In order to fully experience any city one must take a look at its nightlife. Although Munich has many clubs of various sorts, Munich’s Backstage is probably the best of its live music venues. Founded in 1991 and having moved a few times, it remains a constant hot spot for good cheap beer and top punk, metal, hip hop, reggae, alternative, rock, electronic, and independent music from all over the world.
The reason I like to draw attention to the Backstage rather than other music venues such as the Feierwerk, Zenith, Tonhalle, Strom, or Optimolwerke is simple: it is easy to get to, has an atmosphere like no other, and is extremely consistent.
The Backstage is multiple venues in one: a small outdoor stage in the summer, a small two level room called the club, a medium sized venue called the hall, and the largest venue they call the werk.
Every summer the Backstage has a series of concerts known as the “free & easy festival.” Although titled as a festival, it really is just a series of normal concerts which are completely free and absolutely ideal for the casual fan or non-committal friend. 2018’s lineup includes The Mahones, Helmet, Hatebreed, and Municipal Waste.
A map, as well as S-bahn, tram, and bus directions can be found here.
I have recently moved back to Minnesota. I know many (including myself sometimes) never thought I would move back (it was 10 years), but I have moved…and it’s been interesting.
Why the move? Many reasons, but at the end of the day it’s what my wife and I decided long ago and we’re giving it the old college try. Is it permanent? Who knows.
What am I going to do with this site? Hopefully be more active again and become entrenched in Minnesota tourism. I really do love to travel and I don’t think moving to Minnesota will change anything other than flight possibilities.
So far this year we’ve done a fair amount of new touristy things in the area, but from this point on I’ll hopefully post about them here.
I call it project rediscover the Midwest as that’s what this is: a rediscovering. Many of the places and things I plan to see and do I have seen and done before, but in what seems like a lifetime ago in a weird dream. This time I’m showing my wife and child the intricacies of my culture while at the same time checking out things I’ve wanted to do since I can remember. Also, thanks to the internet, I now know of options I never knew existed…making the list of options almost endless. Project rediscover the Midwest will take years, but it should be fun and you’re welcome to join us…if you have ideas, post’em!
Radius Tours, the main tour company I’ve worked with since 2005, is having its 25th anniversary this month! It’s time to party while trying to conduct tours…
So last weekend we spent in Innsbruck, a beautiful lesser regional capital with a very cool club if you enjoy live music (the pmk). Apparently I’m the mayor of it on foursquare at the moment. So anyways…
Last year we were there a few times…twice for sight-seeing and once for a concert. Although it is possible to do Innsbruck (sight-seeing) in a day from Munich…either you won’t see much at all or you’ll be completely exhausted from running around all day…leave EARLY and come back late (early is more important as museums, castles, palaces, and churches close by sun down or earlier).
I recommend 2-3 days, quite similar to Salzburg…though Salzburg is much prettier…
I enjoy being in Innsbruck…but I certainly wouldn’t want to work there as a tour guide…
So yeah…things you should not miss:
The cenotaph of Max I (it’s in a church, across from the palace, gotta pay to enter, but it’s well worth it)….castle Ambras….and the museum of the golden roof…the imperial palace is nice as well, but we’ve got much better in Munich 🙂
Want a more impressive run-down on what is in Innsbruck and my opinions of each? ask in the comments or e-mail me! (I just don’t want to write a novel if no one cares 🙂 )
As many of you know, I used to do the Radius “Bavarian beer and food tour.” Last night I went on the tour with a group of fellow guides & Radius employees as well as a few tourists. I rarely go on tours from other guides…just as most guides rarely go on mine. It’s usually very annoying to me so I sneak away from the group and try not to listen to the guide. There are many reasons for this…
Anyways, so last night I went with the group to the Beer and Oktoberfest Museum (which is great), had a few beers there & then went on to eat at the Hofbräu Keller (which is a highly recommended restaurant for good reason), and then we ended up at the infamous Hofbräuhaus. Well, okay, to be fair we continued after that…but not with the full group.
This is actually a fairly typical night out, partly because so many of the places in Munich close by 11 or 12. So then you have to hunt for a smaller hole in the wall that will let you drink for another hour or two.
Several companies these days to pub crawls, but when we created the Bavarian Beer and Food Tour we were the first to focus on the actual TOUR…the beer and its role in Bavarian culture. Depending on the group as well as the guide, however, in practice the tour can make many detours and digress very quickly into a drink-a-thon pub crawl with food thrown in for the hell of it. Half truths filling in for reality and accepted because of either pandering to nationalism or an emphasis on entertainment rather than correctness.
I think it may be impossible to do a proper beer tour day after day without this variance though. That may be a big part of why I don’t do the tour any longer. At least not for random groups.
I love beer. I love Bavarian culture. I love Munich. *sigh* oh well.
Want a private beer tour? €220 + the price of the beers and I can make it happen. Please enquire at least three weeks in advance of the proposed tour date. Cheaper if you don’t mind me drinking soda while you’re drinking beer, that way I can work the next day.
Really, it’s not good. Snow has been falling the last couple of days and although it hasn’t amounted to hardly anything (it’s pretty much all gone), it makes a tour guide’s life hell. It’s just cold and wet…that’s no fun.
Wednesday I had a Neuschwanstein tour…it mostly drizzled and you couldn’t see anything. The tour group were all happy at the end of the tour, but it really is hard to make someone actually HAPPY when you can’t show them anything. The good part is for those moments that you CAN see the building from further than 20 feet away, there is no longer any scaffolding covering it!
I keep having Spanish people on my tours…yet they say they have 25% unemployment. Rather odd.
Supposedly they have a special glühbier this year at the Christmas market…gonna have to try it soon. Tomorrow we’re going to Die Toten Hosen…it’s been years since I’ve seen them…
It’s black friday, but I don’t have time to shop. At the moment I’m on a train out toward where I used to live. This is a test to see how this app for my phone works with wordpress…so far so good.
Speaking of where I used to live, Seefeld, there’s a massive 14th century castle there that may be well worth a visit on your way to Andechs monastery…well, that is if you like Egyptian stuff.
Everyone’s idea of the perfect trip is different. I saw that a popular travel blogger recently told people that they can see the world for far cheaper than they imagined and he’ll tell you how: stay at hostels in the middle of no where in 3rd world countries…and walk there. (ok, fine, I added the walk there part)
My point is that travel is expensive and I don’t have a magical way of seeing everything for free. I myself am ridiculously frugal, though, and if I am advising you on your travel plans you can be assured that I am taking that into account. At the same time, you want to see everything since you will probably not be back. I like to see EVERYTHING myself and am quite annoyed that every guidebook is incomplete…
Nearly all of my vacations in Europe are sight seeing at ancient monuments, churches, palaces, castles, and such. Many of these are in major cities or able to be done as a day trip from a major city. So what do I recommend? Guide books? wikipedia? Google? local tourist boards?
Well, I recommend reading everything. I know, you don’t have time. Well, you have found me and I have very likely been to the place you want to go.
So the best way, in my opinion, to plan your vacation to a major city in Europe? Have an expert, like me, do the planning for you.
When I take a trip I read through a couple guide books on the place in question from cover to cover. Then, I Google everything while checking out their wikipedia sites as well as their official websites. In the end I come up with an excel spreadsheet with all of the basic information on the places, expected prices, opening times, days they are closed, if they are covered by some kind of pass, and oftentimes notes on when is the best time to be there. For the ones I do for myself I don’t have to be as thorough as if I were doing it for someone else since I only need an outline really, not the full speech…if ya know what I’m saying.
Anyways, I plan to post a few old spreadsheets of mine on here at some point to help others out, but if anyone would like me to do one for you…I can be bought. Especially if you’re planning months in advance, it should be no problem for me to make up a spreadsheet for you along with a few extended notes. You can pay me via paypal if you want after the spreadsheet is received. cost? let me know in a comment or e-mail what you’d want to pay for this service…and I’ll at least consider any offer.
It has already snowed this year, so I declare it winter. By that I mean that I’ll be quite miserable until May…ish.
As I’ve said many times before, Munich doesn’t REALLY get winter. However, it does get miserable…and that’s bad enough for me. What I mean by miserable is that for the next several months highs will be in the 30’s or 40’s and lows will be in the 20’s or 30’s. Lots of rain with the occasional snow…and very rarely a hint of sun. This is not the sunny but freezing cold winter of Minnesota…this is worse.
Now on to happier things: Munich’s Christmas market is coming soon. The reason I say this is that the Christmas tree in front of the New Town Hall is already up! In the states this would be blasphemous before Thanksgiving…but since there is no thanksgiving here, Christmas is thrust upon them even earlier than back home!
The Christmas markets are quite lovely to take a stroll through and they also mean one of my favorite German beverages are available everywhere: Glühwein. (mulled wine) So we can happily get drunk on the streets and pretend that it’s sunny!
It also brings some of my favorite tourists, truth be told, in the type that remind me of my parents. Backpackers are not my thing…
Anyways, I’ll be (once again) trying to update my blog more often…and who knows, maybe I’ll keep it up for quite some time now that Nileguide isn’t going any more.
I know, it sounds crazy…but I’ve just been too busy. Petra and I went the other day for lunch and a wander around the grounds (there are certain things we need to do there every year…). Anyways, I’ll be there to drink on Sunday…I’m considering Friday or Saturday.
I’ve been on vacation for pretty much all of August, but I’m back now. I know what you’re thinking: “A tour guide can take off a month in the middle of the high season?”….well, yes, I can and do every year…it’s the best time to take a trip in my opinion…and so I do.
Anyways, I’m home and available again…not sure if I’m looking forward to the Oktoberfest…
Every few years I need to visit friends/family/decent beer/mexican food/the sun, so tomorrow I’m going to head across the Atlantic to do just that. I’ll be back in late August…but I’m already booked every day of that week. September I’m relatively open, though.
I’ve been doing a lot of private tours lately and I really need to change the text of my private tour section here. Basically what I need to change is to scare away the crazy people.
1. I can’t drive you around Bavaria as I don’t have a commercial driving license (and YES, that is required). Some guides will do this, but it is breaking the law and really not worth it if they get caught. I live in Germany, a very rule-abiding society…and that’s just how I roll. I do have a German driver’s license, but that is irrelevant.
2. I don’t own a helicopter or a jet, it’s impossible to do all of that in one day. What’s that? Google says you can? Okay, try it yourself and tell me how that went. I once had a crazy tour leader from Stanford University who would not listen to reason…in the end they rented like 16 BMW’s to drive to Neuschwanstein because they said it’d be faster. In the end it was a very tight schedule with a lot of illegal driving…they barely made their tour time inside the palace and they missed their dinner reservations in Munich. All because they believed google over their local guide who has done it hundreds of times (literally).
3. Mainly for private tours I do Munich city tours, by foot, which can be tailored to whatever length you want or day trips by public transportation. If not on foot, public transportation REALLY is the way to go.
I dunno…I just ran out of steam, noticed the time, and I gotta go to work. I’m heading down to Neuschwanstein again today. should be a high of 66 with a 30% chance of rain…HMMM…
Current price for walking tours of the city: €120 for a standard 3-hour tour. Free if you are a member of a band I love. (good luck with that one)
The track works between Munich and Neuschwanstein end on Wednesday….it’s been fun watching the tourists struggle, but that’s over….thank god. I’ve got a massive group today, but it’s nearly summer so I suppose it’snormal.
Planning the trip to NYC tomorrow
It appears my photo-uploading abilities on here have hit a hitch…working on a work-around. There should be photos below…I’ll fix it this week…
Summer? okay, it’s not quite summer yet, but we’ve certainly had weather as if it were summer (for Munich).
This month looks like a busy one…I’ll be going back and forth between Neuschwanstein and Herrenchiemsee mainly, at least according to the schedule. I’ll probably throw in some Munich city tours of course.
This week we’re going to a Jupiter Jones concert…next week we’ll go to Lagwagon….then Flogging Molly…then…
Seven weeks or so until our vacation. If anyone needs a tour in late July or the first 3/4 of August…sorry, I’m out of the country.
Hi everybody. I’m going to get back into updating regularly, I swear. I’ll still blame Nileguide responsibilities primarily, but I’ve exchanged those for writing for The Munich Times! I’ll be doing regular concert reviews, interviews, and all sorts of other writing primarily in the culture section. It is an online newspaper, but also a print newspaper (soon). Anyways…Last night I saw John K Samson again…always a fun show. Tomorrow I’ve got a city tour around Munich…and then Wednesday and Thursday I’ll be down at Neuschwanstein. Speaking of Neuschwanstein, I had the tour there last Wednesday and it was a goddamn blizzard. Yesterday’s tour there it was about 74F…so…yeah, I’m not a fan of the spring really…manure is in the air…but at least summer is coming soon…
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