Using an eSIM in Munich

What Munich is like on a phone

Munich is used as a starting point as often as a destination: people come for the old centre and the beer gardens, fly in for a trade fair, or pick up a hire car and head into the Alps the next morning. The city itself is compact with two rail systems overlaid on each other, which makes getting around easy and the signal even. The difference to prepare for is south of the plain, where the landscape turns to valleys and tunnels and the network stops behaving the way it does in town.

When you land

Munich Airport (MUC) is a fair way out, linked by two suburban lines that take around forty minutes, while trains from Vienna, Zurich or elsewhere in Germany arrive at the Hauptbahnhof. Switch the line on before going down to the airport platforms, because you have to pick a service and check that your ticket covers the airport zone. Most of the ride in runs above ground through fields and suburbs with steady service, before dropping into tunnel for the last stretch into the centre.

Where coverage changes

The centre, the large parks and the outer districts stay connected. The metro here is not especially deep and much of it remains usable, though the shared tunnel under the middle of the city, where trains run close together, feels slower at rush hour. The old stone beer halls have thick walls and dense crowds, so sending a photo takes longer than the bars on your screen suggest. What genuinely differs is heading south out of the city into the foothills, where tunnels and valleys start cutting the connection.

What a day here costs in data

A day in town runs about 700MB to 1.2GB, since the walking distances are short and maps work less hard than in a sprawling city. A mountain day is a different profile: you shoot far more photos and video and then send it all at once on getting back, a large burst in a short window. During the big festival periods, when a lot of people gather in one place, allow more time for uploads rather than simply more data.

Districts travellers ask about

• The Altstadt and Marienplatz: The main square is crowded every day, especially when the clock figures move — uploads slow right then, because everyone is filming the same thing at once.
• The Englischer Garten: A huge open park with good service almost everywhere in it; only the thick tree cover at the northern end takes the speed down while remaining usable.
• Schwabing: Cafés and bookshops on streets that are not too tight — steady enough for an online meeting from a window table.
• The trade-fair grounds and Olympiapark: On a big fair day tens of thousands use the network at once inside a limited area, so push important files out before the peak arrival hour.

Day trips out of the city

• Neuschwanstein: Train and bus reach the foot of the hill with service nearly all the way, but the climb up, shadowed by the mountain, and the viewing bridge in the gorge weaken noticeably — have your ticket already on the device.
• Salzburg: It is across the border in Austria; the train is short, and near the frontier a handset may swap onto the other country's network — check the plan's country list before you go.
• Königssee and Berchtesgaden: A deep valley walled on both sides means long gaps, especially on the boat once it reaches the narrowest part of the lake.