City Break: Munich, Germany – Markets & Food

Tarrant had had her little heart set on visiting some actual, proper German Christmas markets for bloody ages, so this year off we fucked to Munich in order to consume our body weight in Bratwurst. I wasn’t too keen on the idea of Christmas markets, I’ll be honest. Once I’ve shovelled a phallic-shaped dead pig and a mulled wine into my facehole, I’m pretty much done with markets back home — but this is Germany, right? They know how to do Christmas markets. They practically invented the fuckers. Plus, Munich is a tourist destination in its own right; there’d be plenty of non-Glühwein-related shenanigans to rub our eyeballs all over.

No idea what this is but we walked past it. It’s not far from where we stayed. It’s very cool though.

Turns out Munich is utterly brilliant, and we’re going to need to come back when there aren’t any markets so we can do more tourist stuff. Also, it turns out the markets are brilliant too, and there’s a metric fuck tonne of them all over the city. As we entered the country we were asked the purpose of our visit and told them it was the markets. The woman sighed, almost wearily, and said, “Yes, I hear that a lot.”

I generally do my best writing on the day whilst everything is fresh in my mind but that wasn’t possible in this case. On account of the indiscriminate consumption of Glühwein and beers as big as my head, there was nothing fresh about my mind. I’m having to scrape fuzzy information from whatever braincells remain to throw this together. So. Here’s your round-up of our very predictable, totally stereotypical Christmas jaunt to Munich.

You can still buy cigarettes from machine in the street here! Like, what the actual fuck?! They’re only like less than €10 for 23 ciggies too. Crazy talk.

The Markets

We might as well start with the whole reason we were here in the first place hey? We began our festive adventure with the Christkindlmarkt Englischer Garten (closest U-Bahn: Giselastraße) clustered around the Chinese Tower in the English Garden, on account of the fact we could walk there from where we were staying. It was already dark by the time we rocked up and the park isn’t lit. I would absolutely not be walking through an unlit park in the UK without a baseball bat with nails through the end but there were quite a few folks around with it being early. Winter really does skew my idea of a late night, I’m pretty much ready for bed by 7pm. It was only about 5ish as we navigated our way to what even I will admit was an utterly magical scene, and I’m quite sure I’m a direct relative of the Grinch.

The Chinaturm was all lit up and a band were playing from the first level. It oozed Christmas. We began our mission to apply as many things as possible to our faceholes: Bratwurst, Glühwein, some manner of thing called Engelstrunk — which is basically Glühwein but with more shit in it — obviously beer, and then we discovered the existence of weißer Glühwein and immediately fell in love. Mulled wine, but make it white and add a shot of rum or amaretto. We tried one of each and planted ourselves firmly in the amaretto camp. I could probably drink enough of this to trigger type 2 diabetes. My dentist would be rubbing his hands with glee if he could see the sheer quantity of sugar washing liberally over my molars.

*Weißer Glühwein*. It’s not much to look at but it’s outstandingly drinkable. A little TOO drinkable.

The next market we graced with our slightly hungover presence was the Münchner Christkindlmarkt (Closest U-Bahn: Marienplatz) at Marienplatz on our first morning here. It’s much of the same but there are signs in English too so you don’t have to frantically Google what everything is before you commit to it — all while a stall owner who is sick of your shit glares at you expectantly. You can, of course, buy all manner of decorative shit, toys, souvenirs. It’s pretty much the same from stall to stall. But then we found Lene’s Kerzenhäusl stall, which translates to Lene’s Candle House. Because it was full of tiny handmade houses that you put a candle in. They had a stall here and another one in a far-away town but nowhere else. I fell in love with them straight away. They had a post office so we bought that. I can see myself wanting the whole set going forward, I’m not going to lie.

We swung by Pink Christmas, (Closest U-Bahn: Sendlinger Tor) a tiny, queer-friendly market at Stephansplatz and treated ourselves to a weißer Glühwein because this is apparently what we drink now, and we also went back the following evening because it really does come into its own when sun sets. It is pink. It’s unashamedly, completely and utterly pink. They had a live singer on when we rocked up in the evening who was replaced by a DJ but the music wasn’t super loud, likely out of respect for the neighbours. It’s very small and you can buy stuff geared towards the gay community, such as rainbow hot air balloon decorations, and tree ornaments in the shape of scantily clad men. The pink pound does tend to forget that lesbians exist. But they’re actually really well done and if they weren’t, like, €50 a pop we might have bought them for certain friends. We love our mates, but we only €1.50 for a fridge magnet love our mates.

We walked from Pink Christmas to the Tollwood Winterfestival (Closest U-Bahn: Theresienwiese) which is huge and has a covered market and a live music tent along with the now-familiar food, drink, and trinket stalls. It’s at the same site as Oktoberfest which is a vast expanse of concrete and Tollwood — despite being big — is dwarfed by the space. It took roughly three whole days to walk across the site to a fuck off big statue called Bavaria, then another day to walk from there to Tollwood. This is where we spent our second evening in Munich, chucking beer and food down our necks, trying to resist the temptation to buy pretty much everything, and watching live music. Definitely do your market perusal first before applying poor-decision-making juice to your braincells lest you end up with six warm hats, a nice throw, and an A1 size drawing of a cross-section of a human printed on rustic paper.

These guys were great but I’m a sucker for a sax.

Since we got together over 12 years ago, we’ve built our own little traditions, as those sickeningly in-love couples are wont to do. One of them is that we go to some manner of Christmas market and have a Bratwurst. We call it the Annual Lesbian Sausage Gobble. For the first time ever the yearly comedy consumption of a German sausage took place in actual Germany. What a time to be alive. To be fair, we’d already consumed several Bratwurst, and some manner of dead thing called an Ossenwurst, which is apparently ox — or maybe beef — but not pork. Still, it’s not an official Sausage Gobble until there’s a selfie posted on Facebook is it?

And here’s a bloke gobbling fire. There was a fire show just outside the Tollwood grounds.

We did wander through other markets during our general touristing but the final one we deliberately went to was the Mittelalterlichen Weihnachtsmarkt (Closest U-Bahn: Odeonsplatz) at Wittelsbacherplatz, which is a medieval themed market. Think leather good, fur garments, drinking horns — everything for the discerning Viking about town. Christmas markets in Munich date back to the 1300’s and this one tries to recreate that vibe but with, like, food safety laws. This is where we tried a Feuerzangenbowle which is mulled wine but you set a rum-soaked sugar cube on fire which sort of caramelises into the drink. It was banging! It also had the biggest cup Pfand because they really, really wanted you to bring your fancy cup back.

That’s something you need to know. Whenever you buy a drink at the markets you’ll need to pay a Pfand, a deposit, ranging from €2 to €5, sometimes €10, or in this case €15 if the cup is particularly desirable. Apparently Americans like to collect them. The bigger markets will give you a token (the smaller ones don’t bother) and sometimes you return it to a dedicated Pfandrückgabe, deposit return, or you’ll bring it back to where you bought it. Even if you paid the deposit by card it’ll be returned to you in cash.

Fancy cups! The woman in the middle is Andrea. I met her in New Zealand about 17 years ago and this is the first time we’ve caught up since.

The final market I’ll talk about is the one at the airport. I shit you not. As soon as we stumbled out of arrivals in search of the S-Bahn, we were immediately met with stalls selling everything you needed to kick-start your Christmas, from hand-painted baubles to mulled liver-destruction. We didn’t stop on the way out but we took an earlier train back to get one last currywurst und weißer Glühwein fix before catching our flight home to the land of inferior sausages and zero concept of white mulled wine. Did we need to impulse purchase a Christmas tree ornament in the shape of a Weißwurst? No. Did we though? Fuck yes! Tourists gonna tourist.

Our Weisswurst ornament on our tree. Probably my new favourite.

For Your Facehole

Most beer gardens aren’t open in November which is fair enough. No one wants their lips to freeze to their Maß unless it’s accompanied by Christmas music and stalls selling baubles. You can always fall into a Bierhalle though for all your food and beverage desires. The ones we went to seemed to be loyal to one brewery, either by choice or because the brewery literally owns it. The most famous, of course, is Hofbräuhaus am Platzl, owned by the brewery of the same name, which was founded by Duke Wilhelm V because he didn’t like the existing beer in Munich.

It’s big, it’s noisy, it’s batshit busy! I loved it. You have to find yourself a place to sit and a waiter will find you. You’ll likely be sharing a table with strangers which is fine, and it’s equally fine to ask if you can sit at the end of an already occupied table. Organised chaos.

It’s full of tourists, obviously, but apparently there are locals who have their own table and a locker in which they store their personalised beer mug. They’ll serve you a Maß of Helles here as standard, a litre of your bog standard lager. If you go to Munich and don’t drink a litre of motor-impairment-beverage whilst listening to music played by men in Lederhosen, did you even go to Munich?

Yes, I needed two hands to lift this Mass for I am weak and my feeble English wrists can’t handle more than a pint.

I had this Schweinshaxe at the Hofbräuhaus. It’s pork knuckle, apparently a popular German dinner thing. I really enjoyed it and I don’t know what they did with that potato but it was banging!

Another favourite was Museumsstüberl which is much smaller and quieter and is, by choice, loyal to Augustiner-Bräu. You can have a beer flight here, tasting the four beers they serve; Helles (light lager), Dunkel (dark beer), Weiss (white, or wheat beer), and some other manner of beverage I forget the name of, probably on account of all the beer I kept drinking. There’s an Oktoberfest museum upstairs which we didn’t visit this time but that’s just yet another reason to come back.

The much more unassuming Museumsstüberl. Shuffle past the locals propping the bar up to the restaurant at the back.

I had Leberkäse at Museumsstüberl. It’s an oddly textured but fucking delicious meatloaf. This one was served with the best potato salad I’ve ever had. I feel like Germans know how to do potatoes properly.

Obviously deserving of its own paragraph is the Weißwurst which is a whole Munich thing. They were, according to the literature in the restaurant we ate them at, created when a chap called Josef Moser who was the butcher at the Zum Ewigen Licht (everlasting light) tavern ran out of proper sausage skins when serving councilmen and dignitaries a fuck tonne of bratwursts. He ended up shoving the sausage meat into tougher pork skins and heating them in hot water so the skins didn’t split and thus a legend was born. These days they’re seasoned with mace, lemon and parsley and eaten before noon with a pretzel (called a Brezel in Munich), sweet mustard, and a Weißbier. I promise I wasn’t just using it as a socially acceptable way to drink beer for breakfast whilst muttering things about it being cultural between gobfulls of sausage.

I’m very pleased that I found out how you’re meant to eat Weisswurst before we came here because you’re not meant to eat the skin. We’d have looked like right numpties trying to chew through it. The traditional way is to bite or cut the ends off then suck the meat out. This is easier said than done and the sound of me trying to do it quite rightly upset Tarrant. We just cut the skin, peeled it off and shovelled the contents down like we were raised by wolves.

As well as consuming our body weight in Bratwurst at the Christmas markets we also excitedly purchased a plate of something called Käsespätzle which is an egg noodle, or more of a tiny dumpling really, covered in cheese. You’d think it would be the way and the light but, dear reader, it was not. We ate a dumpling each, grimaced a little bit, then abandoned the plate on one of the many tables dotted around the place. The Germans I’ve spoke to since about it expressed surprise and said it’s usually really good, so either we have a very different idea of “really good” to most of Germany or we had a bad batch. It actually tasted slightly fishy and don’t get me wrong, I’m partial to a spot of dead sea life, but there’s a time and a place for it and my cheesy German noodle things are not it.

*Käsespätzle*. I’m up for giving it another go. Tarrant will see Hell freeze over before she lets it anywhere near her facehole ever again.

Currywurst. The way and the light. Bratwurst chopped up and covered in a substance conjured from concentrated deliciousness and the tears of angels.

Obazda. We had this at Rechthaler Hof after a suggestion from the waitress who more or less ordered us to have the “creamy cheese and bread. It’s good. You’ll like it” with the air of a woman who’d seen too many tourists spend four hours perusing a menu before trying to order a feast five minutes after the kitchen closed. I still think about this cheese. You’ll notice it was served with a large quantity of red onion and pickles, both of which I would eat daily by the fistful if I didn’t think it would lead to divorce. The cheese itself is a culinary wonder. Tarrant said it smelt like feet. I disagree. It’s one of those things I’ve fallen completely in love with and am already planning the next trip to Munich just so I can eat more of it.

Click Here for part 2.

Jump to “Useful shit to know…”

München, Bayern, Deutschland

Stayed at: Bob W. Munich Schwabing, Munich

Bob W. Munich Schwabing. Really comfortable albeit a bit too warm. Our room was small but it’s fine for a few nights. Shower was great. We didn’t use the kitchen but it’s there if you need it. It’s a bit out of town but only like five minutes to the nearest U-Bahn. Everything is online including your key! You have to use the website and your phone so make sure it’s charged. We’d probably stay here again if we returned to Munich.

Useful shit to know…

Getting Around

There are no barriers for the S-Bahn and U-Bahn in Munich. They just trust that you’re going to buy a ticket.
If you buy a paper ticket I think you have to validate it at the machines on the way in.
We used the MVV app. If there are two or more of you and you plan to get a few trains that day it’s worth getting the group day ticket. It’s good for up to five adults over 15.
The tickets you buy on the app are good for trains, buses and trams.
The MVV app is great, you can use Google Pay (I’m assuming Apple Pay too) so you don’t have to dick around putting a card in.
Everything in the city including BMW Welt & Museum are in zone M. The airport is zone 5.
If you’re heading into the city from the airport and intend to get more trains you can get an Airport-City_Day-Ticket. If you’re going from the airport to the city and staying there (or vice versa) you can just get a single ticket, zones M-5.
You can use Google Maps to find out which U-Bahn or S-Bahn goes where, and it covers buses and trams too.

There are screens in the trains so you know where you are and what the next stop will be. Announcements are, obviously, in German, but sometimes in English too if it’s of interest to tourists.

Miscellaneous

Whenever you buy a drink at the markets you’ll need to pay a Pfand, a deposit, ranging from €2 to €5, sometimes €10. At one place it was €15 but the cup was particularly desirable and apparently Americans like to collect them.
The bigger markets will give you a token (the smaller ones don’t bother) and sometimes you return it to a dedicated Pfandrückgabe, deposit return, or you’ll bring it back to where you bought it.
Even if you paid the deposit by card it’ll be returned to you in cash.