Munich Airport (MUC)

Terminal 1's modules, Terminal 2 and the satellite

Terminal 2 and its midfield satellite are the Lufthansa and Star Alliance side, joined below ground by a shuttle train that makes the quickest internal move at the airport. Check-in and bag drop happen in the terminal, boarding often out in the satellite, and the two function as one building — most connecting passengers never leave this half of the airfield.

Terminal 1 works on the opposite idea: a row of modules lettered from A onward, each with its own check-in desks, its own security lanes and its own gates, and no airside walkway between them. The queues are usually shorter, but landing in the wrong module means going back out to the public level and walking along the front of the building. A free shuttle bus links the two terminals landside.

Passport control appears only on the non-Schengen side: in Terminal 1 that means the modules handling flights from outside the area, and in Terminal 2 a controlled crossing between the Schengen and non-Schengen areas. Arrivals from within the area walk straight to the belts. Which passports may use the automated gates, and what a nationality needs before boarding at all, belongs to the entry rules for Germany.

The S-Bahn that splits, the bus and the rank

Two suburban railway lines serve the station in the central area between the terminals, one approaching the city from the west and the other from the east; both end at the main station, and between them they run often enough that the timetable barely matters. One of those lines divides on the way out of town, with only the rear portion continuing to the airport and the front half going to Freising. Platform displays say which is which, and boarding the wrong half is the local rite of passage.

An airport bus runs to the main station for anyone who would rather keep their luggage on one seat, and the taxi ranks outside each terminal are metered rather than flat-fare, so traffic decides the fare. The airport sits in the outermost ring of the regional fare network: a city-zone ticket does not reach it, and the day ticket that includes the airport is usually the cheaper way to arrive and leave.

The square between the terminals

The roofed plaza joining the terminals is what makes Munich unusual among big airports: a genuine public square, landside and open to anyone, with shops, a supermarket, a medical centre and an airport brewery pouring beer brewed on the premises under one of the largest covered beer gardens anywhere. You need no boarding pass to sit in it.

Through the cold months the square becomes a Christmas market with an ice rink, and in summer it carries open-air events; a viewing park with retired aircraft sits a short bus ride away, which is the answer for anyone travelling with restless children.

The curfew, late landings and the early start

Munich enforces a strict core-night curfew. Only a small, listed set of movements is allowed at the margins of the evening and the early morning, and nothing routine operates in the deep hours — an inbound running badly late risks being diverted instead of cleared to land.

The mirror image is an early first wave, which makes an airport hotel a practical rather than an indulgent choice. One sits on the plaza itself, several more ring the approach roads with their own shuttles, and the terminals keep lounges with showers and landside left luggage for shorter waits.

Onward: Bavaria, the Alps and the trains south

Hire cars are collected from the garages between the terminals, and this is the German airport where that choice makes the most sense: the motorway south starts minutes from the return lanes, and the lakes, the foothills and the alpine regions open up within a morning's drive.

Without a car, airport buses reach regional towns directly and coaches run to the ski valleys and across the Austrian border in season. There is no long-distance platform at the airport itself, which is the one thing Munich lacks: the suburban trains either carry you into the main station and the national rail network, or outward to Freising for regional connections north.

Practical: signal, money, bags and family

Bavaria is fonder of cash than a card-first traveller expects, and the terminal is the last easy place to fix that: pick a bank-branded machine in the halls, decline the offer to charge you in your home currency, and let money in Germany cover the rest. Connectivity is simpler — an eSIM bought before you fly is working as you taxi in, and the free wireless over the terminals and the square will set one up if you left it late.

Families do well here: play areas, quiet rooms and family security lanes are signposted from the halls, and the plaza gives children somewhere to run off a delay. Left luggage and lockers are landside, which matters if the plan was to stow a bag and stay airside. Travellers needing mobility assistance arrange it with the airline in advance, and the meeting points are signed in both terminals.