1870 and all that (ii): Metz

November 2, 2013March 21, 2015 / travelneville / Leave a comment

I stood in the lobby of a French hotel in a German building, in the German district of a French city, chatting in my Belgian-accented French with the receptionist, who replied in German.

Welcome to Metz. Alles klar? Avez-vous compris?

I’m fascinated by the cultural and linguistic shatterland between French and German Europe, which extends all the way from Charlemagne’s Aachen in the north to the Matterhorn in the south. Here, bier faces off against baguette and sauerkraut becomes ineffably French by the simple expedient of changing its name. On old maps German Aachen resurfaces as Francophone Aix-la-Chapelle and French Thionville as the thoroughly German-sounding Diedenhofen. In the midst of all this the people of Luxembourg converse in their own High Germanic language and the good folk of Neutral Moresnet mourn the loss of their quasi-independent statelet, which once drove a microscopic wedge between Belgium and Germany. Or perhaps not, since it disappeared in the redrawing of boundaries that followed World War One and there is no obvious clamour for its return.

Nowadays these are the most convincingly European of all European regions, where crossing from one country to another involves nothing more than a slower speed limit and a brief glimpse of abandoned buildings. A hotel receptionist in Saarbrücken will advise you to wait until Luxembourg before filling up with fuel, because it’s cheaper there. The shatterland is now the land of Schengen, a village on the Moselle at the point where France, Germany and Luxembourg meet. It gave its name to the treaty that opened borders and, more than this, opened minds.

The shatterland wasn’t always quite so at ease with itself, which brings me from Schengen the short distance upstream to Metz. The city’s history, like that of so many places in this part of the world, is a study in ambiguity. Once part of Roman Gaul, it was later a Merovingian capital and later still a free city within the Holy Roman Empire. It first become French in 1552, but its citizens were independent-minded and its Frenchness wasn’t finally confirmed until the Treaty of Münster, which ended the Thirty Years War in 1648. During the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Metz became one of the most heavily fortified towns in France. And then came the nineteenth century, the rise of nationalism as a political force and with it the rise of Prussia, the most powerful of the German states. Bismarck’s telegraphic mischief and the French overreaction to it brought war in the summer of 1870, and by the end of October the besiged city fell to Prussia. It would remain part of the German Empire for almost half a century. Unable to bear the thought of German rule, many left the city.

The long imperial summer was time enough for the city on the Moselle to be transformed. The old medieval fortifications were dispensed with and a new district, nowadays known as the Imperial Quarter, laid out to the south of the historic centre, with a palatial railway station as its focus. If Metz was not willingly German, its German interlude at least left it modernized and improved, for the imperial impulse motivated Metz’s German architects to build handsomely and well, and the Jugendstil villas and historicist apartment buildings of the nineteenth century city are very fine indeed, the equal of anything in the more exclusive bits of Wiesbaden or Dresden. The areas around railway stations are so often a city’s seediest quarter that it comes as a surprise to discover the Quartier Impérial is quite the most elegant in Metz.

A walk north from this Germanic townscape peels back the layers of Metz’s history. The public buildings ranged around the giant Place de la République have the chilly hauteur of Parisian officialdom, as assertively French as the railway station is bombastically German. The public gardens fringing the river Moselle are quite ravishing; the historic city beyond them is where Metz’s various identities meet and mingle. A shopfront as foppishly Art Nouveau as a Parisian metro station is juxtaposed with steeply Germanic rooflines; the oldest opera house in France stands in glacial Neoclassical contrast to a protestant church of purest Rhineland Romanesque.

Only the older buildings refuse to take sides. The medieval cathedral is an architectural wonder, with stained glass by Marc Chagall and one of the highest naves in the world. The arcaded place Saint Louis dates from Metz’s medieval zenith and was influenced by the architecture of Italy, though it reminded me of the main square in the Austrian city of Linz. Just like Linz’s Hauptplatz, it’s the setting for an annual Christmas market. Everywhere, the creamy local Jaumont limestone adds the harmony that its history denied Metz for so long.

Metz is a garrison town still, and on Sunday afternoon the military threw open the gates of the military governor’s palace to visitors. It was an odd place to be exposed to the gloire of the French armed forces, for the gabled mansion still looks as though the Kaiser might pop by at any time. The soldiers were smart but very young and not particularly fierce; they looked like the sort of French boys who should be showing off to the girls with their first motorbike, their first cigarettes, their first leather jacket.

Afterwards, I returned to the railway station and chanced upon the memorial to the railway workers who had died fighting for France in the second of the twentieth century’s world wars. Their names gave human form to Metz’s unique identity: Boyon following Boehler; Gebhardt preceded by Galleron.

Of all Metz’s architectural landmarks only the newest of them disappointed me a little, for the Centre Pompidou south of the railway station has a strangely makeshift air, as though it had been run up for some expo or other and would be dismantled again when the show was over. Like many of the more expressive modern buildings it strains a little too hard to be an icon, its undulating form intended to resemble a floppy hat. I’d rather it looked like an art gallery. Posters advertised an exhibition of work by the German artist Hans Richter, who through his long career collaborated with Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Mies van der Rohe. I liked the sense of Franco-German common enterprise better than I did the Pompidou’s slightly lumpy looks.

The Rough Guide to France describes Metz as an undiscovered gem, and as a contributor to that book I wouldn’t wish to argue. The old jibe that France is ‘Paris and the French desert’ has always struck me as untrue, for provincial cities are one of the things that French culture does best. In Metz as in Aix-en-Provence or Bordeaux the urbs is urbane. You’ll eat well; there’s quiche Lorraine but also pork and delicious, scented little Mirabelle plums. The wine flows, the coffee is strong; you’ll scarcely feel the need for Paris. Or for Berlin either, for that matter.

Tourist information: http://tourisme.metz.fr/en/

Centre Pompidou Metz: http://www.centrepompidou-metz.fr/en/welcome

SS Rotterdam: on a voyage to nowhere, waiting for Doris Day

February 27, 2013March 21, 2015 / travelneville / Leave a comment

Some nightspots suit jazz; others were born to boogie. In the Ambassador’s Lounge it has to be mambo. Only music as brassy and unmistakably fifties as the club itself could hope to match its Technicolor boldness: here, cherry pink and apple blossom white meet ocean blue and hot tomato red. In truth, I had a particular tune in mind. There’s something about the carefree musicality and Cuban-American sassiness of Xavier Cugat’s Siboney that’s perfect for this luxurious fifties time capsule.

To enjoy it, however, you must travel to Rotterdam, not Havana. To the city’s floating namesake: SS Rotterdam. The fifth (and not the last) Dutch liner to bear the name, she is without question the most illustrious. Built in the late fifties just as the transatlantic trade’s post-war boom began to falter in the face of competition from the Boeing 707, she was dubbed tomorrow’s ship, today. No-one could then have imagined how much truth there was in that brave claim, for in the decades that followed the flexibility of her layout, her engines-aft configuration and retro-futuristic silhouette became the blueprint for a new generation of cruise ships. In one breathtakingly sleek package she was one of the last great North Atlantic liners and one of the first truly convincing cruise ships.

At 38,000 tons and 750ft in length, the Rotterdam is not large by the standards of today’s Miami-based behemoths, but in 1959 she was among the larger liners plying the Europe to New York route, and the largest ever built in Holland. With size came dignity: as the flagship of the Holland-America line, she was – like Cunard’s Queens – a true ship of state, the flagship of the Dutch merchant marine and a vessel for national prestige as much as a means of transport from the old world to the new. She was launched by Queen Juliana; her elegant Ritz Carlton ballroom hosted Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco. Frank Sinatra performed in her theatre. That’s the kind of glamour today’s Cancun-bound resort ships have a hard time living up to.

She has the looks to match – looks that subsequent generations of passenger ships have gradually lost. In the first two decades after the Second World War naval architecture reached an apogee of grace, as streamlined modernity met the minimalizing impact of improved technology on ships’ silhouettes. Funnels were reduced in number and the old-fashioned clutter of ventilators and masts was swept away to be replaced by open-air swimming pools, terraced open spaces and clean lines. Among the first examples of this new style were Italian ships like the ill-fated Andrea Doria of 1951; among the last was the QE2 of 1968. The Rotterdam arrived midway through this golden age, and her elegance of line – from curved stem to cruiser stern – disguises her considerable size. She has the look of a yacht about her.

After an illustrious career, she managed somehow to avoid a one-way trip to the beach at Alang in India, where old ships go to die. Rotterdam returned to a tumultuous welcome in her home port in 2008. She was then stripped to the bare metal for a thoroughgoing restoration that was complicated by the liberal quantities of asbestos used in her construction. The Rotterdam reopened as a static hotel ship and museum in 2010, but even then all was not plain sailing: the cost of restoring her overwhelmed her rescuers and for a time it was rumoured that she might depart for an uncertain future in Oman.

Happily, it didn’t come to that. New owners were found, and I spent a bleak midwinter night on board in the dying days of 2012.

A Christmas tree and a flaming brazier cheered the blustery quayside; a liveried footman warmed the welcome aboard. Beautiful as she is on the outside, it’s Rotterdam’s interiors that are the most evocative thing about her. The ship’s hot 1950s colours made a delightful antidote to the grey December drizzle and a refreshing change from the timid whites and beiges of contemporary good taste. At once grand and intimate, she’s big enough to have a 600-seat theatre yet small enough to retain inside the yacht-like ambience her elegant hull suggests. An Atlantic crossing to or from New York in her late fifties heyday must have felt less like a stay in a grand hotel than a glamorous four-day house party. On the North Atlantic in the fifties the classes were still divided, but on Rotterdam the division between the VIPs in first class and the tourists in second was a discreet one, removed entirely when she cruised.

What makes this lovely ocean liner so special is not just her once-revolutionary design, but that she has survived in such original condition. She is as perfect a period piece as a pink Cadillac, a Douglas Sirk movie or the sexual chemistry between Doris Day and Rock Hudson. This is the fifties as experienced by affluent Americans, and there are luxurious touches everywhere: deep, cossetting armchairs so heavy it’s a struggle to move them, a bronze dance floor patterned in imitation of the sea bed, mosaic table tops fashioned from Murano glass and – above all – wonderful modern art, from sculpture to painting and tapestry. Though the crew-to-passenger ratio is not at all what it was in her North Atlantic heyday, she makes a surprisingly successful hotel. I had an immaculate, spacious cabin in the former first class section of the ship. Its décor was a nice mix of boutique hotel modern and fifties retro, with original, custom-built cabinets and a fifties magazine on the coffee table.

By day you can tour the ship from bridge to engine room with an audioguide, though for the latter you have to join a group. Former crew members are on hand to explain the workings of the bridge or simply to tell anecdotes of their years at sea. But daytime wanderings can be thwarted by the conferences and wedding receptions that ensure the ship’s public rooms earn their keep. There are no such bars to exploration for an overnight guest, and I seized my chance to see the magnificent smoking room, Ritz-Carlton room and Ambassador’s Lounge in complete solitude, with only my camera for company.

After dinner I nursed a cocktail beneath the fish-scale ceiling of the ocean-themed bar, coveting Aart van de Ijssel’s extraordinarily prickly red copper wall sculpture, which resembles nothing so much as an attenuated, cupric plateau de fruits de mer. The drink was good and strong; the music suited the setting. There was no mambo, but one by one the voices of Ella, Frank and Tony gave aural expression to the atmosphere of fifties luxe. As on any good sea voyage, there was no particular rush to do anything. So I lingered awhile, content and just a tiny bit drunk, waiting for Doris Day.

SS Rotterdam, 3e Katendrechtsehoofd 25, 3072 AM Rotterdam, Netherlands. Tel : (+31) 10 297 30 90
http://www.ssrotterdam.nl/uk/
Xavier Cugat’s 1950s recording of Siboney on YouTube:

Belgium. So much more than Death Race 2000

October 25, 2012November 4, 2013 / travelneville / Leave a comment

Belgium requires concentration. I cross it by car four or five times a year, zipping through to Aachen from Calais or Dunkerque, usually on my way to Austria. The Belgians have their own special driving style, which combines a lemming-like fondness for following their neighbour with a carefree approach to pulling out that always ensures a lively, exciting ride. It’s no surprise that the road death statistics are roughly twice as bad as those for the Netherlands, a country with which Belgium shares a language, a border, a landscape and a population density usually found only in flash mobs.

Just across the border from Dunkerque the motorway does a slight kink to avoid the town of Veurne. And perhaps it’s merely the novelty of having to turn the wheel, but Veurne always registers in a way so many of the Belgian towns I speed past fail to. It helps that the traffic isn’t as fearsome as the Death Race 2000 rerun that is the Brussels Ring. Plus, there’s a promising-looking cluster of spires and belfries roughly where the signs suggest Veurne will be.

So this time I gave in to my curiosity and pulled off the motorway for a closer look. And do you know what? Veurne is lovely, with one of those step-gabled Flemish market squares that calls for chips all round and a trappist beer or three. It has a Unesco world heritage site, no less.

So here’s a tip. When you’ve been cut up by an apparently suicidal Fleming in a dented Peugeot for the umpteenth time, do yourself a favour and pull off the motorway.

It may save your life. It’ll certainly transform your impressions of Belgium.

You probably haven’t heard of…Sanary-sur-Mer

October 25, 2012November 4, 2013 / travelneville / Leave a comment

Unless, that is, you’re a fan of Sybille Bedford.

I first came to Sanary in 2004, but it wasn’t until I read Sybille Bedford’s memoir ‘Quicksands’ that I opened my eyes to its literary past. Bedford – who died in 2006 – was, like Patrick Leigh Fermor, one of that vanishing generation of travel writers who lived a remarkable life, wrote beautiful prose and never had to drag a fridge anywhere to please a reluctant publisher. Her chaotic, bohemian childhood saw her wash up in Sanary in the interwar years, just as it became a place of refuge for writers and intellectuals fleeing the rise of fascism. You want names? Sanary’s interwar exiles are names to conjure with: Thomas Mann, his brother Heinrich, Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger, Stefan Zweig and Mahler’s window, Alma Mahler-Werfel. Not all the exiles were escaping Hitler: Aldous Huxley produced some of his greatest work while living at the Villa Huley close to La Gorguette beach. Bedford knew the Huxleys, and subsequently became his biographer. The dinner parties must have been intimidating.

War came and scattered the exiles to the four winds. Mann’s house fell victim to the Nazis, who demolished it to make way for coastal defences. But Huxley’s villa is still there, and is marked by a plaque. So too is Bedford’s much more modest house on chemin du Diable. Pick up some information from the tourist office by the port and you can spend an enjoyable afternoon chasing literary ghosts.

In the nicest possible way, Sanary is a little old-fashioned. Its architectural ensemble is unimprovable: there are no filing cabinet apartment blocks to spoil the harbour. Instead, it’s dominated by the church tower, the mairie and the venerable Hôtel de la Tour where Sybille Bedford spent her first night. There are yachts, of course – this is the south of France – but unlike its neighbour Bandol, Sanary doesn’t have a marina so big you can’t actually see the sea. There are foreign visitors, but no braying expats; tempting restaurants, but nothing bling enough to lure a St Tropez celebrity. There’s an old-fashioned bandstand by the port, and a pretty little cinema on the avenue Gallieni, as timeless and unmistakably French as Babar the elephant.

There are beaches: a brace of modest coves west of the port, and Huxley’s beach at La Gorguette, dominated now by a slick new hotel. Longer beaches are found east of town in Six-Fours-les-Plages, and if you’re a seeker after secret coves, the far side of Cap Sicié has some as charming and modest as any in the south of France.

I returned to Sanary this summer on a warm July night to find the harbour in full swing. From a live stage by the tourist office the rhythms of a Latin American band blared. On the quay a night market was busy with visitors, browsing contentedly for crafts.

I browsed too. Not for jewellery, but for dinner: picking my way from one menu to another until I found what I was looking for. I selected a table just back from the quay. The restaurant was tiny – little more than a pop-up, its interior all kitchen and its handful of tables teetering on the kerb, a little too close to the traffic. I didn’t particularly mind; no Mediterranean port is entirely complete without the drone of scooters or the faint threat of motorised death. The meal was simple: soupe de poissons, dark and fishy, served with rouille, croutons and creamy gruyère. A perfect glass of cool rosé. Fresh grilled fish with salt, lemon, a scattering of herbs and a little olive oil. A small salad. It was wonderful. What I paid would have bought no more than a scornful look in London.

Little ports in the south of France just don’t get much better than that.

Oh, I doubt it’ll ever be hot or happening. Sanary is on the ‘wrong’ side of Toulon, which is in turn – and in some respects unfairly – the most unfashionable city in the south of France. It’s not on the travel industry’s radar. But if that’s what it takes to save it from a fate worse than St Tropez, so be it. Perfection beats a glimpse of Simon Cowell any day.

Practicalities
Sanary lies on the coast of the Var département, a little west of Toulon http://www.sanarysurmer.com
Ryanair connects London Stansted with Toulon-Hyères airport in the summer months; otherwise, fly to Marseille and pick up a hire car.

Hôtel de la Tour (sanary-hoteldelatour.com; around €95) is the traditional choice, right on the port and with a good restaurant; Hostellerie La Farandole (hostellerielafarandole.com, from €235) is the luxury choice on Huxley’s beach.

Beautiful Bamberg

March 12, 2012March 22, 2015 / travelneville / Leave a comment

Unless you’re a connoisseur of good beer – of which more soon – you probably haven’t heard of Bamberg. It’s not the kind of place colour supplements drool over: there’s no palm-fringed beach, it lacks a Ryanair flight and it’s in Germany, a country still little known or appreciated by much of the travel press. What this lovely Franconian city does have is a gloriously complete Central European townscape, as perfect as a pocket Prague and with the Unesco World Heritage status to prove it.

The foaming brown waters of the Regnitz swirl around Bamberg’s old town hall, but if the mid-river site looks precarious, in practice the building has proved its staying power; the oldest parts date back to the fifteenth century.

Not even a grey winter’s day can rob Bamberg’s showpiece cathedral square of its looks. The city was for centuries an independent prince-bishopric, and this square was its nexus of ecclesiastical and temporal power.

Elaborate baroque wall paintings and bubbling stonework adorn Bamberg’s old town hall, but the building is much older than its outward appearance suggests.

Rivalling the cathedral for dominance on Bamberg’s skyline is the former Benedictine monastery of St Michael, commanding a hilltop site with sweeping views over the city.

The medieval fishermen’s houses of Klein Venedig (Little Venice) line one side of the river Regnitz.

Bamberg’s baroque bishop’s palace was the work of Leonhard Dientzenhofer, one of a distinguished Bavarian dynasty that also supplied Prague with some of its most celebrated architects.

Bamberg isn’t only memorable for its major monuments but also for the lost-in-time feel of its meandering historic streets

The city has some magnificent historic townhouses. The outrageously florid Böttingerhaus was built in the early eighteenth century for the privy councillor and elector Johann Ignaz Tobias Böttinger…

…who also commissioned the lovely Concordia water palace just a short distance away.

Finally, two more views of the Altes Rathaus – from the Inselstadt side of the river…

…and from the opposite, Bergstadt side of the river

Practicalities: the nearest international airport to Bamberg is at Nuremberg, which has direct flights from London Gatwick and Stansted. From Nuremberg, high speed ICE trains reach Bamberg in around 35-40 minutes.

Stay: The St Nepomuk (www.hotel-nepomuk.de) is slick and built out across the river, but how could you resist a fine old hotel by the name of Messerschmitt? (www.hotel-messerschmitt.de)

http://www.bamberg.info/en/

When it comes to Christmas markets, size isn’t everything

December 16, 2011November 4, 2013 / travelneville / 1 Comment

I’m not big on Christmas, but I do like a good Christmas market. There’s something about browsing for baubles in sub-zero temperatures that melts my flinty atheist heart. It’s probably the Glühwein.

Since the Anglo-Saxon idea of what Christmas looks like is for the most part a Teutonic import, it seems logical to make a seasonal pilgrimage to the source. To Germany or Austria.

Not all Christmas markets are created equal, and while some are international travel magnets others are altogether more modest, local affairs. I have concentrated on the latter. Size isn’t everything, and what the following lack in big-city buzz they more than make up in fairytale charm. So here are my hot tips for a cold season.

Instead of Nuremberg, try Rothenburg ob der Tauber: http://www.rothenburg.de/d/ISY/mlib/media/ChristmasMarket2011_engl_web.pdf?mediatrace=.5376.

Nuremberg’s Christkindlesmarkt is as ur and echt as they get, a classic Christmas market in a setting that’s steeped in German history. Including one or two of the more unsavoury bits, but let’s gloss over those for now.

If anywhere can top Nuremberg for atmosphere it’s surely Rothenburg ob der Tauber. You may not have heard of this exquisite little Franconian town but you surely know what it looks like, for it had a starring role in the film version of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Perched on a hilltop overlooking the valley of the river Tauber and still defended by its city walls, it’s like something straight from the Middle Ages.

Alas, as magical as it is, Rothenburg is no undiscovered secret, and if anything is likely to mar the lost-in-time charm it’ll be sheer numbers, for this is a regular honeytrap for the bus tours. On the upside, there’s a Christmas museum and a Käthe Wohlfahrt Christmas store that’s open all year round, making this the perfect destination for those who – unlike me – wish it could be Christmas every day.

How to get there: Air Berlin (airberlin.co.uk) fly to Nuremberg from a number of UK airports. From there, pick up a hire car – Rothenburg is just off the A7 Würzburg-Ulm autobahn.

Instead of Munich, try Neuburg an der Donau: http://www.rce-event.de/on_doc/132196284142.pdf

Now this place really is an undiscovered gem: a beautiful historic town on the Danube, between the asparagus-growing country around Schrobenhausen and the Jurassic landscapes of the Naturpark Altmühltal , where there seems to be a castle atop every second crag. The market itself focuses on Schrannenplatz in the lower part of the town, and if it isn’t the biggest or most spectacular in Germany, it nevertheless boasts a free skating rink and offers a wonderful excuse to spend time in a setting so Christmassy you’ll want to wrap it up and take it home with you.

You can’t miss Neuburg’s enormous Renaissance Schloss because it looms over the town in properly feudal fashion, but be sure to see the handsome gabled houses tucked behind it in the patrician upper town. It’s also well worth making a side-trip to Neuburg’s equally picture-postcard neighbour, Eichstätt. Until 23rd December.

How to get there: Easyjet (easyjet.com) fly to Munich from London Gatwick, London Stansted, Manchester or Edinburgh. From Munich it’s about an hour by train via Ingolstadt; from Munich airport to Neuburg takes just under an hour by car.

Instead of Frankfurt, try Marburg: http://www.marburg.de/sixcms/media.php/20/Programmheft%20Weihnachten%202011%20%28Lese-Version%29.pdf

Frankfurt is a veritable superpower among Christmas markets, with a tradition that dates back to the Middle Ages and a hugely successful British offshoot in Birmingham.

Christmas in the university town of Marburg is modest by comparison; even the Riesenrad or ‘big’ wheel is a toytown affair, strictly for the children. The hilly, half-timbered Oberstadt (upper town) is a truly wonderful setting for some seasonal shopping, with the castle of the Hessian Landgraves crowning the skyline. Right on the main square there’s a little museum dedicated to the Marburg Romantic circle, whose members included the Brothers Grimm. You don’t get much more fairytale than that.

Scarcely less appealing is the Unterstadt (lower town), with a second cluster of stalls around the impressive Gothic Elisabethkirche. Some of the best options for eating, drinking and staying are in this part of town, too.

How to get there: Air Berlin (airberlin.co.uk) fly to Frankfurt from several UK airports. From Frankfurt it’s just over an hour by train to Marburg

Instead of Salzburg, try Wolfgangsee: http://www.wolfgangseer-advent.at/

I have to declare an interest here, because my own holiday home is on a hillside overlooking this stunningly beautiful Austrian lake. Close enough to Salzburg to make for a viable two-centre trip and with as many Julie Andrews points as the former when it comes to Sound of Music locations, Wolfgangsee is one of the most beloved of all the lakes in the Salzkammergut region, ringed by mountains and with three villages on its shores. The bus trips tend to go for St Wolfgang, the largest village; if you prefer complete relaxation then Strobl, at the eastern end of the lake, won’t give you sleepless nights. The westernmost of the three is St Gilgen, and it’s a good compromise, with fewer day trippers than St Wolfgang but a lot more life than Strobl at this time of year.

As for the markets, the produce is impeccably local: bath salts made with the pink mineral salt that gives the region its name, sheep’s milk soaps and flavoured schnapps – be sure to try Zirbe, flavoured with Swiss pine and tasting like an alcoholic walk in the woods.

The markets reopen on 25th December and stay open until New Year’s Eve.

How to get there: Easyjet (easyjet.com) fly to Salzburg from Gatwick, Luton, Bristol and Liverpool. From the airport it’s a 45 minute trip by car; the bus from central Salzburg takes around the same time.

Instead of Cologne, try Soest: http://www.soester-weihnachtsmarkt.de/

As wholesome as Westphalian ham and reputedly the place where pumpernickel was invented, Soest is an enchanting place to visit at any time of year, with a backdrop of half-timbered houses and green sandstone churches that makes it a particularly fine setting for a Christmas market.

The attractions include an old-fashioned carousel and the produce ranges from jam and marzipan to Hungarian specialities from Soest’s twin town.

But Soest itself is the real star, with market stalls taking pride of place in the main market square and huddling in the lee of the twin churches of St Petri and St Patrokli.

How to get there: Easyjet (easyjet.com) fly to Dortmund, from where it’s just 40 minutes to Soest by bus and train.

Travel Neville

Undiscovered gem