Hello Local Guides! I am your colleague. When writing this post I realised it would take too long reading when listing all of the hidden gems, so let me start by writing about one of them in this post. Hope you enjoy. But let me introduce myself first.
My name is Andrê and I am celebrating turning 7th level Local Guide of Munich (district). April 2019 gives a lot of reasons for celebration after all. Easter Holiday, Easter school break for my kids, nice sunny weather and preparation to May holidays. A lot of holidays means a lot of reasons to travel. With my wife and my 5 and 9 year old children we met the grandparents in Vienna, Austria, we met our friends in Bad Radkersburg thermal resort in Austria with a short trip to Maribor, Slowenia, then we visited our favorite resort in Abano Therme, Italy and celebrated Easter Monday in Paehl near Bavarian lake of Starnberg.
So we were busy that is why I only had little time to write this essay for the application for Local Guides event in California. You can already guess why I like being a Local Guide. First of all because I like to travel with my family. “On the road again”, - means for me closer contact to my own family, a lot of new impressions, sometimes change of mind, a relaxation from work, making new pictures. Second contributing to Google Maps to helping others to explore new places that is exciting to get in contact to others even not knowing them! I really enjoy reading about and participating in the Google Maps Local Guide concept.
This was the introduction. Now let us turn back to our place - Munich area. Here we are residents and here we submit most of the reviews.
Everybody knows Munich and its attractions in the beautiful Marienplatz, Karlsplatz, Odeonsplatz and Königplatz and of course Oktoberfest. A lot of people visit the castles of Ludwig the Second the “fairy tail king”. Besides these attractions there are hidden gems in the District of Munich, called by locals München Land. To find those gems is what I am passionate about. And my family supports me in this adventure as well as in sharing this information with the others.
Typically our plan is the following. First, my wife Marina looks for attractions in local newspapers, at the posters along the roads and in the travel books we have. Next, I look at Google Maps and check the travel times, opening hours and restaurants and guest houses in the area. Finally we decided upon the date and enter the event into Google Calendar. The patience of the kids allow us to travel in the time range of 2 hours from hour so München Land is the perfect region to explore.
On the day of event, usually on Sunday or Saturday we make breakfast, load necessary supply of water and toys into our Volvo and off we go. When the goal is relatively far, we first go to a reastaurant and have a brunch. Google Maps reviews help us to choose the one we can enjoy and be surprised, like with especially well service or some new local food dish or a great view.
Then following the Caesar’s “Veni, vidi, vici!”, we come, we see and we do the review. We usually spend another couple of hours visiting the attraction we were after. After that we take another Mahlzeit, which is German word for lunch and discuss our experiences and share photos with each other and friends out there.
For instance, on March 23 we visited the ancient town of Burghausen. Located there is the Burg, which is a German for a castle, is located on a high hill and is “longest” in the world. We had a great food at L`Antico Borgo Ristaurante Pizzeria rated 4.6 on Google Maps. We climbed up to the castle and visited some of its attractions including the interactive museum, where a lot of hands on medieval amusements are available for kids. Finally, we strolled through the streets of the down town. We discovered that once a year Burghausen hosts a famous jazz festival. We shared this with our friends so that this next event could be beginning of another planning. Full of impressions we returned home.
Posting the photos and reviews from the travel allowed me to reach level 7, and this good time will for sure remain in my memory. But more remarkably it will remain in memory of my family and friends thanks Google Maps which allowed us to plan the trip and to share the experience from it.