Damn! We are in Munich, but it is not October. Luckily they still serve beer in September, so we made it our mission to taste test a few just in case they needed any advice on what to serve next month during the mother of all beer parties. Last year over seven million people attended the 16 day Octoberfest, making it the biggest public festival on earth.

Munich may be about to be invaded by thousands of party animals for their beerfest, but their bigger concern at the moment is the invasion by thousands of Syrian refugees. We arrived by train in Munich on the same weekend that a flood of over 20,000 refugees arrived. Having limited internet access and no English TV at our hotel, we are not sure exactly what is happening now. On the northern side of the central train station scores of buses, ambulance vehicles and police seem to be dealing with the continuing influx. As tourists, it has not really affected us. Away from the station it seems to be business as usual. From my limited grasp of the local German news channel it seems many refugees are being housed in big halls and others are being bussed to other cities. The numbers are staggering. Australians getting upset over a few hundred boat people pales to insignificance.

Despite the refugee crisis, Munich marches on. We fell in love with Copenhagen and Hamburg, but now Munich has also claimed our hearts. It is a beautiful city full of wide pedestrian malls, spacious squares, lovely old buildings and incredible parks and gardens. Here are our main hints and highlights.

English Garden
922 acres of serenity in the city centre makes this one of the largest urban parks in the world. We loved strolling through tree lined paths, beside streams, and across spacious green fields watching people enjoying the outdoors in so many ways. School groups were doing P.E., surfers were riding artificial waves in rushing creeks (even in areas that distinctly said "no surfing"), lovers were picnicking, others were cycling, jogging or strolling just like us. In one section we found a Chinese tower surrounded by hundreds of tables and chairs with a fantastic selection of food cabins selling local fare such as grilled pork knuckles, schnitzel, sausages, giant pretzels, and of course giant glasses of beer.

Rathaus
Rathaus is my new favourite word. It is the German word for city hall, and apart from it seeming to be a brilliant description of a city hall, these places are full of surprises in Germany. The Munich Rathaus is beautiful with its tower and old world charm. Under the clock in the tower are two levels of figures that come alive every day at 11 am to dance and perform to music for 15 minutes while the crowd below watches mesmerised.

And if the beauty of the building and the entertainment of the clock were not enough, we discovered another pleasing aspect of the Rathaus. Inside is a cafeteria style restaurant which sells hearty Bavarian meals for a very reasonable cost. Many specials of the day (including a soup as well) were available for €5. We had (at different times) a tortellini pasta, a sausage, potato and pea type of casserole, and sausages and potato. All very tasty and very filling. And another plus - there is a free toilet, which we used even when not eating there. (It gets costly going to the toilet in countries that charge, but we have gathered quite a few cost saving tips if anyone heading this way needs them.)

More Parks and Palaces
This city has so many lovely gardens it is impossible to do them justice. Some of the ones we enjoyed were the Botanic Gardens, the Nymphenburg Palace and Park, and a lovely parkland stretching along the eastern side of the Iber River. The Residence, a palace begun in 1385 and now an extensive complex built around ten courtyards, lies in the centre of the city and is flanked by more beautiful gardens to the north.

Viktualienmarkt
We almost missed this, but luckily stumbled upon it on our last day here. It is Munich's oldest market and Reg thought he had died and gone to heaven as he browsed through the meat and sausage shops, the fruit stalls, and a myriad of other stalls selling everything from great varieties of mushrooms, stuffed olives, seafood and pasta, to flowers and scented house decorations. A foodie paradise.

Dachau
The day we visited Dachau was a very sobering day of our trip. On March 22, 1933 the first Concentration Camp was opened ten miles north west of Munich at the town of Dachau. The Nazis established it as the prototype model camp. It was also the training centre for the SS, where recruits were indoctrinated into a system that encouraged the torture, humiliation and killing of prisoners. I knew this would be an emotionally tough day, but I had to do it, not to convince myself that it actually happened, but to acknowledge that it did and pay some sort of silent tribute to those who suffered beyond belief.

It is free to get in, but well worth the €3 it cost to take a two and a half hour tour with an English speaking guide. Our guide was a German retiree who provided us with a wealth of information and encouraged questions and discussion that made us dig deeper into what we knew and thought and felt.

I won't try to describe Dachau. I don't think it is possible that we can begin to imagine how horrible it must have been. And as awful as this was, it was on the lowest scale of "horribleness" compared to many other camps.

If you do plan to visit Dachau from Munich, the best way to do it is to buy an XXL pass. It cost €14.20 for a day ticket for the two of us and covered the S2 train to Dachau (20 minutes) and the Bus 726 to the Concentration Camp. The ticket is valid for all transport (trains, trams, buses, underground) until 6 am the following day, so it is good value. We used our ticket to travel on trams for the remainder of the day to see a bit more of the city.

Hitler's Munich
As the birth place of Nazism, Munich has a dark side, and I wanted to see some of the sights associated with this. Konigsplatz is a large open area not far from the main station and was the site of mass party rallies. We also went to the site of the party's first mass meeting at the Hofbräuhaus, but the meetings there now are much more fun. This place is a gigantic beer house full of locals and tourists alike, where beer flows and Bavarian food is served to diners at long wooden tables and benches while a German band plays loudly from a central stage. 120 tables are reserved for regular guests and there is also a stein vault where loyal customers can store their own stein. Oh Hitler, if you had only taken the time to drink a big beer here instead of being such a grouchy lunatic, history may have followed a very different path.

Well folks, that's the abbreviated version of our time in Munich. Time to leave Germany and head for Austria.