Germany's cities are easy places to have a good time. Berlin has its grand monuments, graffiti-daubed cafés, hip contemporary galleries and pulsing music scene; Munich, its October ale rituals.

Cologne clings to its river – the Rhine – with picturesque perfection. Düsseldorf has urban regeneration and hipster art. Dresden is a superb case study in how to rebuild from ruin. Hamburg has nightlife galore. And there is a Germany beyond the cities, too – a hinterland that inspired the West’s most beloved fairytales, dotted with fantastical castles. The Black Forest gifts its hilly treeline and rich, rural traditions to the south-west; the Uckermark brings a similar pastoral beauty to hiking trails in the north-east. Then there is the coast, all 1,484 miles of it, fringing the Baltic, a European seaside of sweeping marshland and powdery dunes, strangely unknown.