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3-2-1- It’s time to ride on the self driving bus
Line 178 it is
Sana Ahmad
November 05, 2026
Servus an Alle!
Welcome back to the Munich Post! The purpose of this newsletter is to share: 3 bits of news, 2 upcoming events, and 1 amazing restaurant/café for expats living in and around Munich. This way, you have a pulse on what’s going on without scrolling through thousands of pages.
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Here’s what we’ve got for you this week:
Two of Munich’s ice rinks are open or nearly there. Prinzregentenstadion in Bogenhausen opened last weekend, and Münchner Eiszauber comes to Karlsplatz on November 13. Winter is officially here.
Germany is also expected to launch the digital driving license this month. It lives in the i-Kfz-App – a supplement to your plastic card, not a replacement. You’ll need your eID to activate it.
One more heads up: Garderobe mit Herz is running its FREE winter coat pickup this Friday and Saturday at Forum Schwanthalerhöhe in Schwanthalerhöhe. No registration needed. If you know someone who could use a warm coat this winter, pass it along.
3 bits of news
Three Munich cafes just made Germany’s best coffee list
The European Coffee Trip Awards 2026 are out, and Munich is on a roll. Three cafes from the city and its surroundings made Germany’s top 10: Humpback Whale Specialty Coffee in Maxvorstadt, Sweet Spot Kaffee at Viktualienmarkt in Altstadt, and Supremo Coffee in Unterhaching, which also won the top spot for the entire country.
The awards were voted on by over 30,000 coffee drinkers through the ECT app without judges, and panels. Just real people naming their favorite spots. More than 57,000 votes were cast across Europe between September and October.
The rest of Germany’s list stretched from Heidelberg to Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Berlin, Hamburg, and Cologne didn’t make the cut.
Find more information here (in English).
Get a train home for Christmas for €6.99
Deutsche Bahn is keeping its last-minute ticket offer alive through December 2027. ICE and IC seats from Munich Hauptbahnhof start at €6.99 but only when you book on a weekend, for a trip the following week.
The catch: tickets only hit that price when seats are still open. Friday evenings and Monday mornings are unlikely to show cheap. BahnCard discounts apply, but prices are capped at a minimum of €5.24 – so no, your BahnCard 50 doesn’t cut it in half. Children still travel FREE.
If you’re flexible about Christmas travel dates, it’s worth checking the DB app on Saturday or Sunday mornings. That’s your window. Leave your dates open and you could get somewhere for less than a round of drinks.
Find more information here (in German).
How to get a seat on Munich’s autonomous bus
Starting November 17, you can ride a self-driving bus on Line 178, running between Petuelring and Freimanner Hölzl in Freimann. The bus is a 12-meter MAN electric bus with LiDAR sensors, cameras, and radar doing the navigating. A safety driver stays on board the whole time, but the bus handles everything: steering, braking, signals.
Over 2,000 people have already pre-registered. Rides run Monday to Friday as part of the MINGA research project, backed by €13 million from the Federal Ministry of Transport. TU Munich and the University of Stuttgart are tracking how passengers feel about the experience.
Sign up here to join the pool. Rides run through June 2027, but the list is already filling fast.
Find more information here (in German).
Bonus:
Check out our partner MITA podcast for Expats.
You switch languages at work and at home. Maybe you wonder which language your kids will grow up speaking. But what happens when a language stops being passed on altogether? The podcast offers simple solutions that you can implement to make improvements at home.
In this episode of The MITA Podcast, host Tatjana Krajsic speaks with Dr Mandana Seyfeddinipur – linguist and director of the Endangered Languages Archive at SOAS, University of London. They talk about how language ties us to identity, why children are the key to keeping languages alive, and how migration and social pressure quietly push languages toward extinction.
Of the 7,000 languages spoken today, around 1,500 could disappear by 2100. The episode also explores how the languages we speak shape the way we think – about time, space, family, and relationships.
2 upcoming events
Anyma is bringing ÆDEN to Königsplatz
Digital crossover artist Anyma is coming to Königsplatz in Maxvorstadt on June 19, 2027 – his first German headline show. ÆDEN is a full audiovisual production: electronic music layered with large-scale digital visuals. If you’ve seen clips from his Sphere residency, you know what this looks like at scale.
He’s one half of Tale of Us, the Italian electronic duo that’s been headlining festivals across Europe for the past decade. This is the solo format with more production, more spectacle.
General sale will be live today, November 5 at 5pm. Register at anyma.com/tour.
Find more information here (in German).
General information:
📍 Königsplatz, Maxvorstadt, München
⏰ June 19, 2027
🎟 General sale: November 5 at 5pm
Munich is getting the world’s first Harry Potter Christmas market
From November 28 to December 6, Prater Island in Haidhausen transforms into a Harry Potter-themed Christmas market. HBO Max is behind it, promoting the new live-action series reboot premiering December 25. There will be Hogwarts-style photo ops, themed food and drinks, and activities for all ages – no judgment if you’re 35 and still invested.
Christmas market season is basically here. The first markets open this week: Motorworld in Freimann on November 7, Chinesischer Turm in Schwabing on November 9. The big ones like Marienplatz and Tollwood follow from November 20.For the full list of markets, dates, and neighborhoods across Munich, there’s a good roundup here.
More information about the Harry Potter Christmas market here (in German).
General information:
📍 Harry Potter market: Praterinsel 3–4, Haidhausen, München
⏰ November 28 – December 6, 2026
🎟️ Ticket prices TBA
Bonus:
We’d like to thank our second sponsor of the week.
Signed a Munich lease since August 2019? Your rent may be over the legal limit
Germany’s rent cap; the Mietpreisbremse limits rent to about 10% above the local reference rent for leases signed after August 2019. A lot of expats are paying more than that without knowing it.
fairmiet lets you check in English. If your rent is over the limit, a partner law firm can take on your case – they’ve negotiated rent reductions of up to €3,200 a year and repayments of up to €6,500.
The check is free. fairmiet’s success fee only applies if you actually get a reduction or repayment.
1 new restaurant/café to try
Campana del Rey
Campana del Rey doesn’t announce itself. The entrance near Isartor on Herrnstraße 30 gives nothing away and if you’re not looking, you’ll keep walking. Step inside and it’s a completely different world: brick vaults, low light, and an atmosphere that has no business being this good for a place this easy to miss.
Their main focus is on rum, so if that’s your drink of choice, this place is worth the hunt for you.
General information:
📍 Herrnstraße 30, 80539 München-Altstadt-Lehel
🥘 Bar
⏰ Thursday, 7pm–1am
Friday and Saturday, 7pm–3am
Sunday–Wednesday, closed
Visit Campana del Rey
We’d like to thank our third sponsor of the week.
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Meme of the week 😂
Thanks for reading and sharing the Munich Post 3-2-1 newsletter.
Aazar, Christina, Heidi and Sana
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