Your question is a bit like asking where is the best place to stay in Scotland in order to visit London for the day, because you would quite like to check out "the station"!I was thinking of staying in Munich is this the best place? It’s 4 hours a while for a day visit is there anywhere I can catch a 3 hour train ride to Vienna? I am keen to check out the station looks impressive a similar to Rotterdam and Berlin.
Returning to the real Germany
Passau and Salzburg are both 2:20 to Vienna, so staying in Freilassing (effectively a German suburb of Salzburg) or a small town a little further into Germany would be an option.
Passau is the obvious choice, a nice little city at the confluence of two rivers but sometimes swamped by cruise ship passengers.
Regensburg is exactly an hour further, a bit bigger - not been there but on my list. Plattling is a railway junction and IIRC has nothing particular of note.
Salzburg doesn’t look as good as Vienna.
Sounds like the best base yet tbh, although probably worth toweling yourself down before getting on the train!I recommend a day at the thermal baths. I'd definitely consider it as a base for visiting Vienna.
I did it from Bratislava.
In fact, I did a triangle Budapest-Bratislava-Vienna-Budapest.
Bratislava-Vienna is Liverpool-Manchester sort of distance. Budapest is maybe the same again, so still not that far.
Vienna is large, expensive and stressful.
Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful and culturally rich. I spent only three days there and still didn't get to see everything.
The streets are always chocker block with people walking which way everyways and watch the roads as the motorists are noticeably more aggressive.
Munich station is rather underwhelming I think.
As a once-upon-a-time resident of Munich, I have to ask 'What did you expect?' It's a large railway station near the centre of the city in quite a densely populated area that was flattened as result of the bombing raids in the Second World War, few old building were left standing. An image of what it looked like in 1945 may be seen here. The whole area was rebuilt as quickly as possible in the 1950s - and the rubble that was cleared out of the city centre now forms the hill in the Olympic park....indeed it is and I found the area its situated in to be massively underwhelming (being polite).
Vienna to Budapest is about 2:40 by train against 1:06 to Bratislava. Personally I think you were about ballpark with twice as far. I tend to agree with your assessment - Vienna's nice enough but it's too big to do in a day, and wouldn't be high on my list of places in the area to stay in. Everything is expensive compared to the surrounding area. I'm sure it's probably great to live in, not least because of its bland but useful new station and excellent transport links across Europe, but that seems a bit beside the point.Seems I've come up a cropper with the Vienna Tourism Board. For the record, I don't actually dislike Vienna but you really need both time and money to make the best of it, I would say.
And to clear up any confusion, I said it was large, nothing more, nothing less. I didn't make any implication that it was particularly difficult to get around.
I stand corrected on the geography trivia (though I still found Vienna to Budapest a doddle), but I stand by everything else I said.
Bratislava is quite small but nice, particularly around the old town. Much cheaper than Vienna.
Vienna is large, expensive and stressful. Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful and culturally rich. I spent only three days there and still didn't get to see everything. The streets are always chocker block with people walking which way everyways and watch the roads as the motorists are noticeably more aggressive. And yeah, the price for a meal in Bratislava might get you a bag of chips, If you're lucky.
Have just returned from Gdansk, which suffered a similar fate, but the Poles took the time and trouble to rebuild as it used to be (except for the Prussian era buildings, for some reason). I was aware that they had done this before I went there, but what took me aback when I got there was the size and scale of area that they had rebuilt - not just a few blocks. To be honest, I preferred Gdansk to Krakow.As a once-upon-a-time resident of Munich, I have to ask 'What did you expect?' It's a large railway station near the centre of the city in quite a densely populated area that was flattened as result of the bombing raids in the Second World War, few old building were left standing. An image of what it looked like in 1945 may be seen here. The whole area was rebuilt as quickly as possible in the 1950s
Have just returned from Gdansk, which suffered a similar fate, but the Poles took the time and trouble to rebuild as it used to be (except for the Prussian era buildings, for some reason). I was aware that they had done this before I went there, but what took me aback when I got there was the size and scale of area that they had rebuilt - not just a few blocks. To be honest, I preferred Gdansk to Krakow.
To be fair to the new station at Krakow, the platforms were built at least 20 years ago in that position, and were connected for years to the station building by a crazily long walkway. The old station building was nice enough to look at but wasn't really great facilities-wise. The new station is a pretty good integrated transport hub for what is a pretty large city.Do you mean the stations, or the wider cities?
I haven't been to Gdansk, but I thought Krakow (city) was very impressive, although its station was a bit like Birmingham New St (retail park with platforms attached).
Having passed through Poland recently I was impressed by Warsaw Centralna and the CMK route to Krakow, also Przemysl old town centre.
There was more time and care taken in rebuilding the centre of Munich than in the residential and industrial areas around the Hauptbahnhof - places like the Marienplatz, Lehel and around the Residenz. One other thing that is sometimes forgetten, not only did Germany have much of its housing and other infrastructure destroyed at the end of the war but it also had to cope with several million refugees driven out of the old German-speaking areas and cities of the East by the Soviet Army. Building accommodation quickly was absolutely essential and overrode most other considerations.Have just returned from Gdansk, which suffered a similar fate, but the Poles took the time and trouble to rebuild as it used to be (except for the Prussian era buildings, for some reason). I was aware that they had done this before I went there, but what took me aback when I got there was the size and scale of area that they had rebuilt - not just a few blocks. To be honest, I preferred Gdansk to Krakow.
I was talking about the wider city. I didn't get to see much of Gdansk main station, as most of the building is currently closed for refurbishment.Do you mean the stations, or the wider cities?
Gdansk is also far from a tourist trap preserved in aspic - its famous shipyards are massive, although I am not sure just how much is still operational.But all said and done, Munich is a living, working town, it's not a tourist trap preserved in aspic
There was more time and care taken in rebuilding the centre of Munich than in the residential and industrial areas around the Hauptbahnhof - places like the Marienplatz, Lehel and around the Residenz. One other thing that is sometimes forgetten, not only did Germany have much of its housing and other infrastructure destroyed at the end of the war but it also had to cope with several million refugees driven out of the old German-speaking areas and cities of the East by the Soviet Army. Building accommodation quickly was absolutely essential and overrode most other considerations.
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Thanks for your post. I knew all that but I thought that my post would get awfully long if I tried to include all the details! The same thing happened with my wife's grandparents who lived in Bad Kreuznach - he was a gynaecologist and they had a larg(ish) house. They not only had a family of refugees allocated to them but the normal living rooms were taken over by the French occupying forces for two officers. My wife's grandparents lived in the cellar for a year or more...Going OT (but then one could argue the first post was OT from the word go)
Just for the record: an awful lot were force marched out (if they didn't die on the way) by the Poles, Czechs and Hungarians. The Poles and Czechs had some sort of excuse, given the brutality of German occupation. The Hungarians, since they were allies to the very end, really had none whatsoever.
OK, you could say they all had the backing, tacit or otherwise, of newly arrived Red Army forces in all these countries, but the cruel and sometimes muderous actions of many local civilian leaders are a stain on these countries' national histories.
Intriguingly, I met the granddaughter of a 'repatriated' Sudetan German family a year or so back. Originally from a tiny German-Czech village smack bang on the Polish border, she was born and raised near Stuttgart-Tubingen somewhere. She said tens of thousands of German families had to take in refugees from the east (and, I suppose, regular Germany) due to the lack of housing. And in many cases, the home owners were less than friendly to their 'guests' - although in her case she said her family had very kind 'hosts', and they remain friendly to this day.
Going OT (but then one could argue the first post was OT from the word go)
Just for the record: an awful lot were force marched out (if they didn't die on the way) by the Poles, Czechs and Hungarians. The Poles and Czechs had some sort of excuse, given the brutality of German occupation. The Hungarians, since they were allies to the very end, really had none whatsoever.
OK, you could say they all had the backing, tacit or otherwise, of newly arrived Red Army forces in all these countries, but the cruel and sometimes muderous actions of many local civilian leaders are a stain on these countries' national histories.
Intriguingly, I met the granddaughter of a 'repatriated' Sudetan German family a year or so back. Originally from a tiny German-Czech village smack bang on the Polish border, she was born and raised near Stuttgart-Tubingen somewhere. She said tens of thousands of German families had to take in refugees from the east (and, I suppose, regular Germany) due to the lack of housing. And in many cases, the home owners were less than friendly to their 'guests' - although in her case she said her family had very kind 'hosts', and they remain friendly to this day.