PLACE TO BE

People in love from all over the world like coming to Munich, a city of over a million inhabitants  where modernity and tradition live side by side. International visitors are inspired by its romantic places, a varied range of things to do in their leisure time .

Favourite Museum

The Alte and Neue Pinakotheks have masterpieces by Dürer, Rubens, Raphael, Cezanne and Van Gogh, to name just a few. The Pinakothek der Moderne – four modern museums in one (art, paper, architecture and design) – is a world-class recent addition, as is Museum Brandhorst, a multi-coloured container-like structure that displays everything post-modern from Andy Warhol to Damien Hirst.

Favourite Wirtshaus

It would be unwise to expect polite smiles or an exchange of pleasantries in Munich cafes or Wirtshäuser (pub-restaurants). Waiting on tables is something to be taken seriously. Munich pubs are a lot more „hit“ than „miss“, providing you don’t turn your nose up at huge quantities of meat or excellent beer. And few would disagree that the Wiener Schnitzel (€21.90) at Spatenhaus an der Oper(opposite the Bavarian State Opera and the Munich Residenz) is worth that few extra euros.

Favourite Shop

With the most expensive retail space in Germany located on Munich’s Kaufingerstraße, shopping for anything in Munich is not cheap. If books are your passion, there are a diminishing number of good English bookshops in the city. Words‘ Worth is a delight. This independent shop has a wide selection of English-language newspapers, the newest book titles and offers me a necessary dose of history, politics and fiction.

Favourite Cafe

Few people are aware that Munich is Europe’s largest publishing city. Exhibitions at Literaturhaus (literature house) are hardly ever a letdown. The perfect accompaniment is a visit to the adjoining Oskar Maria brasserie (named after 20th-century Munich, later New York, writer Oskar Maria Graf). For some, it provides a stimulating location for a post-exhibition discussion. I prefer to quietly get to work on the chef’s delicious risotto (reasonably priced at €8.80), followed by the wonderful sorbet (€6.50).

Favourite Münchner

Larger than anything similar in London or New York, the English Garden begins a stone’s throw from the city centre and covers around 4 sq km. It is undoubtedly the favourite open space of most Münchners, not least because of its many beer gardens, the best being the Seehaus, on the edge of the Kleinhesselohe boating lake. That this oasis is bang in the centre of Germany’s third largest city is in no small part due the eccentric 18th-century Sir Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford), a British citizen born in pre-revolution America, serial womaniser and one of Britain’s greatest scientists. For the English Garden alone, Rumford’s title of Bavarian count (to add to his knighthood from Britain) was worthy reward

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