The Alte Pinakothek Museum in Munich. Photo by Clare and Ben

You don’t want to leave Munich without visiting some of the city’s wonderful art, history, and science museums. Aside from traditional museum, visitors to Munchen have no shortage of other sightseeing options, from flea markets to cafes and the Hofbrauhaus.

Here’s our “Cheapo Strategy”: During the week, keep busy with biergartens and Bavarian buildings. But on the weekend, take advantage of the several city museums that charge only €1!

Art on a shoestring

Each Sunday, many of Munich’s best-known museums offer reduced entrance fares to visitors.

For instance, you can tour the Alte Pinakothek’s collection of European art, the modern art at the Lenbachhaus, Roman and Greek architecture at the Glyptothek, and the sculpture and musical instruments at the Bayerisches National Museum’s, each for a small €1 admission charge.

If you want to hold onto every last euro, Munich can be even friendlier on your wallet.

Entrance to the unique collections at the Kartoffelmuseum, the Siemens AG company museum, and the Geologisches Museum are free seven days a week.

While you’re at it

Be sure to check the museums’ websites for any upcoming events. For instance, the Glyptothek, Munich’s museum of classical Roman and Greek art, hosts a “Lange Nacht der Museen” twice a year, when the museum’s doors stay open till 2 a.m.

Tell us: Have any other Munich tourist tips? Add them below!

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An alley off Charing Cross Road. Photo by Andwar

In London, great writers from Dickens to Keats, Woolf to Orwell found a home and a literary community. Today, bookish visitors can find shelves filled with their works, often in charming, historically-significant bookstores. Cheapos on the hunt for souvenirs know that many of these shops hand out bookmarks for free.

Souvenirs to write home about

The proprietors of many of London’s famous bookstores promote themselves with free bookmarks. After perusing your favorite titles on the shelves at one of the shops, pick one up at the front counter. Not only will they keep your page, but the bookmark will be a pleasing reminder of your trip.

Charing Cross Road, a row famous for its many second-hand booksellers, runs between the Tottenham Court Road and Leicester Square tube stations, and is an excellent place to hunt down bookmarks. Waterstone’s and Foyles, two of the biggest British houses of books, are found here as well. You can also stop in front of 84, Charing Cross Road, well-known by the book of the same name (c. 1970) and the film starring Anthony Hopkins (c. 1987).

Daunt bookstore has four locations. The main store is at 83 Marylebone High Street south of Regent’s Park. Branches are also in Belsize Park, Hampstead and Holland Park. Rumors purport that George Orwell often frequented the location in Hampstead, where he also kept house.

While you’re at it…

Why not also buy a book for you to mark? We’d suggest buying a novel by a British author in his or her old neighborhood. For instance, a trip to London doesn’t get more self-referential than buying “A Song About Myself,” by John Keats, from the Daunt branch near the poet’s old house.

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Editor’s Note: This week, the blog has been tagging along with fellow Cheapo Alex Christodoulides as she visits family in Cyprus.

NEW YORK—For the first 17 years of my life, my panorama of Cyprus was the inside of my relatives’ homes. We would arrive “apo Ameriki” and immediately begin a whirl of lunches and dinners with different relatives, and there’s a “welcome” round of invitations as well as a “farewell” one.

To an extent this is still the case — this visit, my mom drew up a calendar and listed each day’s invitations (and, afterward, what we ate, and then she and I transcribed the recipes we’d requested for the various dishes because we both love cooking) even though much of the socializing was in restaurants, as our relatives lose interest in spending days in the kitchen and hours washing up.

Now that I’m back in the U.S. I find myself wishing I’d brought home more than photos and recipes. My relatives are such charming, smart, interesting people, and trying to recreate dishes we ate at shared meals just makes me wish they were with me more often.

Besides the food, one other thing in Cyprus is inevitable: political discussions. In Cyprus politics isn’t just background, it’s life.

The Cyprus problem, as it’s called, is that since 1974 the island has been divided between the predominantly Greek-Cypriot Republic and the Turkish and Turkish-Cypriot north after Turkish troops invaded in response to a Greek-Cypriot coup (the Museum of the National Struggle in Nicosia explains some of this in greater detail, but makes no claim to objectivity). The Green Line that marks the partition is still patrolled by United Nations troops.

Since then, diplomacy has failed to truly resolve the situation, and just about every time I visit Cyprus there’s another round of talks between the Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot leaders. I don’t notice tension between the two sides in everyday life, but talks always get people emotional and this time was no exception.

Just before the Republic of Cyprus joined the European Union in 2003 the Green Line was made a porous border, where at certain checkpoints you can enter the north. A passport is required, and for this reason many of my relatives refuse to visit — they say they shouldn’t have to show a passport to cross a false border (Turkey’s is the only government to recognize the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus) — but I’ve gone to my dad’s village on a previous trip to Cyprus and found the north sort of like a trip back in time. It was a fascinating look at how the two sides live, and interesting to see where I could have grown up.

But politics is only part of life in Cyprus, where there are beaches to lay on, food to enjoy, art to examine, shopping and nightlife to sample, and strong coffee to power us through all of it. It’s a small country with a big appetite to enjoy life.

Speaking of coffee, when my relative read our fortunes (see photo), she predicted for my mom “a social gathering at a table, which will be a very pleasant and joyous event.” Which is just like every visit to Cyprus, for us — followed by food coma and a nap, then dinner, sleep it off again and repeat.

This is why I visit every couple of years — that’s how long it takes to fit into my clothes again because, unlike New Yorkers, Cypriots don’t walk. We drive even the shortest distances, and would maneuver our cars through the supermarket aisles like a giant drive-thru if we could.

And then, peering into my mom’s coffee cup, she directed my dad to bring us back every year.

About the author: Alex Christodoulides is one of those push-me-pull-you creatures known as a dual citizen. When not at home in New York City (where she is a freelance writer) or in Cyprus (where she is a freeloader taking advantage of her relatives’ hospitality), she is probably dreaming of a trip to someplace where vaccinations are required and Fodor’s fears to tread.

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Bratislava, thankfully for us Cheapos, is a pretty reasonable city.  Most museums here do charge an entrance fee, of which the average cost is SKK80 (just over $4).

But, one of Bratislava’s national treasures is free and open to the public every day except for holidays and Mondays.

Bratislava Castle sits high on a hill. It’s a national landmark you simply can’t miss, visually or otherwise. The castle itself probably dates back to the 9th-Century and was first inhabited by the Celts. It’s known for the four, massive towers at each of its corners; these giants seem to dot the sky with importance.

Today, the Castle houses the Museum of History - an impressive collection of art, artifacts, and architectural marvels - all under the umbrella of the Slovak National Museum. Exhibits at the Castle include art and sculpture by Slovaks, venues exploring Slovakian culture’s reach across Europe, and lots of military objects, ceramics, and items of folklore. Note: From time to time, some exhibits do charge a nominal admission fee, typically SKK60 (about $3).

To visit the grand collection and see parts of the old castle, pick up a free ticket, available at the visitor’s center on the premises.

Note: Much of the Castle will be undergoing planned renovation from 2008-2011. While the castle doesn’t have its own web site, you can check for more details via the Slovak National Museum page, where you can also learn more about the current exhibitions that open to the public.

Join us again tomorrow, Cheapos, for more free tips. Next stop? Brussels!

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Photograph by i.langsdson1

April is just around the corner. We’re thinking of the world’s best April Fool’s joke, warmer weather, and student riots. Ok, we know that riots don’t quite fit with Easter egg pastels, matzo ball soup, and cherry blossoms, but we just read Love in the Days of Rage by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a chronicle of the student riots that took place in Paris in the spring of 1968.

Always the poet, Ferlinghetti presents the riots, and the political ideas they incite, through the romance of poetry and lovers. The book focuses on Annie (an American painter) and her lover Julian (a Portuguese banker and anarchist) as they experience their love affair in the midst of political chaos. The affair takes the foreground, but it inevitably encompasses their political present, making the novel at once tender and thought-provoking, two things we love and don’t often find together.

Still not sold? Even if you don’t love a political uprisings or a love stories, you will love the writing itself. Ferlinghetti’s poetic style translates to a lyric prose that begs to be read aloud. It’s as though he created a watercolor painting in words, and it embodies all that we think of spring, and of Paris itself.

Besides, who doesn’t love a good student riot?

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