Germany

Germany rewards travellers who look past the clichés, then generously confirms the good ones. Berlin is Europe's great work in progress: world-class museums on their own island, street art districts, beer gardens under chestnut trees, a nightlife with its own gravitational field. Munich answers with polished old-world confidence, the Alps on its doorstep and Oktoberfest when autumn arrives. Between them, the storybook unspools. The Romantic Road strings together walled medieval towns like Rothenburg. Neuschwanstein rises from forested crags exactly as Disney remembered it. The Rhine and Mosel valleys stack vineyards beneath ruined castles, best seen from a slow river cruise with a glass of riesling in hand. Trains make it all effortless. Germany is precise where it helps and romantic where it counts.