Munich Underground Visit

Just before the end of the Bavarian school holidays we organised a visit to the Munich sewers. We expected that there would be lots of parents anxious to see their kids out of the way for an hour or two.

 

Instead of children,  eight adults turned up who, with a guide from the Munich City Drainage Department (Münchner Stadtentwässerung), descended into the depths.

 

The previous night it had rained so heavily that the water in the Munich sewer was too high to receive visitors. Fortunately, the guide had an alternative in mind. In Schwabing we descended into the "Jägerkanal", built by British engineers in the 19th century under the direction of Max von Pettenkofer. The original bricks were still in good condition, apart from the odd bit of repaired bomb damage. By the way, Max von Pettenkofer pioneered many projects aimed at improving hygiene as well as doing many other scientific experiments.  

 

From there it was a short walk to the nearest underground reservoir (Regenrückhaltebecken), an enormous football field-sized 5-metre high tank - in fact, it's built underneath the Schwabing sports centre and is one of several. Munich gets heavier downpours than any other German city but that’s no great problem because when there's heavy rain, the water is diverted into the tanks. This avoids overloading the sewage treatment plant and prevents the discharge of raw sewage into the River Isar.

We learnt, that the biggest Tank is underneath the Hirschgarten beer garden.

 

There was surprisingly little smell in either the sewer or the tank. In fact, one of the main sources of smells comes from yeast discharged by the Munich breweries - even underground you can't get away from them!

The excellent photos were taken by David Bock and are used here by kind permission.



This report was written by Alec Clelland who also organised the visit for the IET LN. Thanks Alec!