MUNICH TRAVEL IN CHRISTMAS

Hello to everyone! Today, we will visit Munich, Germany. As the Christmas period approaches, we think it is the right time to share our previous experience. In this article, we will talk about the sparkling view of the city in the last week of December 2019, on New Year’s Eve and Christmas Eve in freezing weather.

A Lovely Coincidence ;).

Transportation to Munich

There are several flights from Istanbul to Munich. You can buy your flight ticket and land directly at Munich Franz Josef Strauss airport in 2 hours and 35 minutes. When you get off at the airport, you follow Terminal 1, go through passport control and welcome to Munich :).

Munich Transport Guide

You landed at Munich airport and how will you reach the city center? You can reach the center of Munich in 30-40 minutes by metro from the airport. You can reach the subway directly by going downstairs without leaving the airport. Since we did not know this detail, we tried to get out of the airport, and when we could not find it, we had to ask someone. As it turns out, the transition to the metro is from inside the airport, for your information!

We reach the subway by going downstairs without leaving the airport. Munich transport systems are a bit expensive. Daily or specific direction tickets are available in Munich. Also, if you are between 2-5 people, there are group tickets, which is very advantageous. The airport is among the most expensive tickets as it covers all regions and you have to buy them if you want to go from the airport to the center. If you do not need to confirm your purchased tickets and you encounter a ticket check, you say goodbye to 60 euro :(.

By the way, there is no need to validate daily tickets, but you have to do this for other tickets. Daily tickets can be used in many transportation vehicles such as metro, bus and tram. In addition to these, of course, you can take risks and travel without a ticket, but in every article we read we were advised not to do this (penalty 60 euro), controllers can act like normal civilians and suddenly check. However, we took a risk and got on without a ticket and managed not to be caught. It is completely your decision, we do not accept any liability :).

Let’s Buy Tickets

There are machines to buy tickets and even Turkish language option is available on these machines. Although there is a Turkish option, the menu is very complicated, you can never find what you are looking for! But don’t worry, we’ll give you a little hint :). We press the search icon in magnifying glass view from the screen and after pressing it, a button for daily tickets appears on the left. By clicking it, we can buy our daily ticket for a single person or a group. Payment can be made by cash or credit card. On the first day, we bought tickets covering every zone (we had to buy all zones since we got on the airport) and we paid 36 euros for 2 people, so we had a daily ticket for 18 euros per person, in our opinion, this is quite expensive. If we had bought this ticket alone, not a group, we would have paid 21 euros!

There are 2 different subways to get to the center from Munich airport, one is S1 and the other is S8. You can reach Munich central train station (Munich Haubptbahnhof) in 30-40 minutes by taking any of them.

Munich has a very large metro network. You can easily reach the places you want by metro. The thing to be careful about is whether the places you will go to are in the same zone or in a different zone, because the tickets differ due to the zone system.

Accommodation in Munich

Munich has a lot of good places to stay. Of course, if your budget is suitable, staying in the central place is advantageous in every respect. But if your budget is limited, hotels in the center can be very expensive.

We stayed in a place that is 5 minutes’ walk from Munich central train station, very close to the Turkish quarter. We were able to reach the center by walking for 10-15 minutes from the hotel, which is very important for us. Although it was cold, we did not have any problems and did not feel like we had to use transportation. Some blog posts had warnings about where we were staying. There were many nightclubs especially in the area we stayed, we hesitated a little at first, but when we went, we realized that these hesitations were unfounded. We stayed in a hotel that met the price-benefit balance within an ideal 10-15 minute walk to the center. We did not encounter any problems in terms of security. If you are wondering about our hotel, you can click!

Munich Delicious Guide

Our journey is just beginning! Many more places to visit, therefore a lot of energy is needed. Then it’s time to puff up the belly :). Let’s discover the flavors of Munich together, clickkk!

Munich Delicious Guide

Munich Sightseeing and Attractions

Marienplatz

Yeees, we are writing Marienplatz square as the first place to be seen like everyone else. You know that this is an inevitable end, more precisely a beginning :).

Marienplatz

Marienplatz is the center of the city of Munich. Many important buildings in Munich are located in this square.

The Meriensaule column with a golden statue of the Virgin Mary on top is standing in gratitude to the Virgin Mary for saving Munich from the Swedish occupation and gives the square its name.

Mariensaule

“Marienplatz” is referred to as the Virgin Mary Square and the most famous church of this place, the Virgin Mary Church, is also located in this square. Also other important historical items are New Town Hall, ST. Peter’s Church and Altes Rathaus are also located in this square.

Since Marienplatz is the most important center of the city, most of the cristmas markets take their place here. Marienplatz is quite lively and crowded during the Christmas period. Many bright Christmas markets lined up in rows welcome us.

You do not know which one to look at at first, and you get dizzy. There are many markets with colorful ornaments that we call pearl beads. As Christmas tree decorating is a routine at Christmas time, people are especially crowded where there are ornaments. In addition, there are shops where different chocolates are sold, and many markets where snacks are sold and where you can sip your hot wine in cold weather. You pay for the hot wine you drink with the glass, you get the deposit back when you return the glass, so when you want to take the glass home, you can take it directly. Since we do not drink alcohol, we only wanted to buy glasses as a memory because there were very nice glasses that were different and depicted Munich.

Christmas Market
Love of Chocolate

New Town Hall (Neues Rathaus)

The New Town Hall, the New Town Hall, is also located in Marienplatz, the center of Munich. The building was built in 1867-1908 and is one of the best examples of gothic architecture. The height of the town hall is 85 meters and you can go up with an elevator (for a certain fee). In addition, 15 minutes of puppet shows are exhibited every day in this building, do not miss it. Show hours start at 11:00, 12:00 and 15:00 in summer. These kinds of shows have become a routine in many parts of Europe, and we recommend you to watch this.

New Town Hall

St. Peter’s Church

St. Peter Church stands out as the oldest religious building of the city of Munich, which was built in the 11th century. If you want to see the city of Munich in a panoramic view, you can visit this 306-stepped Church on Marienplatz. You have to pay 3 euros to go upstairs. If you are a student charge decreases to 2 euros (they accepted our Turkish student cards). One of the activities we would recommend.

St. Peter’s Church

Altes Rathaus

When you take the New Town Hall to your left at Marienplatz, it is a very beautiful triangular building. This is the city’s old town hall. Munich’s toy museum (Spielzeug Museum) is located here and you can visit it between 10.00-17.30. In addition, there is a statue of Juliet character in front of Altes Rathaus and there is a belief that if you touch the statue’s right chest, you will find your loved one. They believed this so much that the statue’s chest was worn :)).

Altes Rathaus
Juliet

Karlsplatz Square

It is one of the important squares in Munich. It was dedicated to one of the Bavarian rulers, Karl Theodor, but the people who did not like the ruler, chose to call it Stachus. There is an old gate of the city called Karlstor in the square. There is also a fountain in this square and the fountain serves as an ice rink in winter. When we were there, there was an ice rink and mulled wine stands. Especially it is very enjoyable to watch the ice rink, or if you know how to skate, you should definitely experience this.

Karlsplatz

By the way, it is a place with many stores for shopping, for your information.

Odeonplazt Square

Odeonplatz got its name from the old concert hall, Odeon. Another important feature of the square is that it was built with Italian architecture. In addition, one of the fame of the square in history was that it was the place where the Nazis gathered and held their ceremonies.

Odeonplatz

Markets are also set up here during the Christmas period. The markets here seemed a little different from Marienplatz. More authentic products caught our eye in a more medieval mood. We can say that there are more conceptual christmas markets. In addition, Odeonplatz square is a place where you can find many shops for shopping, so you should definitely stop by.

English Garden

It is a huge park in the center of Munich city. It is one of the must-see places when you go to Munich. People come to this park for sunbathing, walking, cycling, sports and even surfing. In addition to these, you can also participate in boat tours on the lake, we did not engage in such activities because we went in winter.

English Garden

In a part of the park, stands are set up during christmas time, we visited this one because we were curious about all the christmas markets, you can take a look at it if you wish.

Christmas Markets in English Garden

You can watch young people surfing around Eisbachwelle in the English park, summer and winter. You did not hear it wrong, people surf not only in summer but also in winter. It is quite enjoyable to watch people, but it would not be a lie to say that we trembled while watching them.

Eisbachwelle

Dachau

This place greets us with the slogan ‘Work Makes Free’. We are heartbroken, we know that this statement is not true for that place. Although many people think that they are going to work, this place becomes a grave for them, what a pain…

‘Arbeit Macht Frei’
Entrance
Model of Dachau

The First Nazi Camp!

Dachau, the first Nazi camp, was established on March 22, 1933 by the national socialist German worker party and the German national people’s party commission government. Political prisoners were first brought to the camp. Then, during the Jewish genocide, Jewish people of all ages, traitors, people with different sexual preferences, journalists, socialists and communists, etc. marked with the star of David by the Nazis were brought here. People were divided into groups and those who are strong were worked. Weak patients, elderly and children were massacred.

From the moment you start touring the camp, a gloom fills you. It is not at all difficult to feel the brutality that is there. There are many museums inside, you shiver more every time you visit. There are places showing from which angle the photographs depicting the persecution in some areas were taken, it impressed us very much. There are also many horrible photographs showing naked dead bodies piled up in the museum.

Horrible!

People used as laboratory animal, live surgeries, bunk beds with 10 prisoners in 1 bed, gas-filled death chambers, furnaces where corpses were burned, and more… It is a truly soul-strangling experience, even while we were traveling, we felt very bad and unfortunately many people experienced these.

The camp buried a total of 45,000 people. There is also a memorial for the dead inside the camp. In the meantime, let us state that there were 23 Turkish prisoners in this camp and 5 of them lost their lives.

As scary as it is, we think it is definitely one of the must-see places. In order not to leave the city bitterly at the end of the trip, we wanted to go and see it on our first day.

Memorial

How to go?

In order to go to the camp, you have to get off at Dachau stop after a 20-minute journey from Munich on the S2 metro line and transfer to the bus number 726. You can use the transportation ticket that covers each zone to get there. The camp is open every day between 9.00-17.00, admission is free. However, when we entered, we bought an electronic audio guide for 4 euros, which is sold inside, we recommend you to buy it, it also includes a Turkish language option.

Viktualienmarkt

A fruit and vegetable market you can buy from its manufacturer. Especially there are stands with many different cheeses. They offer you the products in tiny cut form for you to try. The shops open at 10:00 on weekdays and close at 18:00 on weekdays, and serve until 15:00 on Saturdays. If you like the fruit and vegetable markets abroad as we do, you should stop by.

Viktualienmarkt

Pinakothek der Moderne

A modern art museum located in the center of Munich’s Kunstrael. The works and the way they are displayed are interesting and impressive. We think you will like it, stop by it. Some museums in Munich are only 1 euro on Sunday. Pinakothek der Moderne is one of them, you can click to see other museums, click click!

Pinakothek Der Modern

There are many places to enjoy in Munich. Although we wanted to go to Neuschwanstein Castle near Munich, we decided to add this plan to our next trip to Munich because the weather was not very favorable. You can evaluate if the conditions are suitable for you.

Our travel notes about Munich were like this, we hope you had a pleasant time with us.

Hope to have endless trips…

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