Munich Part 1

So with the flight behind us and our first night in Munich done (and suitcase unlocked) it was time for us to move to our next hotel closer in town and then get out amongst it in the city.

“The Don” in all its wintery glory

I wouldn’t go as far as saying we are now experts at finding our way around town, but we have got it pretty sorted in terms of getting around via public transport and we’ve been enough times now that we have started to develop some of our own little favourite ways of getting around. Again we stayed at the same hotel as always, but this time we used a more efficient way to get there, rather than train and tram we just got off at the local mainline train station and walked. Our new favourite train station which we used more often this time is Donnersbergerbrücke, or as we refer to it “The Don”.

We walked from The Don to the hotel in what was thicker snow than we have experienced before and it was bloody freezing. Even though the sun was out I still had a shirt, fleece, down jacket, beanie, gloves on and I was still cold, the warmth of Sydney felt a world away.

The first thing we decided to do was go and get ourselves a leberkäse, which was something we stumbled on late during our previous trip to Munich. It’s pretty basic, just a slab of finally ground pork, bacon and other stuff and cooked like a loaf of bread and then stuffed onto a small roll, give it a bit of mustard and there you go. There are plenty of places that you can get it, pretty much all train stations etc have it but we found a place in the markets near Marienplatz that does a great job of it so we go there all the time, and at under 3 euros its a bargain as well. This was our first box ticked for things we like to do in Munich.

Given that we had been on a long flight and sitting on our backsides for almost an entire day, and feeling the guilt of having to train for a triathlon we decided that it was time fora bit of exercise, so we headed to Munich Olympic pool to cut ourselves some laps and get the blood flowing. For those who had read more of my blog articles you would know that it’s become a bit of a thing of mine to swim in old olympic pools and that we’ve been here before. Munich pool is one of my favourite pools to swim in, on one side you have a giant grandstand and on the other side you have a big glass window that looks out into the park, and in winter you see the whole area covered in snow while you are toasty and warm on the inside in the pool. Something that always freaks me out swimming in Europe is that you swim on the opposite side of the lane, which believe it or not really messes with your head when you are doing turns.

We decided post swim to go for a bit of a walk in the park which was nice to do because it was so thickly covered in snow. In Australia you don’t really get to enjoy just going for a wander in the snow and seeing people carrying their own little sleds around to slide down the hills, or parents teaching their kids to ski on small slopes, or even simple things like trying to throw rocks through the ice on the lake, or if you are Sebastian trying to throw snowballs which I’m not sure he has nailed just yet.

Olympic Park, Bayerns old stadium to the left, swimming pool to the right.. frozen lake centre

Post our time in the park we decided to continue wandering around and so we found ourselves back at BMW looking at all the new cars and bikes then got on the train and went back to Marienplatz where we pretty much walked the entire shopping area just browsing in interesting shops. We bought nothing because I’m a bit cheap but it’s just interesting to spend time in a shopping area made up of little stores and streets as opposed to a giant shopping mall like a Westfields.

Perfect fries, perfect wurst, perfect sauce

We closed out the day going back out that night and looking for the best curry wurst that Munich had to offer. For those not initiated with it curry wurst is basically just a sausage, cut up on a plate with some curry sauce and served with fries. Sebastian fell in love with it when we were in Berlin and so it’s something that we always like to hunt down. I think curry wurst is probably similar to fish and chips, you can buy fish and chips anywhere but it’s hard to stumble on that place that just gets it right, you know with the perfect crunch in a battered piece of fish and where the chips are just cooked to perfection. Well we found that place in a shop named Bergwolf which was tucked away down a little alley, I’m not sure you would find it if you didn’t go out of your way to look for it. Needless to say it hit the spot, it was probably the best curry wurst we have had outside of the OG one in Berlin, but closely followed by a place that Sebastian found in the market which serves it up in a little pot that you stand and eat from out the front, what it lacks in taste it makes up for in presentation and atmosphere.

Running in the snowy Englischer Garten

Our next morning started somewhat as it always does, we got up early, it was still somewhat dark and cold, we put on our running gear and we headed out for a run. We have our favourite little loop which is down in Englischer Garten, which for us meant we had to catch the tram that coincidentally starts out the front of the hotel all the way through town and out the other side. I don’t think I have ever seen it without snow but it looks amazing all covered in white with the ice river flowing down the middle. This time we came prepared with warm clothes and so did a nice easy 3km out and 3km back loop. Tradition has it that we stop off at a bakery afterwards and grab a coffee and a pastry and plan our day ahead. We didn’t have much planned for the day other than some more wandering around the streets and shops but in the afternoon we had the first of our Bayern Munich games to go to (I’ll write about that separately).

So for now that was Munich largely done for us, we had acclimatised to the wintery weather, ticked off a few of our favourite things to do and we were ready for what was to come.

Michael