avhuebner

My husband and I are going to have a five hour layover in Munich this winter - as I have never been to Munich and he has never been to Germany, I thought we may as well go have lunch somewhere so he can see more than just the airport. A few years back I had a similar situation in Frankfurt - I took a train, wandered around the city, had breakfast and went back to the airport.

My question - is this possible from the Munich airport? If so, does anyone have any good recommendations as far as restaurants? Train station information would be most welcome!

greg

I have done similar thing at Munich; although, I had a much longer layover.

First, be warned that the German airport security check is very thorough and time consuming. Make sure you pay attention to the boarding time specified by your airline. It is much longer than you may be used to especailly if your next leg is to the US.

Airport to down town is connected by two S-bahns, S1 which runs counter clockwise around city to down town and S8 which runs clockwise. Each one leaves every 20 min, or combined trains are spaced almost evenly (this is Germany, you know...), you have a train bound for downtown about every 10 min.
Trip to Marienplatz area takes about 45min.

You MUST buy AND VALIDATE (on blue machine at the entrance to platform) your ticket before boarding.

The train info is at:

http://www.s-bahn-muenchen.de/media/...et_S8_S1_3.pdf

WARNING: For Airport-> down town trip, S1 and S8 both do the same thing to the area around Marienplatz. BUT for downtown->Airport, while the entire S8 make it back to the airport, a part of S1 separates at NEUFAHRN. Only the back part of train make it to the airport -- this is noted in the PDF file above.

Also the some stations in downtown are double level. For example, at Marienplatz, the east bound S-bahn trains at 1st undergrouand level, the west bound S-bahn trains are at deeper level. On the platform there are color coded train departure displays showing next few trains.

dfr4848

I have nothing to add to greg's info on getting into Munich from the airport. I would reiterate and emphasize his comments about the security. You don't say how many years ago you had your layover in Frankfurt, but in the past 15 months we've had 3 layovers in Frankfurt and 2 in Munich. Security is very tight and time-consuming. In both airports, we've gone through 3 different security checks each layover. We didn't leave the airport and were connecting on the same airline (LH). The security checks themselves weren't particularly time-consuming, but the waits can be quite long. One time it took over an hour. You may not have quite the waiting time in the winter, but 2 of our layovers were in March and it still took a while.

I'm not trying to discourage you from attempting to go into Munich. It is absolutely one of our favorite cities in Europe. I would just caution you to do your homework as greg suggests on flight times, check-in requirements, location of gates, etc. in order to minimize any potential problems. Certainly hope it works out for you.

logos999

>comments about the security
It totally depends on the airline. Lufthansa and Delta in Terminal 2 are very strict. Condor and LTU are rather fast and easy, even when going to the US. Seems terrorists don't like package tours. ;-)