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MY GERMANY - MUNICH

TRAVEL

‘Munich is still just a village for many people’

Get The Local flavour of Germany with our series offering an insider's take on life in people's adopted hometowns. This week, Liang Li takes us to Munich.

Published: 22 February 2013 07:09 CET
'Munich is still just a village for many people'
Liang Li (left) and a friend. Photo: Liang Li

Despite being busy working on his science PhD, 29-year-old Li made the time to fill us in on his experience of the Bavarian capital – how to choose between sausages, beer and how to best have fun for free. Although the Oktoberfest is less exciting than it used to be, he still finds more than enough in the city and its environs to keep him busy and happy.

What do you like best about living in Munich?

I love the access to nature. I live in the south-western part of the city, right next to the Westpark. In the summer and spring it’s very beautiful. There are also a lot of lakes around the city. If you enjoy sports, there are loads of things you can do. In the winter you can ski and go snowboarding. In the summer I particularly like doing cycling tours in the Alps. I try to do a tour every month when the weather permits. Hiking is equally popular – it’s so easy to get out of the city. Munich is surrounded by Bavarian villages, where you really can feel at ease.

How do you find the people?

Although Munich is the second biggest city in Germany, it’s still just a village for a lot of its inhabitants. Many people aren’t all that interested in what’s going on elsewhere. They are just happy with Munich and with Bavaria. For this reason they aren’t always necessarily very open to outsiders. But around a fifth of the population are newcomers. You hear a lot of different languages everywhere. So you can say that Munich is now an international place, and I think this has also made it more open.

There’s no escaping traditional Bavarian culture in Munich, though. Are you are fan of the beer and sausages?

I don’t actually like sausages much, but I enjoy drinking beer. I can’t decide which kind I like best. I went through a stage of drinking a lot of white beer, which is quite sweet and delicious, but you can find such a huge variety here.

Where is your favourite place to drink it?

In the summer a beer garden is definitely the best place to sit back and enjoy a beer with friends and pass the time.

What about eating out?

Sometimes I spontaneously go to a local Bavarian pub. It isn’t exactly healthy – there’s a lot of meat and fat – but I find the atmosphere good. In general, though, I don’t eat out much in Munich, because it is quite expensive.

Is there anything you can do in the city for free?

You can do all sorts of sports in the English gardens for free – football, volleyball, jogging and so on. And you can always just walk along the river. In the summer you can do salsa dancing outside in the Hofgarten for nothing. I really enjoy doing that.

Are you a fan of Oktoberfest?

My interest has fallen, largely because there seem to be ever more party people going. But it’s a traditional highlight for Munich, and if you are a visitor here, it’s fun to see the traditional Bavarian costumes – the Lederhosen and the Dirndl.

Where do you get your favourite view of the city from?

All the tourists go to the church on Marienplatz. I prefer the view from the TV tower in the Olympic park. But my top tip though would be to go to the university where there’s a terrace with a beautiful view for free. There’s also a nice café there.

What would be your ideal Sunday in Munich?

I’d grab my bike and go for a cycling tour – with lots of stops for beer along the way!

Can you tell us something about the city which only locals know?

Where to have a barbecue! Not many tourists know where, or realise that you can. You need to go to the Westpark, or head southwards along the River Isar.

Pippa Wentzel

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DISCOVER GERMANY

Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

With thousands of years of history in Germany to explore, you’re never going to run out of museums to scratch the itch to learn about and fully experience the world of the past.

Published: 5 April 2024 10:46 CEST
Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

Here are eight of our favourite museums across Germany’s 16 states for you to discover for yourself. 

Arche Nebra

Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt

One day, around 1600 BCE, local Bronze Age peoples buried one of their most precious objects – the Nebra Sky Disk, a copper, gold, and bronze disk that acted as a calendar to help them plant crops. This was a matter of life and death at the time. 

Over three thousand years later, in 1999, it was uncovered by black market treasure hunters, becoming Germany’s most significant archaeological find. 

While the Sky Disk itself is kept in the (really very good)  State Museum of Pre- and Early History in nearby Halle, the site of the discovery is marked by the Arche Nebra, a museum explaining prehistoric astronomy and the cultural practices of the people who made it. 

Kids will love the planetarium, explaining how the disk was used. 

Atomkeller Museum

Halgerloch, Baden-Württemberg

From the distant to the very recent past – in this case, the Nazi atomic weapons programme. Even as defeat loomed, Nazi scientists such as Werner Heisenberg were trying to develop a nuclear bomb. 

While this mainly took place in Berlin, an old beer cellar under the town of Halgerloch, south of Stuttgart, was commandeered as the site of a prototype fission reactor. 

A squad of American soldiers captured and dismantled the reactor as the war ended. Still, the site was later turned into a museum documenting German efforts to create a working reactor – one that they could use to develop a bomb.

It’s important to note that you don’t need to be a physicist to understand what they were trying to do here, as the explanatory materials describe the scientist’s efforts in a manner that is easy to understand. 

German National Museum

Nuremberg, Bavaria

Remember that scene at the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, where an unnamed government official wheels the Ark of the Covenant into an anonymous government warehouse? This could possibly be the German equivalent – albeit far better presented. 

The German National Museum was created in 1852 as a repository for the cultural history of the German nation – even before the country’s founding. In the intervening 170 years, it’s grown to swallow an entire city block of Nuremberg, covering 60,000 years of history and hundreds of thousands of objects. 

If it relates to the history of Germany since prehistoric times, you’re likely to find it here.

Highlights include several original paintings and etchings by Albrecht Dürer, the mysterious Bronze Age ‘Gold Hats’, one of Europe’s most significant collections of costuming and musical instruments, and a vast display of weapons, armour and firearms. 

European Hansemuseum

Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein

In the late Middle Ages, the political and economic centre of the world was focused on the North Sea and the Baltic German coasts. 

This was the domain of the Hanseatic League, one of the most powerful trading alliances in human history. Centuries before the Dutch and British East India Companies, they made in-roads to far-flung corners.

The European Hansemuseum in the former Hanseatic city of Lübeck tells the story of the league’s rise and eventual fall, its day-to-day operations, and its enduring legacy.

This museum is fascinating for adults and kids. It uses original artefacts and high-tech interactive elements to tell tales of maritime adventure. Younger visitors will also be enchanted by the museum’s augmented reality phone app that asks them to help solve mysteries. 

Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum

Augsburg, Germany

The Hanseatic League was not the only economic power in the late Middle Ages. The Fugger and Welser families of Augsburg may have been the richest in the world until the 20th century.

From humble beginnings, both families grew to become incredibly powerful moneylenders, funding many of the wars of the 16th century and the conquest of the New World.

The Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum not only explains the rise of both patrician families but also the practices that led to their inconceivable wealth—including, sadly, the start of the Transatlantic slave trade. 

The museum also documents the short-lived Welser colony in Venezuela, which, if it had survived, could have resulted in a very different world history.

This museum has many high tech displays, making it a very exciting experience for moguls of any age.

Teutoburg Forest Museum

Kalkriese, Lower Saxony

Every German child learns this story at some point: One day at the end of summer 9 AD, three legions of the Roman army marched into the Teutoburg forest… and never came out. 

Soldiers sent after the vanished legions discovered that they had been slaughtered to a man.

Arminius, a German who had been raised as a Roman commander, had betrayed the three legions to local Germanic tribes, who ambushed them while marching through the forest. 

Today, the probable site of the battle – we can’t entirely be sure – is marked by a museum called the Varusschlacht Museum (Literally ‘Varus Battle Museum’, named after the loyal Roman commander). 

The highlights here are the finds – made all the more eerie by the knowledge that they were looted and discarded from the legionaries in the hours following the ambush. 

German Romanticism Museum

Frankfurt, Hesse

The Romantic era of art, music and literature is one of Germany’s greatest cultural gifts to the world, encompassing the work of poets such as Goethe and Schiller, composers like Beethoven and artists in the vein of Caspar David Friedrich.

Established in 2021 next to the house where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born, the German Romanticism Museum is the world’s largest collection of objects related to the Romantic movement. 

In addition to artefacts from some of the greatest names in German romanticism, in 2024, you’ll find a major exhibition exploring Goethe’s controversial 1774 novel, ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, and another on the forest as depicted as dark and dramatic in the art of the period. 

Gutenberg Castle

Haßmersheim, Baden-Württemberg

Sometimes being a smaller castle is a good thing. The relatively small size and location of Guttenburg Castle, above the River Neckar near Heilbronn, protected it from war and damage over eight hundred years – it’s now the best preserved Staufer-era castle in the country.

While the castle is still occupied by the Barons of Gemmingen-Guttenberg, the castle now also contains a museum, that uses the remarkably well-preserved castle interiors to explore centuries of its history – and the individuals that passed through it.

After you’ve explored the museum—and the current exhibition that uses Lego to document life in the Middle Ages —it’s also possible to eat at the castle’s tavern and stay overnight!

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