TRAIN #22 – 17:00 Rome to Munich (Continued)
I had another bad night. I woke up several times and I was wide awake before the Austrian border with West Germany at around 04:00.
After another round of immigration and customs inspections had been conducted on board we were off again. We arrived on time into Munich’s modern Hauptbahnhof at 07:20.
MUNICH
With the luggage deposited and the money changed with relative ease, we armed ourselves with maps and decided to undertake a tram and bus tour of the city. We paid 6.50 DM for a day ticket and then caught a bus out to Prince Regent Strasse.
We had a breakfast of freshly baked bread rolls from a bakery that was even more impressive than the ones we had seen in Italy. After a quick look at the Art Nouveau Museum, we went on to Wiener Platz and then to the Deutsches Museum, the largest technical museum in the world and by far the best museum of the whole trip. It was extremely well done with ships, planes and a very impressive mining section.
We went to the Hofbrauhaus for a lunch of beer and sausages and then a walk around Marienplatz, St Peter’s church and the amazing food market, Vitualienmarkt. After a visit to the twin-domed cathedral, we walked back towards Karlsplatz along the pedestrianised shopping street. It reminded me of a British street with a few of the same shops such as C&A and Woolworth’s. There were a lot of street singers performing.
We caught the S-Bahn out to the quiet suburb of Dachau and from there a bus to the concentration camp museum. It was very sobering but interesting. We both fell asleep on the S-Bahn on the way back to the city but just woke in time to get off at the main station.
For dinner we headed off to the Englischer Garten and at the Chinese pagoda beer garden enjoyed the best, but also most expensive, meal since Brussels. We ordered roast chicken, mashed potatoes and a roll and washed down it with a quart pot of beer. We sat there for nearly two hours making the beer last.
We got lost on the way back, jumping on the wrong tram. We somehow made it back to Marienplatz using a combination of bus and U-Bahn and then walked back to the station. We got our luggage, had a coffee from a kiosk and then watched as the overnight express for Berlin pulled out. We then went over to the platform for the Hamburg train.
TRAIN # 23 – 23:20 Munich to Hamburg
We had a good feeling waiting for the Hamburg train. There were very few other people about as the stock to form it pulled into the platform. We got a compartment to ourselves, put all the seats down, got the sleeping bags out. I was soon fast asleep.
Forty Years Later….
- Physical border controls between Austria and Germany were removed in 1997 under the Schengen Agreement.
- The Deutsche Bundesbahn (DB) was merged with the East German state railway (DR) to form Deutsche Bahn AG (DB AG) in 1993.
- Euro banknotes and coins replaced the Mark on January 1, 2002
- Dutch C&A still operate in Germany after pulling out of the UK in 2000.
- The German Woolworth’s is also still going. It became independent before the US parent went bankrupt and closed all UK stores in 2009.
- I have been back to Germany many times including Munich since 1984.
