Munich

Munich has long been on our list of places to go but one too many horror stories of the infamous Munich Octoberfest beer festival has put us off til now. Here you can be sure that any local can quickly spot an Antipodean accent, as this is where over the past few years plenty of Kiwis and Aussies have continued to work on lowering the tone to new depths.

Despite these stories Germans we have met on our travels have always recommended Munich highly, and wow were we pleasantly surprised by what we found!

We stayed at a fantastic campground on the side of the Munich river 6kms up stream of the city. A cycle path follows all the way along the river into town making for a nice cycle in each morning. The river has been landscaped in such an impressive way too, with forest and parkland on either side. All the way along this stretch canals have been created to control the flow and divert it however they choose. One section was covered in beaches; another made to look like a fast following mountain river with rapids and rock pools, and the regular sight of beer gardens adds a nice touch too.

One of Munich's may city riverside beaches

The weather picked up nicely when we arrived and the whole of Munich seemed to be out enjoying the river. In true sign of holiday brain we thought it was Thursday and marvelled at how the 35 hour working week was being used to great effect. A day later we actually found out that it was Saturday! Oops.

A very entertaining English guide led us on a walking tour of the city pointing out all of its quirks and history, the English Garden being an interesting highlight where nude sunbathing is the norm and only just a stone's throw from downtown. To be honest, to us it seemed any bit of park or riverside was fair game for stripping sunbathers! Before anyone gets too excited, be warned that 90% of these are elderly men and have been in the sun for far too long already!

Also on the tour we encountered another use that the citizens of Munich have found for the river; no coast in sight so why were there so many people wandering about with surfboards? Answer was the standing wave, where keen locals attempt to ride on man made rapids! Brilliant! check out the pictures...

Looking down the rivers rapid

Surfing on the standing wave

Hum... not that anyone took any notice!

After the tour we went in search of the beer gardens Munich is so famous for. It seems quite the done thing in this town, and we were impressed to see people from all different walks of life enjoying a beer in the afternoon sun. There were even a couple of wedding parties (sophisticated ones too) being hosted in a beer garden! The one thing we couldn't quite get our heads around though was the size of the beers everyone - including a few grandmothers - were drinking, an entire litre at a time!! Impressive to say the least.

Was that the first or third litre?

But the one highlight for the both of us had to be the Deutches Museum. Now normally a science and technology museum wouldn't be a top draw for Sharon, but it has to be known that this one was so thoroughly enticing that we both lost an entire day in its 6 floors of exhibits, everything from a complete reconstruction of mining through the ages, to how metals are created, tooling workshops from last century through to now, welding, musical instruments (including some very scary bagpipes with the animals still attached), printing presses, food technology, the development of flight (although we were disappointed not to see any mention of Richard Pearse or Jean Batten) complete with real Messerschmitts, several floors on astronomy and space exploration, mapping and geodesy, textile production, the development of computers and programming, electronics, telecommunications, marine navigation, bridge construction, pharmacology...and the list goes on! We were so utterly exhausted by the time we were escorted out at 5pm, but had only managed to see about half of it. You could really spend an entire day just trying to absorb one subject matter. And of course, what made it really interesting for us was to see the development of some of these areas from a German perspective and not neccesarily a British one for a change.

1800's engeneering work shop, all in working order too!

One of the first 'minature' steam tirbine engines

Amazing aviation section over 4 stories high

We really enjoyed Munich, a really great, compact city, and the Deutches Museum was an absolute thrill for us - definitely one of the top highlights from the entire trip so far! We definitely hope to come back sometime...