With only 3 days in beautiful Munich, we decided to conquer as many tourist spots as we possibly could. Hence in one afternoon, we jumped on a train with the intention of visiting the BMW Museum, the Olympic Park AND Nymphemburg Palace. Perhaps a little ambitious, but nothing we haven’t done before.

First things first, logistics. The BMW Museum is actually situated at the Olympic Park – to get there, you get the train to the station handily named ‘Olympia Zentrum’. It even has a little Olympic Logo next to it on the map that says ‘Olympic Park’. Easy.

There are two parts to the BMW Museum – the actual museum, and BMW World. BMW World is free, but there isn’t that much there. I believe it’s more of a place where people go to pick up their new BMWs, though you can get a tour of the factory from there if you pre book.

We didn’t go in there, as we had our eyes on the prize… The museum. It’s big, shiny and full of big, shiny things. Hamilton has much more of an interest in cars than I do, but I still enjoyed it.

We got a discounted ticket on arrival which I think made it about 7 euros, because the new technology section was closed, which we were quite chuffed about really. I mean, we see the new cars all the time… On the road! It’s more the racing cars and bikes and planes etc that I was there to see.

It’s a really well designed building, though a bit confusing when you first walk in because there are walkways EVERYWHERE. The way you walk is fairly clear – because you can see all the different ways to walk you can sort of figure it out. It’s just a little bit disconcerting when you can see people walking around above you looking at another shiny thing, that you can’t necessarily tell if you’ve already seen or not.

I actually have no real idea how big the museum is, but I’d say it took us a good hour or so to get round it. My personal favourite bits were the concept section aka cars / motorbikes that won’t actually ever go into production, but are cool. Also, the racing cars. Because I’m a big kid.

If you’re into engines and cars and bikes etc this will be your absolute paradise. If I’m honest, we only really went because we were interested in seeing the Olympic Park and it gave us another reason to make the trek out there.

If you’re not interested in cars, I probably wouldn’t bother. The Olympic Park is… Strange. It’s kind of like being in an apocalypse. Even the geese on the lake look confused. Looking back I didn’t even take any pictures of the park!

Maybe we just missed it all, but there isn’t a lot going on there. I kind of knew this before, but I’d hoped there would at least be some information boards or something up to give some background. We walked round as much as we could bear in the cold, but aside from the buildings, only came across some hand prints set in concrete that didn’t really make much sense.

They’re basically prints from people that have sung or visited there, I think. Not just from the actual olympics. To be fair, the Olympics did happen there over 30 years ago, so there isn’t any real reason it would be thriving.

I think it might be because we had such a good experienced at the Lillehammer Olympic Park (If you’re passing GO. It’s amazing.) we had high expectations. Plus, I kind of love the Olympics.

Nonetheless, this wasn’t the last stop on our daily outing, so I wasn’t too upset by the weird experience. Our final port of call, was Nymphemburg Palace. It was about 3pm by this point, but we’d looked it up and google told us it shut at 6, so we had plenty of time.

We got the train there, walked through the weird town from the train station but there aren’t any signs or anything when you leave to say you’re in the right place. (I don’t know if many people get the train there, I’m not really sure how they get there. It only took about 20/30 minutes from the BMW Museum if I remember rightly.) it’s then about a 15/20 minute walk to the palace itself.

I was already aware that a lot of the statues etc are covered up in winter to preserve them, so wasn’t expecting too much of the gardens. When walking up to it, it’s beaut. Lots of geese, a pretty palace, a Christmas tree and nice symmetrical gardens. There isn’t that much more to be interested in outside after that though. I mean, it’s quite woody, which surprised me. Aka, there are a lot of trees.

So after a quick wander around, we decided to go inside. Alas, it was shut.

Basically, Google lied.

In winter it actually shuts at 4pm. So… Yeh. It’s meant to be lovely inside, but I can’t actually tell you if that’s true or not.

So, we walked back through the slightly creepy gardens (it was getting dark) to the train station, and then went back into central Munich with slightly fuller pockets than expected seeing as we didn’t have to pay out to go inside, drank beer and laughed about how useless we are. Honestly, only we would do that.

So, basically, it wasn’t the best afternoon in the world. Nonetheless, I had a really good day because I was with my best friend, and in good Christmas spirit. Sometimes, that’s all you need.

If I was to recommend an alternative to this afternoon it would probably be Neuschwanstein Castle, which we didn’t go to because Hamilton had already been, but I’ve seen it on the Amazing Race and WILL go there one day. I believe it’s about 2 hours from Munich city centre, and the height of Disney Princess ideals.

So, yeh. Not the most successful afternoon, but still a lot of fun.

6 days until Christmas!

Abi

X

@abipageaustin

@travelteatv