Five road-trip stop-offs en route to Munich

Right, so we’re heading to Germany for a World Cup qualifier at some point over the next two years. Along with our friends at Continental Tyres, an Official Sponsor of the 2014 FIFA World Cup™, we suggest making it a road trip. Here are five stop-offs for an Ireland away day to remember.

By Shane Breslin

Dunkerque (Driving distance from Dublin: 809km)

If you head across England and take the Dover to Calais ferry, then Dunkerque is just a few miles away, and it’s well worth a visit.

It’s virtually impossible to contemplate the sheer numbers involved in the so-called “Miracle of Dunkirk” in May 1940, as British and French forces retreated from the advance of the German army. Winston Churchill dispatched 900 ships to evacuate 340,000 stranded servicemen, with 40,000 vehicles abandoned on French soil.

Nine hundred ships? Incredible. We’ve been to Dun Laoghaire and the harbour can look over-crowded by two dozen dinghys.

Waterloo (Driving distance from Dublin: 966km)

We’re willing to bet a lot of money that this is the only paragraph you’ll ever read that compares Steve Staunton to Napoleon. Steve Staunton is quite tall, Napoleon was stubby. Steve Staunton proved to be a completely incompetent manager, Napoleon ruled an entire empire for a decade. “Napoleonic” means something. “Stauntonesque” doesn’t. Still, we believe that Waterloo was to Napoleon what Nicosia was to Steve Staunton: the place where everything turned to crap.

Waterloo is situated 11 miles south of Brussels, just off the N5, with the battleground itself a couple of miles further south in the town of Mont-Saint-Jean. Frankly, though, Mont-Saint-Jean doesn’t roll off the tongue in quite the same way, does it?

For the war bore in the travelling party, there’s loads of interesting museums and stuff. The rest of you can go climb the 40-metre high Lion’s Mount, marvel at the gentle nothingness of the surrounding countryside and contemplate what it must have been like to be filleted by a bayonet on the same patch of turf 200 years ago.

The EL-DE Haus in Cologne (Driving distance from Dublin: 1013km)

Crossing into Germany - where those Continental Tyres, Official Sponsor of the 2014 FIFA World Cup™, are engineered, remember - we suggest staying with war history, and you could do worse than stop off at the EL-DE Haus in Cologne, which served as the headquarters of Hitler’s Gestapo during the World War II.

You can take guided tours of the house, in which you will be shown the cells which held Jews, homosexuals and anyone else regarded as an enemy of the state during the Fuhrer’s regime. Eerie.

The Maintower in Frankfurt (Driving distance from Dublin: 1206km)

By this stage, you could be completely humbled by history, but a change is as good as a rest, isn’t it?

Since being completed in 1999, the Maintower (right) has become synonymous with the new Irish capital city of Frankfurt, as integral to the fabric of the place as international finance.

If you’ve a head for heights, you’ll probably find yourself wanting a bigger buzz than that provided by an artificial Belgian drumlin, so you can go all the way to the top, 656 feet about ground level.

Okay, so it’s not exactly the Petronas Towers – there are three taller buildings in Frankfurt itself, for gawd’s sake – but the observatory at the top provides exceptional views of the city, and if you peer through the little telescopes provided, you may even be able to spot some of the fat-cat senior bondholders whose ability to refunded all their money on a misguided bet has brought the whole of the Eurozone to its knees.

Any decent beer-selling emporium in Munich (Driving distance from Dublin: 1508km)

Three undred kilometers, three hours or so and precious little wear and tear on your Continental tyres later, it’s touch-down in the capital of Bavaria. Having combined all that historical contemplation with the stress of walking up and down mounds and towers, you’ll be looking for something both relaxing and energising when you land in Munich, and few things fit the bill better than beer.

The fixtures are decided yet, so you never know - there's about a one-in-five chance that Ireland's game against Germany will be during Oktoberfest. However, when you factor in that the chances of the game taking place in Munich are also probably no more than 20 per cent, then it starts to look like a longshot.

Irrespective of that, however, they don't need it to be autumn to enjoy a tipple or two in Munich, and you'll find

If you want to make like a local find yourself a seat on an outdoor terrace and practise saying "Ich mochte ein bier bitte" to any waiter who comes your way. All of that will get you one or more of the following: (a) a glass of frothy glory, (b) plenty of slagging from your travelling companions who are so macho they never speak a word in a foreign language, and (c) admiring glances from German women.

Well, two out of three ain’t bad.

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