Daddy T does Munich part two

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.

Beer and no knickers

Munich's English Garden

After a period of radio silence during which Daddy T had his birthday with a cacophony of cousins in a place called Wokingham, I am now in beautiful Bavaria, where the temperatures are soaring and I've been having some frightening encounters with long, fat white sausages and the occasional sour kraut.

Yesterday was my first ever day in Munich, which on first impressions over the course of a warm sunny summer's day is a rather lovely, compact and Italian-influenced German city. I spent the morning in the delightful company of Birgit, a local guide, who led me to beer kellers, through little alleys, into big look-at-me squares and for a stroll among some city centre parks.

A few things jumped out at me here. Under a bridge on a fast flowing brown river there was a young woman literally walking on water. But no, on closer inspection the person in question, and a few others also, was actually surfing. Surfing! Well get me out in the green room in the sharky brine for a bit of a lefty or some other blokey Aussie expression I've never had cause to use as the only thing I've ever done on a surf board is fall off it. This wasn't just surfing though as the wave never actually goes anywhere, just stands up like the squares saying "look at me" while the water smashes downriver from under the city at a pace that's guaranteed to clean your ears and everything in between. Bloody oath, this mob were surfing a standing wave in, well if it weren't the world capital of beer drinking you wouldn't believe me, Munich.



Only just over that shock, Birgit led me through this former Englishman home, to the Englistshe Garten, 6 kilometres of woods, small rivers and meadowy grass where Munich's finest go to sun themselves. Some with nothing on, not a stitch, no knickers or anything - in the middle of a city. As if it were utterly normal. Which to them, it is, but to those of us with a little less "look-at-me and all my tackle" tendencies is just a little risque.

The rest of my exceptional day in Munich panned out a little less alarmingly but there were still things sticking out at me at odd times like the characters in the city hall Glockenspiel at 5pm and the bosoms of some hearty frauleins dressed in traditional Bavarian attire at the beer garden I rested in.

By the evening I was ready for some rest and there's honestly no better place for that than at the Blue Spa at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof. Set over the top two floors of the smart hotel, it features a pool with a retractable roof, deck with sun loungers, sauna and steam room and a bevvy of therapists ready to iron you out. I had a lovely dinner downstairs with Erena del Campo, the hotel's PR, then spent a couple of hours swimming, being massaged and finally trying out the sauna and steam room, which was of course, clothes... optional. Well if you can't beat them join them...