Unlike the other cities we visited, Munich was really a convenience stop-over of a single night. We were booked on the 5:50am train from Munich to Paris, so it just made sense to stay near the station overnight, rise early and depart.

We found a somewhat kitschy hotel about a block from the station – Cocoon Hauptbahnhoff. Decorated with ski resort & tyrolian themes, it was comfortable and convenient – just right for us.

As we had done in Prague and Budapest, we signed up for a 3hr withlocals.com tour. Sure it’s still scripted and likely glosses over many things, yet it still gives an opportunity to get a more personalized and interactive glimpse at some of the city’s “attractions”.

Munich was a surprise. Even in our very short time, it was a worthy visit. With an architectural mix of both old-world remnants, not destroyed during the wars, and modern replacements – it also held some of the sense of the grandiose plazas, though with the chilling backdrop of Hitler’s rise to power.

Of course, Munich is all about Oktoberfest. Though we’re not beer drinkers and the famed event doesn’t hold much meaning for us, the locals (and much of the world for that matter) take their beer drinking very seriously.

Ground zero, if you can call it that, is the Hofbräuhaus am Platzi –  a beer hall, originally built in 1589. So serious are they about beer that the Hofbräuhaus has a few locked racks where locals keep their personal mugs (“Krüge”)!

It was difficult to see some of the sites in Munich without the hearing (and imagining) some of the historical context. The Hofbräuhaus is an example. On February 24, 1920, the Hofbräuhaus is where Hitler made a speech founding the Nazi Party.

Another such site which really brought carried historical context is the Golden path. It’s a narrow, curbless pedestrian street, not long and paved with cobblestones. While officially named after the architect Viscardi, its nickname is from the 1930s, because locals could use it bypass the nearby Nazi memorial to the martyrs of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, thus avoiding the requirement to perform a Hitler salute to the guarded structure.

Another such site on the tour was the Sterneckerbräu – a relatively unassuming looking restaurant. Turns out, the inn served as a meeting place for the first branch of the German Workers’ Party, which became the Nazi Party. It was a place of pilgrimage for the Nazi movement and is a registered monument on the Bavarian monument list.