Германинг

Germering is Munich's western neighbour with deep foundations and a good concert hall. The double town — Germering and Unterpfaffenhofen grew together into one of Upper Bavaria's larger cities — stands on land settled almost without interruption since the Bronze Age: excavations along the old Roman road yielded burial grounds, Bajuwarian villages and enough finds to fill the town's ZEIT+RAUM museum, where suburban Germering displays a past far older than Munich's.

Its modern identity is residential and self-aware: garden neighbourhoods, schools and S-Bahn platforms serving the metropolis, with the surprising civic flagship of the Stadthalle Germering — a hall whose concert, theatre and cabaret seasons draw names and audiences well beyond the city limits, giving the commuter town a genuine cultural address rather than a borrowed one. Parishes old and new — the village churches of St Martin and St Jakob among the oldest walls standing — anchor the districts, and the Germeringer See's park supplies the summer shoreline.

Westward the Fünfseenland's lakes and the Ammersee's sails begin within a short drive, while Munich's centre lies twenty minutes east: the town's arithmetic of location explains its growth. Honest about what it is — a young city on ancient ground, well run and well connected — Germering adds the pleasant footnote that its hall is worth the trip against the commuting current.