Our last day spent in Germany, this time around again, was spent in Munich, as you might have figured out already by now. My previous visit to the city was quite a short one as well, which you can read about here, but this time we did have a bit more time to spend and take a look at some of the sights I haven’t visited those few months ago. Sadly though, the weather didn’t really do us any favours that day, as it was cloudy and gloomy throughout most of the day, with some occasional rain showers to spice things up, but we did manage to avoid the worst of it by staying indoors until it passed.
On the night of our arrival, we decided that we were going to get up not too early, since our initial plan, sadly, had to be changed because of the weather. We were thinking of going to Dachau and visit the Concentration Camp Memorial Site, but since most of that is only outdoors, we decided against it, with the rain uncertainty hanging over us. So instead, we got some coffee first, packed our bags, and off we went. The first order of business was to get rid of our bags, leave them at the train station from which we were eventually going to leave the city, and then go from there.
As it was the case with my previous visit, the first “touristy” spot was the Allianz Arena. Sadly, because of our late arrival the night before, we didn’t have the energy nor the will to go see it in the dark, when it lights up, but seeing it in the day time, and just being close to such an important landmark is still an experience in on itself. We’ve driven past it quite a number of times, as I believe I’ve also said in that first post about my time in Munich, but this was a different story now, for my parents, and for myself as well, even though I’ve stood next to the stadium before. I was hoping we would have been able to get inside the Bayern Munich’s official store at the stadium, but after some quick digging, it was made clear to me that access to the store is only granted to visitors of the stadium tour, or if you have a valid match ticket. From my experience in Manchester all those years ago, I thought it was open to public like it is there as well, but obviously I was wrong. So after taking a few photos, it was time to head back into the central part of the city.
Our next stop was one of the most famous squares in the city, according to most people we talked to, called Marienplatz and you can see the photo of one of the buildings at that square in the feature photo of this post. The square is surrounded by a number of streets heading in different directions, but the main theme of them all is shopping! Lots of different shops and stores you can choose from to spend your money in, basically anyone can find something for themselves there, and so did we. Well, technically my parents did, but anyway. The one shop I was most interested in was buying some Munich souvenirs, since I haven’t done that the first time I was there, and I always have to get a fridge magnet from every city that I visit. Of course we didn’t just buy one magnet, I had to buy a couple more things for some friends, but after that was done, I really didn’t want to spend anymore money, but oh boy, was I wrong. It was spent mostly on food and drinks from that point onwards, but still, Munich is not the cheapest of cities, I can tell you that much.
We stay on point with shopping, as our next destination was the Olympia-Einkaufszentrum, basically just a shopping centre on the outskirts of the former olympic village, when Munich hosted the Olympic Games in 1972. One of the most notorious games to this day, due to an incident that saw 2 members of the Israeli team get killed. The shopping centre was nothing special to be honest, of course there are some shops in it that we don’t have over here, but nothing unusual about it at all. We came back there one more time later in the day, when we really didn’t know where else to go so we were just killing time at that point, and sat down for a drink in one of the bars on offer. However, there was one more super interesting point on the agenda for me, that I wanted to visit, and that was the BMW World.
BMW World is right across the street from the BMW Museum, and the BMW factory. Of course the factory is off limits for us, mere mortals, and the entrance fee for the Museum costs 10€, which is not that much, but for that day, it wasn’t something we’d be particularly interested in spending the money for. But the BMW World part of the whole complex is free to enter, with many interesting cars and motorbikes on display, as you can see below, with an official BMW store in there as well.
The location of the BMW complex also put us right next to the Olympic park, which is something I want(ed) to visit and see the venues that were used for the games. Some have been changed in the 50 years since, but some have stayed as they were back then. But unfortunately, once again, the weather had other ideas. It started raining the heaviest of all times during the day, so we had to go back underground, and find a different place to go to. From that point on it was just basically all about killing the time and waiting for our train to arrive and take us home.
The fact that the temperatures dropped quite significantly in the week that we spent in the country, towards the end of the day, and right before boarding the train back home, it was super cold. We tried to stay in warm places as much as we could, even found a great brewery a few minutes away from the Munich Ostbahnhof station, where we got one last beer in Germany, and spent another hour inside, before venturing back to the station, getting some food and just wait it out. As I already mentioned, the ride back home was a pretty quick one, with no major drama like the day before, so it was time to jump back into reality and start thinking about new adventures for the future!
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