Munich – Exploring the Old Town, BMW Museum and Beer Garden

Since we had travelled all the way to Munich for Oktoberfest, we decided to also do a city tour of Munich itself. After leaving the Oktoberfest area, we walked around the old town of Munich and along the main shopping belt in Marienplatz.

There was a weekend market going on in the area, so we wandered through the market. It was very much like the markets in Maastricht where they sold all sorts of wares and groceries. However, we stumbled upon this stall selling organic apple chips which were truly delicious and sweet. Although they were expensive, we bought several packets, one to eat in our dorm in Maastricht and the other to bring back to Singapore.

After about 2 hours of walking, we decided to call it a day and return back to our respective accommodations. Once again, I ate my usual fare at the Munich Hbf (central train station) – sausages (called wurst in German) with bread and pork knuckes, bought from random food stalls at the station, before taking the tram back to the airbnb.

The next day, we made a visit to the BMW museum. There were two sections. One was the BMW Welt which was basically a showroom for their latest cars. Entrance was free. The other was the museum itself and we had to pay for entry (around 6 euros after the student discount).

The BMW Welt:

Inside the BMW museum:

After spending around 2-3 hours at the Welt and Museum, we continued our journey to this Chinese-themed beer garden in Munich. It was located in the heart of a park and we had to walk for about 5 minutes before reaching the central area where all the stalls were located.

The beer garden itself:

We chose a bench located in the pavilion depicted in the photo above. We heard from other friends that we had to pay one euro as deposit when we bought the beers, which was refundable when we returned the mugs to the stall. Well, we were supposed to return the mugs but we wanted a souvenir of Oktoberfest too… *evil smirk*

We also ordered some food to go with the beer. The pork knuckles cost only a fraction of the price in the Oktoberfest tents!

After the beer garden, it was time to eat dinner and take the train back to Maastricht. I was not looking forward to the return journey, as I had to make 3 transfers in total, and all occurred in the middle of the night. This meant that I couldn’t have a proper and uninterrupted sleep on the train.

The train itself was pretty cool. It was a high-speed train by ICE and we noticed that the destination of every passenger was depicted on the LCD panel above their respective seats. How cool is that!

Needless to say, I did not sleep well, if at all. It was also torturous having to wait around for the train on the windy platforms during transfers. I was certainly underdressed for the chilly night weather. Finally, I arrived in Maastricht at 7.30am in the morning. Although I had early morning lessons at 8.30am, I opted to skip them and go back to my room to bathe, do the laundry and catch up on some sleep! Hehehe.

This pretty much concludes my Bavarian adventure! 🙂