Munich Day Tours

Don't know if it's already on your itinerary, but Nuernburg is only 1 hour from Munich by train. You could check out the museum and parade grounds, and be back in Munich for dinner.

"Crazy" King Ludwig's castles.

When you mentioned a tour of Dachau, I hope you are going to do it on your own, and not with an organized tour. Organized tours cost almost €20 or more, per person. Two people can do it themselves for less than €18, combined.

It only takes 39 minutes to go from the Hauptbahnhof to Dachau by S-Bahn and bus (21 min to the Dachau station, 11 min to catch the bus, 7 min to the memorial). You can make the round trip to/from the memorial with an €11,80 Munich XXL Partner Tageskarte, which is valid for up to 5 people. That ticket not only covers your round trip to/from Dachau, but all other travel within the inner two zones of Munich for the rest of the day.

Entry into the Memorial is free. There are guided tours for €3 per person or you can rent an audio guide for €3.

www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de.

Probably the best WWII historical tour would be to Obersalzberg (Berchtesgaden) to see the Eagles' Nest followed by a visit to the Dokumentation Center at the foot of the mountain. However, I'm not sure that can be done easily in a day.

We did the Radius tour to see Dachau and I highly recommend them. Their tours are given in English by native English speakers. I know it can be done on your own for less money, but sometimes it pays to take a tour - and I am not generally a "tour" taker. Actually, over 3 trips to Europe, not to mention many other destinations, it is the only guided tour we have ever done. Our guide was very good, able to answer questions in addition to providing more information than could be gathered by signs or audio guides. Radius offers other tours too that relate to WWII, but we didn't have time to take those. Have a great time!

Gosh Lee, did you have a bad experience on a tour once? You are so anti-tour. Some people like to "hear" their information, rather than read it from a book as they walk along. What if you have questions? How can you ask a sign or a book or an audio guide? Some people like to have more in depth experiences than what you might get from a book. It is often the case that a guide will have personal experiences to relate, the stuff that isn't in a guide book. These are what makes tours interesting. If they weren't, people wouldn't walk away from them raving about how wonderful or moving they were.

There is no wrong or right way to see a city or a tourist sight. If someone prefers to do it themselves, who are we to say they should do it another way, but if someone wants to take a tour, why tell them not to? I don't understand that.

Hi Chris, we visited Dachau last september and really liked it. We tooked the train and bus exactly like Lee described in his post and took a guided tour at Dachau. The guide was excellent, try not to miss hit, it lasts around 2.5hours.

Chris,

I used the same method as Andrea and used Radius Tours for my visit to Dachau. The Guide provided a very interesting description of the history of the camp, before allowing the group to explore a bit on their own. I felt that allowing some time for personal reflection was good at that point. They took care of all transportation and other arrangements, and I felt the tour was very good value.

I'd definitely recommend Radius, and they provide other tours as well, such as Munich Walks, History of the Third Reich and bike tours. Their office is in the Munich train station. Check Their Website for details.

Happy travels!

Hi Chris!

There is a great book called Hitler's Munich and it features a walking tour of all of the old Third Reich sites in the city. The book is in English. Try:
http://www.amazon.com/Hitler-Munich-Brian-Deming/dp/3922590462/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246862683&sr=1-3
You can get it through Amazon.com (above.) The Hauptbahnhof (main train station in Munich) had a bookstore where I got my copy years ago.
While you are in the train station, the information kiosk there has a pamphlet on Munich walking tours. There used to be one devoted to solely to Third Reich sites, but it operated only a couple of days per week, as I recall.
I got the book and did the tour on foot by myself. My own speed and the book is a great keepsake.

Don

thanks to everyone, I am looking forward to my trip even more

We took the Radius tour & were sorry we did, as we felt rather rushed. We would have liked to have more time to read the very informative displays. It's cheap & easy to get there from Munich.

I recently took an all day themed tour in Munich with Dark History Tours. In the morning the guide showed us around sites like the Feldherrenhall, Gestapo HQ, and Hitlers HQ. We also saw where Sophie Scholl was arrested. In the afternoon - after a liquid lunch - he took us to the Deutsche Museum, where we saw a couple of uboots and some fantastic WW1 and 2 planes (although they were all german I noted). They even had a V2. I was shocked to see this stuff on display in germany as I thought it was a tabboo subject. If WW2 is your thing guy these guys a go

I have heard good things about Dark History Tours too. We are planning on using them later this year. Here is the website in case anyone else is interested. The guy is a professional Archeologist who is passionate about Munich!
http://www.dark-history.eu/

Hey my wife and I had a really great tour experience with 'Dark History Tours'.

Taff was friendly and really knew his subject well, my wife who's not much into history really found the whole thing fascinating. We really enjoyed our Third Reich tour about Munich, thought it was great value and have recommended it to friends and co-workers alike.

http://www.dark-history.eu/index.htm

quote: Gosh Lee, did you have a bad experience on a tour once? You are so anti-tour. Some people like to "hear" their information, rather than read it from a book as they walk along... Some people like to have more in depth experiences than what you might get from a book...if they weren't, people wouldn't walk away from them raving about how wonderful or moving they were.

Just wanted to respond to this comment. I think Lee was pointing at the at tour is 20 Euro and not worth that much, not being anti-tour. There are pro's and con's to a tour guide in a lot of experiences.
PROs: getting to ask questions, listen to a guide as you walk, and get more in-depth (sometimes)
CONs: being Rushed, "wasting" time being told info you already knew, herded like cattle sometimes, not getting to see and do all that YOU want.

With that said, most of the time I loved a tour was when I knew very little about the site, but no-matter what guides don't let you go at your own pace. You get to do/see more, but not spend time on the things you may have wanted to REALLY spend time with.

I plan on doing Dachau without the tour. It is way cheaper and it sounds like the audio guide was very informative. No matter what though... everyone says this is a MUST-SEE.

We were at Dachau just two weeks ago.
Glad to see you're visiting it.

Debated, just for a moment, about taking our teenage daughter, but I'm glad we did. So is she.

It conveys an important message for everyone.