As Europe’s A-list cities – London, Paris, Venice, Rome – become ever more crowded, the B-list cities, less well known but often just as interesting, become ever more appealing. Even in December, in cities such as Munich, a favourite among UAE visitors for its atmospheric Christmas market – as well as its medical facilities and clinics – the main shopping streets rarely become as insufferably crammed as the Champs-Élysées or Via Condotti. Year-round, you can view their art collections without wanting to murder the dozen other people standing in front of you. You’ve got a reasonable chance of getting a hotel room, restaurant table, massage or opera ticket at short notice. And you don’t arrive feeling you know the place because you’ve seen it as a backdrop in so many films. All of which puts you in that nicely relaxed mood which, as we all know, is reliably the one most likely to conjure up serendipity and the joy of the just-right purchase – whatever that might be.
In Munich, I’ve discovered, that could be a vegetable peeler. Honestly. I’ve just walked into Manufactum, a household-wares department store in the square off Marienplatz, the prosperous centre of Germany’s most prosperous city, and I am gazing around in surprise and delight. I’ve never seen anything quite like this place. It’s like a cross between the kind of supply store you would have found in a Wild West gold-rush town – everything practical and much of it handmade – and a luxury home store such as The Conran Shop in London or Gracious Home in New York. I take one of the store’s catalogues, stacked just inside the entrance, and sit at the coffee counter, next to the artisan bread counter. “This shop is amazing,” I tell the waiter, after ordering a €2.90 (Dh12) cappuccino and €3 (Dh14) slice of raspberry flapjack. “A typical German store,” he says calmly, “but thank you.”
I open the catalogue – it must weigh five kilograms – and do a double take. Twelve types of peelers; about 25 types of household brushes, including a four-prong one for cleaning blinds. Plus, grey felt slippers, alpaca blankets, goosedown duvets. Browse while sitting, drinking coffee and eating cake, then saunter off and buy: this is certainly one definition of a perfect shopping experience.
Half an hour later, I emerge into the autumn sunshine, only slightly weighed down (mustn’t peak too soon), turn left – and there’s the famous Dallmayr, a Munich institution not to be missed. I push open the old-fashioned heavy glass, brass and wood door, then breathe in the scent. Think Fouquet’s in Paris. Food, glorious food, with, I quickly discover, a chocolate, cake and biscuits section to make one put on about five kilos just by looking. Chocolate-coated figs, apricots, apple slices and dates? Yes, says the assistant, of course she can make me up a little mixed bag.
The high quality of German-made everything makes Germany particularly agreeable for shopping. Just Pure biodynamic skin creams; Falke silk, wool and cotton socks – the best you can buy; elegant and timeless calf-leather Aigner handbags; robust but body-skimming Bogner skiwear; chic and hardy Rimowa luggage – oh, and BMW cars. All have stores in Munich. The wild and sprawling Berlin gets all the publicity, but Bavaria’s safe and pretty Munich is so enjoyable to shop in, too, with its pedestrianised streets and manageable size. Visitors from the UAE often first get to know Munich because of its Grosshadern, Bogenhausen and Rechts Der Isar clinics and other excellent hospitals, discovering the brilliant shopping between appointments. Others come primarily for the Christmas market, opening on November 27, or the art. The big, airy, immaculately lit Neue Pinakothek, which opened in 2002, and the Brandhorst, which opened in 2009, hold two of the world’s most glorious collections of 20th-century paintings, with the great German expressionists – Otto Dix, Max Beckmann and Ernst Kirchner – especially well represented. But anyone could come for the luxury goods shopping alone – plus the odd serendipitous peeler – and leave feeling pretty pleased with themselves.
Where to shop
The compact city centre – which you can cross on foot in about 15 minutes – has three main shopping areas. For antique shops and boutiques dedicated to the burgeoning young German designer scene, there’s the network of narrow streets in the Glockenbachviertel and Gaertnerplatz areas. These flank the huge square that houses the enormous must-see open-air Viktualienmarkt food market (closed on Sundays) and its surrounding patisseries and cafes. The main square, Marienplatz, where the Christmas market is set up each winter, is a two-minute walk away, and five minutes from that is the main luxury shopping area, centring on Maximilianstrasse. Grand and Renaissance-style, this is the most expensive shopping street in Germany. Home to Chanel, Wempe, Bucherer, Cartier, Vertu, Omega, Patek Philippe, Rolex and the like, it’s aesthetically pleasing to wander along. Nearby, the Fünf Höfe complex, designed by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, is particularly appealing in snowy or cold weather. Partly open-air but mostly covered, it’s a chic string of courtyards linking a mix of familiar names such as Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Tory Burch and Prada, plus speciality shops and cafes.
Department and concept stores
The seven-floor Ludwig Beck department store, on Theatinerstrasse, with its excellent ground-floor beauty section, vies with the more sedate Lodenfrey – set up in 1842 by the family that pioneered loden (the first water-resistant fabric) – as the city’s best department stores. Among the more youthful-feeling concept stores, the newest is the Colette-copycat Apropos, at 12 Promenadeplatz, with fashion (Valentino, Armani, Missoni, Balmain, Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs, Santiago Gonzalez and Linari), books, homeware and a restaurant. At 28 Kaufingerstrasse – off the main square and home to some of Europe’s most expensive retail space – is the world’s largest concept store for men, Hirmer Menstyle. Six floors pack in a good mix of top labels, including Armani, Paul Smith, Canali, Belstaff and Hackett, while Konen at 3 Sendlinger Strasse stocks brands for men, women and children. The newly opened Wild Munich is the baby of the local stylist and fashion scout Beate Wild, with three floors given over to a coolly curated mix of German names such as Thomas Rath and international labels such as Issa London. And the old triple-gabled Oberpollinger, on Neuhauser Strasse, is a Saturday-afternoon must for any luxury shopper.
Speciality stores
On quiet Prannerstrasse, behind the Bayerischer Hof hotel, Carpe Diem sells delectable bed linen. With its Swarovski-buttoned little pillows, jewel-coloured duvet covers, outrageously seductive, buy-me-now-in every-colour soft alpaca throws for €299 (Dh1,400), you won’t leave unladen. Next door, the little costume-jewellery store is a treasure trove well worth browsing, too, with its chunky fake-gemstone-studded cuffs that look fabulous on a tanned wrist. James Dowie at 10 Brienner Strasse is the key place to know for men’s shoes. Also for men, and full of perfect gifting items, such as mechanical Swiss-made caged-dice cufflinks, say, handmade with eight ball bearings that set the dice in motion, is Werner Scherer, a big name in luxury men’s fashion in Germany since the 1950s, at 5 Platzl. Cigars at 139 Landsberger Strasse will spark the interest of any aficionado, with cigars from the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua and, of course, Cuba. In Fünf Höfe, Screbiers sells the pens Germany so excels at, from Lamy to Pelikan.
Perhaps the ultimate speciality store, however, is BMW World, on the outskirts of the city. Germans love to come here to collect the annual new car they will have ordered from a local dealer, watching it being driven towards them down a splendidly dramatic glass road. And many international buyers discover that buying here, then shipping the car home, or driving back, is invitingly cheaper than buying at home.
Where to stop for coffee
The palatial Cafe Luitpold is one of the grandest cafes in Europe, famous for its chocolate making (with a little museum telling the story) and good for recovering after browsing through the 200-year-old Luitpoldblock shops on Brienner Strasse. Also with a uniquely Bavarian feel are the wood-panelled, high-ceilinged 18th- and 19th-century spots that you find throughout this old city, places where waiters speed around in long aprons – Dallmayr’s first-floor cafe for one, and the gorgeous Restaurant Kronensaal at 205 Lindwurm Strasse for another. On a sunny weekend it’s fun to walk over (it takes barely five minutes) to the English Gardens – the world’s biggest city-centre park – for a coffee by the Chinese pagoda or boating lake. This is the only place anywhere you can see – or try for yourself – inner-city river-surfing. And you shouldn’t leave without walking through – no need to actually stay – the Hofbräuhaus on Orlando am Platzl, a vast hall that is in a permanent state of raucous uproar with an oompah band, beefy locals in feathered hats and a fleet of sausage-bearing waiters. Only in Germany, that one.
Where to stay
Visiting celebrities and those who value privacy tend to choose the sumptuous little Mandarin Oriental (www.mandarinoriental.com/munich; 0049 89 290 980; b&b from £441[Dh2,615]). Barely a minute's walk from the main square and the Viktualienmarkt, it has a chic rooftop terrace cafe bar China Moon, which has the best 360-degree views in the city, and becomes home to a delightful Bavarian mountain wooden chalet in the winter. The big draw is the feeling of closeted cosseting that comes from a hotel with just 48 rooms, 25 suites and sensationally efficient staff. The neutrally decorated bedrooms and their marble bathrooms are compact but high-ceilinged, with the finest of zillion-thread-count bed linen and blissfully comfortable goosedown pillows. The spa exudes professionalism; the restaurant is Michelin-starred and breakfast is a cosy affair, with excellent breads and pastries, if a limited selection of cold meats and cheeses, set out on a series of little tables. Envelopingly comfortable, with its intimate little lobby lounge, it's unusually "boutique" for a Mandarin.
The stately Bayerischer Hof (www.bayerischerhof.de; 0049 892 120 900; b&b from €496 [Dh2,320]), on the other hand, has been the city's grandest see-and-be-seen-in hotel since it opened in 1841, built to accommodate King Ludwig I. It is extravagantly elegant and big, too: 280 rooms, 60 suites. The best of these are splendidly redone, spacious, in pale greys or greens, with the bathroom well removed from the bedroom and convenient open clothes-hanging space in the entrance lobby. The spa is delightful, one of the last projects by the designer Andrée Putman, with a pool and airy therapy rooms. Breakfast in the futuristic white-on-white sixth-floor restaurant, with some tables on a terrace planted with wild flowers, is pure pleasure. Entirely perfect, in fact, from the fineness of the porcelain and excellence of the tea to the temptations on offer, from top-quality smoked salmon and homemade jams to irresistible croissants.
Getting there
Emirates (www.emirates.com) has direct return flights from Dubai to Munich from Dh2,555 in economy. Etihad (www.etihad.com) has direct return flights from Abu Dhabi at the same time from Dh2,595.
Further information
The city's tourist site is unusually informative: www.muenchen.de
