, and I felt bad not eating half of my meal, but each bite got worse and worse and it just began to make me nauseous. I was not a fan of the all meat meals. The meat was alright, but I needed a little something else with it (just not a potato dumpling).
There was a historic mall/center that intermixed with old historic buildings. One of which I remember was a large church, but it was closed so we couldn’t see inside it. There was another church, but it was unique because the outside was just a facade. There were what looked like large marble columns, but they were actually hollow and fake.
I also remember seeing a lot of the oktoberfest outfits for men in the windows of the mall. We couldn’t tell if these were normal outfits or just for the upcoming Oktoberfest (we were there in August).
On the walking tour podcast (Rick Steves) we took, there was a building where Hitler spoke. It was modeled to look like the building in Florence where there are a bunch of marble statues outside (it’s almost just like a big porch with statues). Behind this look-a-like building in Munich, there is a gold path where people who were against Hitler dared to try to pass behind to resist his movement and joining the crowd he spoke to. Next to this square, there was a garden that was so beautiful, but the podcast mentioned that there are often nude people there. We didn’t see any, but we didn’t really venture into the majority of the park.
While in Munich, we took a day trip out to see the Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria where King Ludwig (the 3rd?) lived for a while. I was so surprised that the castle wasn’t finished inside, and the inside has more of a medieval theme, while the outside of the castle is absolutely gorgeous. This was definitely a highlight of the trip. We hiked up to a viewpoint, which of course, I wasn’t too happy about in the moment, but the viewing point was remarkable. You were up in the alps, looking over the city and the other alps and seeing the castle below. This is the castle that Disney’s castle and Cinderella’s castle are based off of.

When we got to the castle, we got in line to buy tickets. When we made it to the counter after waiting for a while, they said the next english tour that was available was in like 4 more hours. We were thinking 2, tops. But we started walking down the trail and it opened up into this crystal clear, incredibly beautiful lake in the alps that we got to wait by. We walked around a bit, ate our packed lunch, and talked by the lake. We also saw an old man changing in and out of his swimsuit. Haha. We had no idea that there was even a lake here, but we wished we would have bought swimsuits for just this day because it looked so wonderful. My phone kept notifying me that we were now in Austria, and we were just barely on the border of Germany and Austria. It was so green and beautiful! Dream land. We were more than happy to wait there for the castle tour. :)