Our trip from Tuun to Munich started at 7.00 am yesterday when we left our hotel and finished at 3.00pm when we arrived at the Holiday Inn Harras and it included a brief stop in Zurich. We were in Zurich for forty minutes whilst we endeavoured to find the bus terminal from the train terminal. The navigation was a little stressful but we arrived at the bus relatively unscathed but a little sweaty as they were loading our fellow travellers on (phew) of course we knew exactly what we were doing 🤫! On arrival at the central Bus depot in Munich Steve worked wonders and we boarded a surburban train to Harras and then had a short walk to the hotel. It is a nice hotel that has everything we need, the staff are great and the meal we had last night (burger and beers) did the trick.

First call of the today for me was coffee please don’t judge me but I was just a little bit excited to have my first Starbucks for the trip… I had missed my caramel macchiatos so much 😄.

We had decided that given that a walking tour with a local is for us the best way to see a city, we would ignore the TripAdvisor comments which were pretty scathing of all of the tours of Munich and try our luck with a company called Radius. For 15 euros each a Canadian expat by the name of Matt guided us around this beautiful and interesting city and he was fantastic. He was engaging, funny, self deprecating and really knowledgeable.

The biggest problem I now have is that I have so much to tell. Matt was a wealth of information and trivia (which I love) so I am going to on,y touch on a couple of the things I have learnt over the five days we are here.

The thing that I hadn’t really considered was that Munich is a different city than it was prior to the Second World War with a number of the old buildings being bombed by the Allies. So for me there was a kind of uneasiness when you look at the beautiful buildings as in the back of your mind you know that they aren’t necessarily the originals and in some cases are not great replicas. As Matt explained with some of the rebuilding of the city decisions were often made to concentrate on the inside of the building rather than on the exterior. Which makes perfect sense but not necessarily great photos for tourists.

We didn’t spend a lot of time talking about the war as there is another tour which we are now thinking about doing, but as it has deeply affected the country it is difficult to talk about the history without reflecting particularly on that dark period.

Our first port of call on the tour was the Frauenkirche (the Church of our Lady). It is the second oldest Catholic Church in Munich (there are lots of Catholics) and it bears the devils footprint. The story goes that when Jorg von Halsbach began building the church in 1468 and sadly there wasn’t a lot of cash around. So he made a deal with the devil to provide funds for the building of the Church and in return the devil insisted that church would have no windows and therefore no light coming in and would be considered as a place to celebrate darkness. When the building was completed the devil entered the church and on first inspection believed that von Halsbach had honoured the agreement, but on taking a further step inside he discovered that in fact there was a stained glass window that was originally hidden from his view. The devil was furious and stomped his foot leaving a mark on the ground so hard it left an imprint and stormed off ( I thought this was a pretty calm reaction myself – just saying ).

You can put your foot in this footprint – Steve and I agreed it was bad karma so declined the invitation. The Church was lovely inside .. but the story did creep me out a bit.

We walked and walked and talked and talked and at the end of the tour we ended up at the English Garden which is one of the largest urban parks in the world. The garden goes back to the 1780’s and surrounds the Isra River which you can swim in and lots of people were. The cycle and walking paths around the garden go for 78 kms, by the way there are cyclists everywhere in Munich and they ding their bells all of the time and seem to be in complete control of the roads and pathways. Matt did warn us that whilst they won’t aim for you, if you get in their way they will win the battle !

In the middle of the gardens there is a beer garden that sits 7,000 (yep 7,000) people, so we of course had lunch there. Bratwurst for Steve and potatoes and sour cream, along with a pretzel 🥨.

It was a wonderful day with lots of walking, laughing, reflection and sunshine. So what better to finish off our first full day in Germany with local Indian at a hotel around the corner accompanied by a beer and a spritz.