One of the problems in Munich is that all rapid public transport goes through the city centre, there is no loop around it like in Berlin. If you commute to the west you have to go through Hackerbrücke station - that's the one close to Theresienwiese, where Oktoberfest is. Same goes for the subway, Munich has very centralised hubs where the lines cross, hard to avoid.

Just to be the counterpoint: I'm also born in Munich and I like this city quite a lot. Certainly not a shithole, IMO - and that's the main reason why rents are as insane as they are. If not even Freiham, a big new city quarter which is currently being build, is able to put a dent into the rising rents, then I doubt replacing the extra hotel capacity would be a game changer either, IMO. Munich just grew way too quickly without scaling it's infrastructure accordingly.

I don't disagree with most of what you said but (and I might be misremembering) but the "grew way to quickly" doesn't hold up.

When I was in school I learned the number "1.3m people" and that was the early/mid 90s, now it's 1.5m. So unless you start counting a more widespread urbanization of the adjacent towns.. the math doesn't seem to work out.

I do agree that it feels a lot worse than 20 years ago.

Right, "way too quickly" probably isn't the right word, "faster than infrastructure and housing" would probably be better. :)

I've lived in Munich for like what, 29, years of my life. It's seriously gone down the drain. Born there, went to school there, went to uni there, went away, and came back 8 years ago.

Housing is unaffordable if your parents haven't died and passed you a sizable estate, if you need childcare you have to register a year before planned conception (obviously exagerrated, but you get the point), good luck finding a doctor if you're not having private insurance, public transport is utterly nuts, cops will relentlessly hunt you down for smoking a blunt or beat you up for daring to host an outdoor rave, and there's fucking traffic everywhere.

Ok, a lot of people feel this about their cities they view through the lens of the past. I think the same of Nashville, but I at least acknowledge I am extremely biased and basically just a grumpy 30+ year old. Munich is easily one of the best -big- cities in the world. Literally everything you just said could be applied to virtually every large city on Earth. Munich has roughly the same population as Manhattan, it is a huge city and yet is clean, safe, accessible, has great transit, close to tons of lakes and the Alps. I know Germans are fairly pessimistic, so not really surprising to hear this, but also, I will vouche that it's not really in touch with reality when you compare it to cities of similar sizes in Europe and the US.

> Munich is easily one of the best -big- cities in the world.

That's the usual problem with relative comparisons. When the competition is cities with people defecating on the sidewalks (SF), half the city being bought up as a wealth store for Russians and Chinese (London) or places with incompetent politicians (Berlin), even a run-down place like Munich stands out. And the conservative clowns holding the Bavarian government hostage for decades does all it can to fuck up the city even more (see e.g. the years of the Bezirksregierung Oberbayern throwing wrenches into the C-series subway or tram trains, or how the state and federal government completely blew the 2. Stammstrecke train tunnel project), just to help out the local Conservatives which really aren't liked in Munich by acting like the SPD/Greens government is at fault for the issues.

Seriously, I demand better from politics than to be happy with being the best among mediocrity. Germany is the fourth-richest nation in the world by GDP, the most powerful economy in the EU. We can do better than that.

> places with incompetent politicians (Berlin)

What makes you think that, stuff like the Mietendeckel?

The complete inability of reforming the Senate vs Bezirke competences chaos is the biggest practical issue for me. The biggest meme issue was to time the last election right alongside the Berlin Marathon which completely predictable led to utter chaos.

I guess they had no choice about the election date, but yeah they should have realized this when they approved the marathon date. And even disregarding that they really should have planned much better, as you said it was predicable there would be immense chaos that day.

The most perplexing thing in recent memory for me was that they had digitized things like apartment registrations during covid yet undid it at some point. What sense does that make?

As another Nashvillian(sp?), I definitely understand the difference between how a city is viewed by tourists and by locals. I don’t mostly hate Nashville, but I basically hate Broadway, 12 south, basically everything everyone thinks of as Nashville