Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

Munich is an awesome city... for a tourist. It's clean, one of the safest cities of Germany (with the exception of the Central Station) and, with the exception of some "Asi-Viertels", well maintained (particularly compared to Berlin, Frankfurt or most of NRW), the attractions are awesome, and the beer is excellent.

For locals though? Speaking as one (who fled a year ago to nearby Landshut and still has to commute)... if you think about moving here, please don't:

- public transport is way too overcrowded, no matter what type of it, and forget about commute by car unless you are rich enough to pay someone to drive for you

- The rents are frankly insane, and fucking Bavarian wannabe-chieftain Söder keeps inviting one big company after another to Munich (instead of, say, Nuremberg for a change) while doing everything he can to avoid and hinder helping Munich alleviate the housing cost crisis.

- Munich's police are rabid if you're not white. Particularly the Central Station is not a good thing to "live while Black" (or dressed like a hippie or alternative), you'll get hounded by them because they can and will suspect you being a drug dealer, although the situation has relaxed a bit ever since cannabis got legalized federally a year ago.

- did I already mention the insane lack of housing? Seriously: prepare to either pay through your nose for short-term accomodation or couchsurfing, unless you are employed at one of the tech giants or rich enough to buy a place in cash you will likely spend a year or two until you have housing. If you are a student, that applies even more.

- a lot of Munich's infrastructure dates back to the money spigot times of the Olympic Games 1972 - and is subsequently shut down for repairs all the time because there hasn't been much invested in maintenance over the decades.

- Oktoberfest, Bauma (the construction trade fair) and the regular Champions League soccer games grind the entire city to a standstill. If you can help it, DO NOT move to any area close to the Theresienwiese (people WILL piss and even shit on your porch, I speak from personal experience) and to the Sechzger-Stadion in Giesing (in addition to the noise, 1860 fans are violent hothead hools that lead to massive disruptions for traffic every time that sorry excuse for a football club has a game).

As someone who still lives in the suburbs of munich, I want to emphasize on the horrible public transportation situation in munich. It's always under construction, nothing really works and, as soon as there is some Public Event, everything breaks down.

Well, about the public transport being always under construction, yes, it is. But I think it’s a good thing.

First there is quite some money put into public transportation which is great.

Second, it has to be modernized all the time to accommodate for the growing passenger numbers and city growth.

Last but not least, for a long time there was no investment done into public transportation in Munich, so now they have to do more to keep up.

I like it and I would not like to live in a city which doesn’t invest in its public transportation system.

> First there is quite some money put into public transportation which is great.

Yeah everything goes into the 2. Stammstrecke, the rest is left to rot in pieces.

So it's busy, expensive and hard to find a place to live. Sounds like any popular city that lots of people want to move to.

People want to work in companies that pay a lot. They are usually not aware of intricacies of the city that the work is in.

I’m still so thankful to covid. I don’t know how I would live without remote work

As someone living in Munich for more than 10 years, 5 around Hauptbahnhof and another 8 around Theresienwiese, I think you’re exaggerating quite a lot, as well as the people below. But in general people do exaggerate and complain a lot about the places they live in, especially Germans :) Munich probably has one of the best public transport systems in the world, but god forbid the S Bahn have some issues during winter or a storm, and some people have to lose their minds about what a disaster the public transport is.

I think people should appreciate more the good places they are living in, instead of trying to find something to complain in every single aspect of their lives

> Munich probably has one of the best public transport systems in the world, but god forbid the S Bahn have some issues during winter or a storm, and some people have to lose their minds about what a disaster the public transport is.

Well, the winter storm of two years ago [0] when there wasn't a single tram running for days should be an example... there hasn't been any investment in resiliency for decades. Only one tram car [1], a 1950s catenary service vehicle [2], was able to run, there was nothing else that was heavy enough.

And even when there is no weather extremes, the S-Bahn is at record levels of unreliability [3]. Particularly the older people remember how reliable public transport used to be. It hasn't even come close to growing with the city, and that's why people are rightfully pissed.

[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wintereinbruch_in_S%C3%BCddeut...

[1] https://www.tramreport.de/2023/12/08/mvg-schneechaos-2023-1/

[2] https://www.trambahn.de/atw2942

[3] https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/s-bahn-muenchen-2024-er...

Can confirm every single point you made.

I’d add that riding a bike is also quite stressful at times.

Munich streets are a war zone - you always gotta be the top dog. Too much traffic, way too much.

And yet I routinely see morons here and on r/de + r/Munich advocate to build even more housing for people in Munich... I mean, obviously, more housing is good, but as there is no way to meaningfully expand the capacity of public transport it's frankly useless.

It's quite the opposite of moronic to build more housing where there is demand.

The problem is, as I noted: housing isn't everything. You need the support infrastructure as well to develop a new city quarter, and that's all but easy: you need schools and kindergartens with playgrounds (which consume a lot of space and create noise), shopping (at least a grocery store and a pharmacy), a general practitioner doctor, a bakery... and then, you need the "invisible" infrastructure that barely anyone thinks about: public transport, streets able to support the traffic that inevitably comes even with a good public transport system, larger streets in the surrounding grid, water and sewage grids, a power grid, heating grid.

The problem is, Munich got lots of new real estate around the city, but especially the public transport system wasn't expanded anywhere near close enough to what's needed. There hasn't been an actual new rail laid for the S-Bahn or the regional trains in decades (in fact, if you go to Mühldorf near Munich, the railway dispatch tech dates back to the era of the Kaiser, so even before Hitler and the Weimar Republic), the U-Bahn hasn't seen meaningful expansion in the core grid as well (only the leaves were expanded, in the late 90s to Messestadt, in the late 00s to Moosach).

And now, the road and public transport networks are at capacity. Munich physically cannot support more people moving here.

OP's article touches on this. This city is too crowded man. There are too many people on too little space

get a cargo bike and people will leave you alone because they fear that you can do real damage to their precious cars.

Source: my daily driver for the last 7 years has been a Nihola and now a HNF Nicola (hey, hamburg!) and drivers rarely come close.

> inviting one big company after another to Munich (instead of, say, Nuremberg for a change)

Companies go where the workforce already is. No company will waste their time to convince workforce to move to a smaller and cheaper town just for them, and workers won't move to a smaller and cheaper town just for one employer in case it doesn't work out and need to job hop quickly.

... If you live close by Theresienwiese, the city provides free cleaning for any accidents during Oktoberfest in your front/backyard also. I have to smile everytime I do find the note containing an emergency accident cleanup number in my mailbox :-)

Well I live very close to Theresienwiese and dont have any problems at all. During the 2 weeks of Octoberfest they clean the streets every morning at 4am and everything is clean and shiny again. Also now that the Theresienwiese have been encircled by a fence during Octoberfest the numbers of drunk people has fallen dramatically.

"No one takes public transit in that city. It's too crowded."

> The rents are frankly insane, and fucking Bavarian wannabe-chieftain Söder keeps inviting one big company after another to Munich (instead of, say, Nuremberg for a change) while doing everything he can to avoid and hinder helping Munich alleviate the housing cost crisis

I live there and I know this to be true, but I don't get it. I personally know tech companies that can't hire in Munich because they can't find apartments for their hirees to live in.

Tech companies not offering remote positions are a shame

> I live there and I know this to be true, but I don't get it.

All that Söder wants is photo ops with famous people, the famouser the better. And if that's not given, at least a single photo of #Söderisst a day is a minimum.

Söder isn't interested in actual politics, he's a showman. He's not willing, I'd say even unable, to deal with the consequences of his actions.

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