The Bitcoin scene in Munich is one of the oldest in the world, hosting regular Bitcoin meetups uninterrupted since 2011. There are a few places that accept Lightning payments, so I went out and tried to visit them all.
Tl;dr: Almost all places I visited indeed accepted Bitcoin payments. While the payment itself always worked flawlessly, Bitcoin payments are poorly integrated into the workflows of these businesses, and there are too few users to make an integration worthwhile. I encountered the Opago PoS terminal multiple times, as well as Wallet of Satoshi and Zeus.
📡I'm using LNVPN on this trip for mobile internet. It's about half the price of Bitrefill (for now), and unlike with Bitrefill I do not need to install a new eSIM every time I buy more data or extend the card's validity. I also don't need to make an account, it's enough to bookmark the checkout page.
🍟A bit outside the city, in the parking lot of an excellently sorted supermarket is the American Burger Bar, operated by a man from Philadelphia and his wife, who met at this very parking lot when he was shopping for exotic sodas. They're open Tuesday to Saturday, but every first Monday of the month they're making an excellent Philadelphia Cheese Steak. I'm here on a Friday afternoon for the burger and a Lightning payment. It took the boy at the cash register a while to locate the orange payment terminal from Opago, a for-profit fork of Ben Arc's Offline Point of Sale. The device looks slick and robust, and has a large color display. It can operate both in online (Wi-Fi) and offline mode. You can connect it to your own LNBits instance or use that of the manufacturer, Opago. I am shown a QR code which I have some difficulty scanning in the sun light.
🍵Daily Matcha is an incredibly busy tea house located near the university. Almost all customers and staff are women and beyond the classic Matcha Latte they have a wide variety of experimental flavors, toppings, syrups and milk alternatives. There was a long queue forming behind me even before I get to place my order, and I worry paying with Bitcoin might hold up their business flow. The server needed to call for help as I announce my intention to pay with Bitcoin, but help is nearby, the Opago terminal quickly located and the invoice promptly paid.
🍣Sushi Sano sells sushi in the old town of Munich. There is a Sago Ramen restaurant nearby that was also tagged on BTCMap as accepting Bitcoin by mistake. The sushi and udon was good and paying to Wallet of Satoshi was smooth, but there is no indication on the website or the store that they accept Bitcoin. At 0.003%, or 28ppm, this payment was by far the cheapest I made.
🐟Maisinger Seehof is a biergarten in the country side, open only in summer, about a 30 minute train and a 45 minute walk away from Munich. It's a wonderful walk to the lake, and the restaurant accepts Lightning payments. The garden is a self-service area, and there are two point of sales, for drinks and food. But only one person, the manager, is able to accept Bitcoin payments, so you will have to ask for him every time you make a payment. The first payment wasn't very smooth, the manager first had to be found, then his embedded Zeus wallet had to be synced, and he had trouble entering the amount for a while, likely because the channel wasn't yet active, and he was interrupted with a "new channel" warning. After a minute, which feels like an eternity when queuing at a bar, I'm given an invoice which I'm able to pay almost instantly. I eventually make four payments in total, main dish, dessert and two rounds of drinks. The manager is very much optimistic about Bitcoin, but he says almost nobody has used it so far this season. He would be interested in upgrading to a proper PoS solution, but is also worried about lack of integration with his existing terminal and that integrating a new service might not be worth the trouble, given how rarely somebody asks about it. The smoked trout was absolutely delicious, and so was the Kaiserschmarrn.
🥪Fräulein Grüneis is a small kiosk in the Englischer Garten, a large green space. It's near the famous Munich wave that you can surf, though that is currently closed after a horrific accident. The kiosk is open mainly during the day and serves cold drinks, sandwiches and sausages. They do not take cash, but use the Opago terminal to accept Lightning payments. There's a long queue outside the kiosk as I arrive, and I'm afraid to hold it up as I ask to pay with Bitcoin, but the terminal is quickly located and connected to a power source. It boots up very quickly, but needs a few seconds to connect to the Wi-Fi. The payment goes through very quickly, and the server notes that this is her first time observing a Bitcoin payment. There's a 0.5€ deposit on each bottle, which you can only get refunded by card, which arrives in my account the next day. If only there was a quicker alternative!
There are other places worth visiting in Munich that I know accept Bitcoin payments. The bar Niederlassung for example also uses an Opago terminal, and on BTCMap I can see a Greek restaurant and a pub that also might accept it. Around the city might be a few restaurants worth a day trip by car, but I'd call ahead and confirm that before going all the way. The Lightning merchant community in Munich seems robust and diverse. It's a good number of merchants for a city of this size (~1.5M people), but it's still somewhat disappointing to know that at 250,000 people per merchant, there are fewer than one payment per merchant and month.
