Travel Information

Documents • Maps • City and Country • Accommodations
Transportation • Food and Beverage • Language • Useful Links

Documents

U.S. citizens will need a valid passport. See instructions on how to obtain a passport here.

Citizens of other countries will need to contact the German Consulate General in San Francisco to determine their individual travel requirements.

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Maps

Amazon: Streetwise Munich Map | Fodor's Munich | Top 10 Munich
Google: Munich

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City and Country

Germany: A European Culture and Business Hotspot
Business:The seminar will be held in September of 2009. Munich, Germany’s third-largest city and its so-called “secret capital,” is an important hub of economic activity. World-renowned companies with headquarters in Munich include luxury carmaker BMW, electric multi-national giant Siemens AG, Munich Re group, the largest insurance-insurer, Allianz Insurance Group, car and railway brakes manufacturer Knorr, MAN truck manufacturer, and other major firms. Globally, BMW and Siemens are the two most admired Germany-based firms. Siemens AG also is the largest foreign-headquartered employer in the United States.

Culture: Munich is an important hub of culture. Besides its highly regarded performance arts scene with some 40 theaters, two opera houses, the top-ranked performing arts school, the film and movie academy, the Bavaria film and movie studios, Munich is home to more than a dozen renowned museums (art, history, and science). The city is a hub of education, science and technology: The Ludwig Maximilian University is Germany’s top-ranked university closely followed by the Technical University of Munich. The city is home to several famous research and development laboratories. Once we travel to Berlin we will encounter a distinct look and feel of culture within the same national context. In Berlin, we will visit various historical sites including the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, former sites of the Berlin Wall, old Jewish, French, and other distinct neighborhoods of the city, as well as the famous Potsdamer Platz area.

Munich and Berlin are famous hubs of sports and other events. Germany’s record-number-of-championships soccer club FC Bayern plays its home games at the recently built Allianz Arena, an architectural gem. The Olympic games of 1972 were held here. Every fall the city attracts more than six million visitors from all around the globe to its legendary “Oktoberfest.” Our seminar coincides with the first week of the Oktoberfest, so students will have an opportunity to gain first-hand insights also from this angle. Berlin cannot match Munich in its soccer success story but was also host of the 1936 Olympic games, where Afro-American legend Jesse Owens won the Olympic 100-meter final in a convincing fashion to the dismay of attending Nazi dictator and racist Adolf Hitler. The old Olympic stadium in Berlin underwent a major update for the FIFA 2006 World Cup and hosted the final played between Italy and France.

Both Munich and Berlin are not only hubs of open-mindedness and tolerance, but also of zest for life with a myriad of restaurants, bars, indoor and outdoor facilities, beer gardens, and bustling inner-city shopping areas. The city of Munich has one of the lowest metropolitan crime rates in the world. The beauty of Munich’s natural environment with large nearby lakes and the nearby Alps mountain range add to the tremendous attractiveness and wealth of this very special European city. Berlin is the federal capital and famous for its monuments, museums of art, history, and the sciences. Berlin’s history is full of drama, twists, and turns, which are very visible and present to this day. Like New York City Berlin never sleeps. The nightlife is bustling with many bars and restaurants operating 24/7. This is why we decided to have the Berlin trip at the end of our seminar.

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Accommodations

Shared room accommodation for students has been reserved at the Dachau Youth Hostel in close vicinity of Munich, the beautiful Munich-City Youth Hostel, and the Wannsee Youth Hostel in Berlin. Breakfast is included.

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Transportation

MVV Munich: "The MVV takes you everywhere in Munich and its surrounding area, either by bus or rail. The section MVV network gives you an overview of all of the means of transportation within the MVV as well as of the maps of the entire MVV transport network, including all line, stop and local maps."

International Airports in Germany:

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