Right now I’m sitting in the Lufthansa Business Class lounge at Munich airport, which I’m supposed to be reviewing and which is supposed to be a replica of a Bavarian biergarten. That’s beer garden to you.
Well, it’s all very nice and all and it undoubtedly serves beer but the resemblance to an actual beer garden is stretching it to say the least. Plus it won’t let Daddy T get online without him paying T-mobile hotspot fees and offers only food that is guaranteed to make you fat. However, to compensate, the authorities here have made Munich airport surely the longest, largest and most likely to make you walk for kilometres. And to make sure you keep walking they’ve also filled it with millions of shops and lots of glitter and shine and window-thingies. It makes Heathrow look like a few provincial runways strung together.
I’ve just completed just over 40 hours in Munich, which is a bit of a cheat as the two definite stories I’m writing are called “24 Hours in Munich” and with great originality, I thought, “”48 hours in Munich”. It’s the same old story, I’ve got way too much material for the first piece and, erm, way too much for the second. The only problem will be providing direction on where to eat, really – the only thing the Munich tourist board was to take me out to lunch somewhere quaint. Breakfast was in the hotel and good as it was it’s hardly typical and dinner, again excellent, was in another hotel. Good job I know some locals to call and get tips from.
As for the Bavarian capital in general, well, I certainly loved it, especially today when, on discovery that a planned bike tour was going to take me on exactly walked on my first day, I did my own thing. It’s rare these days, when others organise my itineraries, to have twenty minutes to breathe let alone follow up myriad lost clothes strewn across Europe so a whole morning is a decided gift. On this, the hottest day of the year in Munich, I roamed the Konigsplatz and walked through the Botanic gardens with its authentic beer garden (that looked nothing like this one). I then found my way as if by chance and miracle to the Blue Spa above the Hotel Bayerischer Hof on Promedaplatz, where again as if by miracle I swam in the stunning open air pool, sunned myself on their terrace and then had a last minute half-hour massage with a rather grumpy but intensely talented Greek therapist. Lovely way to bid adieu to the city.
On both days I was hugely impressed with Munich’s subway and underground – very regular, very smooth, very uncrowded and very clean. It just shows what you can do when you try. No wonder the streets are so wonderfully bereft of traffic. If I hadn’t have been so busy walking everywhere, which is my means of really getting to know a city, I’d have got on it and ridden every line to their last stops just for the hell of it. Would I have made it in 24 hours though?
Next stop is another new city to me, Copenhagen, where I was due to review the top three restaurants other than the orgasmically successful Noma, write about the country’s impressive environmental advances and go cycling to Hamlet’s castle. However, poor old H, the poor old Press Officer for Copenhagen tourism is a man with too much on his plate to help an individual Aussie journalist visiting in peak season. I sympathise, I really do, H, all that galavanting with the Irish and German press must be hard work and I really know what it’s like not to have enough time. I’ve written back full of empathy and at least have a hotel for the time I’m there and a bike hired. But no restaurant bookings which will make the Copenhagen cuisine story interesting.
Oh well, it’s back to basics for Daddy T and I’ll bloody well have to make the most of my underitinerised time. More from the design capital of the world soon.
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