Munich Dashes Preconceptions - Page 3
By Tom Kagy | 10 Aug, 2025

The 5th and final leg of our 12-day Central Europe road trip took us through the Alps, Salzburg and into Munich's unforgettable Old Town.

Neues Rathaus wasn't fully finished until 1908 when the soaring clock tower was added.  The Rathaus-Glockenspiel features 43 bells and 32 life-size figures that enact historical events twice a day at 11 a.m. and noon.  All in all Marienplatz and its environs completely changed our pre-trip perception of Munich as an industrial powerhouse and a cultural wasteland.  It and the half dozen other plazas in Old Town made us feel as immersed in Old Europe as most other European capitals we've visited. 

The Residenz München, Munich's old royal palace, offers visitors access to 130 ornately decorated rooms and 10 imposing courtyards.  (Photo, Tom Kagy)

We ventured into the Rathaus courtyard in search of restrooms.  The public restrooms on ground level were attended by a middle-aged Vietnamese woman maintenance worker who told us that the automated pay gate didn't function and that we could pay her and she would manually coax open the electronic turnstile.  The price of relief was advertised as 2 euros apiece, as I recall.

Munich's Old Town streets are lined with a wide variety of restaurants and shops.  (Photo, Tom Kagy)

After taking advantage of the photo op presented by the phantsmagoric Rathaus courtyard, we escaped out the west side and saw signs of a music festival struggling for traction in the light rain on a broad pedestrian mall.  It led us north toward Residenz München, the royal palace once occupied by Bavaria's Wittelsbach monarchs.  Its 130 rooms and 10 courtyards are now open to visitors, making it a top attraction for those seeking immersion in the decor and amenities of freeze-dried 14th and 15th century palace life.  

The courtyard of Munich's Neues Rathaus, New Town Hall, a fully-functional structure built in the late 19th century after a determinedly Gothic fashion, is a popular photo op.  (Photo, Tom Kagy)

We were drawn more to the adjoining Hofgarten, courtyard garden, a big square park  featuring a geometrically divided central green square setting off a stately circular open pavilion in which we and a number of other visitors sought shelter from the intensifying rain.  When the rain abated we perambulated around the periphery and were surprised to discover a statue of Confucius on the north side of the garden.  It had been gifted to Munich in 2007 by China's Shandong Province to commemorate cultural ties.

Around mid-afternoon we made our way south on Ludwigstraße toward Odeonplatz, the site of a bandstand for the music festival.  After casting around for a good lunch spot we settled on an Italian place called Tambosi after Luigi Tambosi who founded it around 1800 as a baroque coffee house with ambitions of prestige.  He seemed to have found it, judging by the interior's black luxe finish and somewhat overdressed clientele, excluding us, of course, decked in our functional travel duds.  

A status of Aphrodite adorns the west end of  Luitpoldbrücke, a bridge dedicated to Luitpold, Bavaria's Prince Regent.  (Photo, Tom Kagy)

We ordered a prosecco, a rosé and bottled waters, mine sparkling, hers flat, to go with our vegetarian pizza and a salad.  It was a pleasant repast, especially as it allowed us the luxury of gazing comfortably out at the rather persistent rain instead of being in it.  The tab came to a reasonable $59.73, about 20% less than what we might have paid in Santa Barbara by the time you add tax and tip.  Not bad for a toney eatery in the world's third most affluent metro area.

On our return walk we re-crossed the Isar River on Maximiliansbrücke, the Maximillianstraße bridge.  At that point the Isar bifurcates around a wooded islet bearing the names, north to south, of Schwindinsel (Schwind Island), Praterinsel, which offers a public beach and facilities, and Feuerwerksinsel.  

At this point the rain let up, emboldening us to cut left onto a paved footpath of the extensive riverside park Maximiliansanlagen and follow a series of paths cutting through a memorably green and hilly landscape that was totally unpopulated at that hour.  That peaceful and luxuriant traipse completed our growing awareness of the high quality of life prevailing in at least that district of Munich, comparable to the poshest urban residential districts of US cities.

Back at the hotel we spent some quality work time on our work laptops.  Throughout our trip we had been obliged to spend a few hours each day on our laptops which is why one of our key criteria for hotels was wi-fi speed.  It was perfectly adequate at all hotels throughout our trip except the one in Prague for which we had sacrificed fast wi-fi for charm and location.

For the last dinner of our Central Europe road trip we decided to try the Huong Que Vietnamese restaurant we had spotted on an avenue adjacent to the park, a block west of our hotel and about a quarter mile south on Ismaningerstraße.  It was a casual place with five tables and a small counter.  An industrious Vietnamese woman was the host and wait staff.  

She handed us a Vietnamese menu in German without English translations.  We were totally flummoxed.  Our puzzlement became apparent to a German couple at an adjacent table to my left.  

"Would you like some help with the menu?" inquired the blond woman in her mid-30s in fluent English.  She then proceeded to answer our questions about German words for beef, pork, chicken, fish and noodles until we had managed to order.

During the ensuing conversation we asked the questions we had been harboring.  First, why aren't there more BMWs on the streets.  After a brief hesitation and a grimace, she said, "They're so frigging expensive.  The only people who buy them are those who want to show off how much money they have."

Having driven BMWs for the fifteen years until switching to EVs, we didn't pursue that topic.  Our other question, the money question, was what Germans thought about Donald Trump who had taken office four months earlier.  A preview of the general sentiment came in the form of a chuckle from the elderly woman sitting at the table to my right side.  It was clear that most residents of Munich understood English, even the 30% who are foreign nationals and the 19% who are naturalized first-generation immigrants — except our Vietnamese server.

As for the couple, my question prompted an exchange of glances and a few words in German.  "He's, you know, different," she began.  "Maybe he will cause some problems..."

We left early the next morning for our Lufthansa transatlantic flight.  The business class seat wasn't totally lie-flat but comfortable enough to allow me to fall asleep with the help of a couple of edibles.  My only gripe was at being awakened by the late night galley gossiping of our otherwise pleasant and efficient female flight attendant.  

As we cleared LAX immigration we were pleasantly surprised at the total lack of efforts by border security to engage in any MAGA-style shenanigans as had been reported in some red states.  Those high California taxes were at least affording us some protection from Trump's un-American border shenanigans.