- A travel guide for the city of Munich in Germany.
I'm your host, Chris, and Tiffy,
and today we're going to be showing you around Munich.
This video will cover everything
you need to know to visit Munich.
In the next seven minutes,
we'll cover the following sites and attractions.
We'll begin with Mariensplatz, Munich's main square,
we'll then pay a visit to some of
Munich's famous beer halls,
beer gardens,
and sample some tasty German food.
We'll then visit the Viktualienmarkt,
which is a historic food and souvenir market,
then go over to Odeonsplatz,
which is a famous site for parades.
The final attraction we'll visit is the BMW Museum,
and I'll conclude the discussion on
some of Munich's excellent transportation options.
The center of the old town of Munich
is here in Mariensplatz, which is called Mary's Square,
named after the statue of Mary up on the top of that tower.
This square is kind of the center of tourist activity here,
it is flanked by the New Town Hall right here,
and then on the other side of the square this way
is the Old Town Hall, that gray building,
which, it's actually funny, because the Old Town Hall
is newer than the New Town Hall
because that one was destroyed in the war and rebuilt.
So if you wonder how I know all these things,
and people often ask me that, on this particular tour,
I listened to Rick Steve's audio guide,
and he hasn't paid me one cent for this promotion, yet.
This pedestrian street right here Kaufingerstrasse
and Neuhauserstrasse is Munich's pedestrian street
that connects Mary's Square to the train station.
It is actually one of Europe's oldest pedestrian streets
and in the 1970s when they pedestrian-ized it,
all the shopkeepers were up in arms
because it was going to kill their business.
Yeah, looks awful.
Munich has a number of beer halls.
What's special about a beer hall?
Well, the beer.
Something particularly unique to this region is the Radler.
It's a half-beer, half-lemonade
that starts with the taste of lemon,
has a lot of bubbles in the middle,
and then ends with the aftertaste of beer.
It's not very alcoholic-y tasting,
and as someone who's not really a big beer buff,
I actually rather enjoy this.
Munich's most popular beer hall is the Hofbrauhaus.
Come here to experience the insanity
of this 5,000 seat beer hall.
It is so incredibly busy that walking inside
kind of feels like a mosh pit sometimes.
You just have to push your way through.
It's so busy that all 5,000 people are inside,
so they're holding people outside until people leave
so other people can go in.
Beer drinking insanity is how I would sum it up.
(traditional German music)
After you've done a beer hall experience,
the other quintessential German beer experience
is to have beer in a beer garden,
around the trees and at night.
Drink your beer and when you've had enough
then you cheer, hooray.
In beer gardens they typically have two types of tables,
those that have tablecloths means you order food
and have service from the waiter,
and those that don't have tablecloths,
and those are self-service or bring your own food.
In Munich, roast meats are very popular,
this is a roast pork knuckle,
this is slices of roast pork and slices of veal.
They also do dumplings in the potato dumpling form.
- But my favorite food is sausages and sauerkraut,
they look like they're wood.
- Viktualienmarkt is Munich's oldest market.
It's where you can come, get a beer, have a pretzel,
and just sit out and enjoy.
There's also a number of other food vendors
where you can get fried fish and
other German tasty treats.
The seven great beer breweries of Munich
take turns vending beer out of the central beer-vending hut.
Today they're selling Spaten beer,
you can pick up a half-liter or a one-liter,
already poured for you.
At the center of the market is a maypole,
that huge blue and white pole there
that has figurines on the side
to advertise what different vendors are here in the market.
It's a tradition from the 15th century.
In addition to beer and food, you can also buy produce
and other assorted knickknacks.
The classic souvenirs to pick up while you're in Munich
are Cuckoo clocks, Nutcrackers, and beer steins.
If you want a little something more upscale,
you can stop into the Schrannenhalle
right next to the market.
It's more of an upscale indoor market,
and if you like chocolates or purple cows,
this is the place to hang out too
because the Milka chocolate company has
their flagship store in the basement here.
And he's a pretty cute purple cow.
Munich is home to a number of great squares,
this one included,
that were part of the imperial family's vision for Munich.
This is Odeonsplatz.
When the Hitler regime and the Nazi regime was in power,
they had a monument here that everybody had to salute
as they came by and it's not here anymore
so you don't have to do that.
Now you can just kind of enjoy the sunshine in the square.
Might be a bike ride too.
One of the most elaborate small churches I've ever seen
is on the Sendlinger Strasse and
it's the Asam brothers' church,
spelled A-S-A-M, not Asam as in awesome.
But actually, it's pretty awesome.
These two brothers, they were a pair of architects,
and they built this as their private church,
but they also use it to showcase their architecture skills.
And guess what?
It was a really short commute for them to their church
because they lived right next door in the Asam house.
Would you like a rock facade for your church?
Can't afford any rocks?
We can make it out of concrete.
Would you like a column?
Can't afford real marble? No problem.
Munich is home to BMW,
which I just learned stands for Bavarian Motor Works,
and I learned this at the BMW headquarters, the BMW Welt,
which is their showroom of new cars,
and adjacent to it is the BMW Museum
to tell you about all the history of Bavarian Motor Works.
The museum buildings looks like a spaceship
that has just come to land.
And now, it's about to take off.
(spaceship noise)
An excellent way to travel to Munich
is by train from adjacent cities.
The Munich train station is efficient, clean,
and drops you off right in the center of the city
so it's very convenient.
The subway was put in for the Olympics in the 70s.
Some of these cars look like they might
still be from that era.
It's pretty nice wood paneling.
Public transportation in Munich
is quite good and easy to take,
even the buses are well thought-out and
they've got digital signs while you're on the bus
to let you know what the next stop
and next three stops are.
At the bus stops, they've got digital signs
to let you know when the next bus is arriving.
And no video about Munich would be complete
without at least mentioning Oktoberfest,
Munich's biggest celebration to beer culture.
And I've got a separate video on that,
click on it in the upper right.
Or you might enjoy watching one of these other videos.
Click any of them to watch,
links are also in the description below.
(traditional German music)