Early arrival in Munich

After stashing luggage at your hotel, go to the Viktulienmarkt and have a weisswurst and a weissbier. "Weisswurst is brought to the table in a big bowl together with the cooking liquid used for preparation (so it does not cool down too much), then eaten without the skin. Ways of eating Weisswurst include the traditional way, called zuzeln, in which each end of the sausage is cut or bitten open, then the meat is sucked out from the skin. Alternatively, the more popular and more discreet ways of consuming it are by cutting the sausage longways and then "rolling out" the meat from the skin with a fork, or just ripping the sausage apart and consuming the filling. Weisswurst is commonly served with a special Bavarian sweet mustard (Weisswurstsenf) and accompanied by Brezen (Bavarian Pretzel) and Weissbier. Weisswurst is rarely eaten in other parts of Germany besides Bavaria--a fact that helped coin the term Weißwurstäquator."
Lots of other groceries and souveniers on offer as well.

Kim, what day of the week are you arriving in Munich? On Sundays some stores will be closed and other days some museums. Have you checked with your hotel to see if you can store your bags securely and perhaps even check in early? Also, if they have a restaurant, where you can have breakfast or if they can suggest a place in their neighborhood. There is a large supermarket inside the Munich airport with a counter that serves coffee and pastry and has wrapped sandwiches for take-out. This is cheaper than the little restaurants at the airport.

If drinking beer first thing in the morning doesn't appeal to you, understandably, I would stash your bags at either your hotel or the train station and find somewhere to have breakfast. Then you could wander around until things open. Not knowing what day of the week you are arriving it is hard to say what will be open and when. Munich surely has a website that will list if there is a market you can check out to something like that. Do you have a guidebook to help you determine what you might want to do?

Wow, I totally dropped the ball on this one; this stop is near the end of our trip and clearly I ran out of steam on doing my research. We're arriving on a Sunday, so we might be wandering some empty streets for a while! I do have the RS Germany guidebook. We're also planning to go to Dachau, but I only just realized it's closed on Monday! So I guess we'll head over there after arriving and storing our bags, and hopefully finding a place open for breakfast. Thanks to everyone for the suggestions!

Why would anyone go all the way out to the airport (about 40 min by S-Bahn) for breakfast when there are lots of restaurants around the Munich Hauptbahnhof and a food court inside at the end of the tracks? If your hotel is not immediately nearby, you can stash your luggage in one of the many lockers in the Hbf and take the S-Bahn down to Marienplatz. The Frauenkirche opens for visitors at 7 AM. There are plenty of shops and restaurants in the Fußganger (pedestrian) Zone west of Marienplatz. The Kaufhaus department store opens at 9 AM, as does the Residenz (in-town palace of the Wittelsbacher family), a few blocks north of Marienplatz. There is a cafe in the visitor's center at Dachau. The cafe, as well as the visitor's center at the Memorial, opens at 9 AM. There is no luggage storage at the Memorial; leave your bags in a locker at the Hbf. There are also a few lockers at Dachau station. Go to the S-bahn station and buy a Muenchen XXL Partner Tageskarte (all day pass for all the transit in the inner two zones of Munich MVV {metro district} for up five people) for 13,10€. Take the S2, Richtung (direction) Petershausen, to the Dachau Bahnhof and the 726 bus, Haltestelle (bus stop) 2 to the Memorial. For more info, see the Dachau page on my website. Just saw that this is on a Sunday. The shops on the Fußganger Zone and the Kaufhaus will undoubtedly be closed, but restaurants will still be open. Frauenkirche will have services some of the time, but the Residenz will be open.

Dachau is now open 7 days a week. So you can go on Monday as originally planned!

Drop off your bags at your hotel and then start sightseeing. Bakeries all open early so you can certainly have some coffee and breakfast, museums, restaurants and other attractions are all open on Sunday. Stores are always closed in Germany on Sundays, unless they have a special Sunday shopping day. Train stations, airports and areas around popular tourist sites may have stores open. The majority of museums in Germany close on Mondays, but not all of them, so it is best to check the website for any museum or tourist attraction you want to visit, to see if it is open.