One Week in Munich

Earlier this month, Inna had to travel to Munich for a few days for some meetings, so we decided to make it a week-long excursion and I would tag along, exploring the city while she was stuck in offices all day. Fair trade, no?

We departed Atlanta on a Saturday evening and arrived in Munich on Sunday. We spent the first couple of days wandering around the city, taking in some sights and consuming lots of wienerschnitzel and sausages. And beer. Big, blisfful steins of beer. 

We wandered through BMW Welt, which is BMW’s all-in-one conference center, museum, European delivery pick-up, and customer experience. It’s a beautiful place to visit, even if you’re not a BMW person. The design of the building is stunning and there’s a lot to do there, including numerous interactive user experiences and driving simulators. 

From there, we strolled through Olympiapark, which was built for the 1972 Olympics. It’s an enormous park with a 70,000-capacity stadium and the 291-meter tall Olympiaturm.

Next, we strolled through the city center of Marienplatz and hiked the 306 steps to the top of St. Peter’s Church. The reward was an amazing view of Munich.

With Inna stuck in meetings for the next few days, I decided to navigate the city on my own. I made my way back to the city center and over to Viktualienmarkt, which is a large outdoor food market with tons of restaurants, bakeries, butchers, florists… you name it. Even on a freezing, foggy morning, the place was buzzing with locals looking to get a hot bowl of soup or some weisswurst sausages. I took some time-lapse shots in various places around the city center and got some crazy looks. I guess there aren’t many time-lapse photographers there?

Then I took the metro over to Universität Station, grabbed a bag of marroni (hot roasted chestnuts), and headed to Englischer Garten, one of the world’s largest urban parks. It was definitely fall, as much of the park was blanketed in yellow leaves. 

After Inna had fulfilled her work schedule, we had only one day left to explore the area. We decided to take a day trip to see Neuschwanstein Castle, which was about two hours away from Munich. We took a train to the town of Füssen and then took a ten minute bus ride to the village of Hohenschwangau. From there, we hiked about 30-40 minutes up a small paved street to where the castle lies atop a large rugged hill. Unfortunately, the fog was so thick that day, it was difficult to see the castle, even from a few hundred feet away. I really wanted to get a shot of the castle from Marienbrücke, which is a sketchy wooden bridge that crosses over a huge gorge, but we couldn’t see anything at all due to the fog.

After spending the day checking out the castle and the village below, we made our way back to Munich and took a flight home first thing in the morning. It had been a while since my last trip to Germany, but I was reminded once again why I love that country so much. You can’t go wrong with the food, the city of Munich itself is gorgeous and historical (like anywhere else in Europe), and the people were incredibly kind. It’s definitely a city we could see ourselves living in and hopefully we’ll make our way back there soon.