Paris is the hub for most things French and in Italy the roads still do lead to Rome but, despite the phenomenal resurgence of Berlin since the wall came tumbling down, things are very different in Germany.
Here there are regional cities that have all the demeanour and gravitas of capital cities in their own right and that is, indeed, exactly what they were before victory in the Franco-Prussian War of 1970 unified a motley collection of small kingdoms into a single nation.
Each of Germany’s major cities is big for business, and for culture, entertainment and sport too.
Hamburg
The key town in the mediaeval Hanseatic League, dominating trade around the Baltic and beyond, Hamburg remains a city state and is one of the 16 federal states that make up modern Germany. It has a population of 1.6-million in the city alone.
Born to do business, it shared domination of the Atlantic trade routes with its spiritual twin, Liverpool, and London.
Still the second largest port in Europe, after Rotterdam, it is the largest city in the EU that is not a national capital. It has more consulates than any other city in the world bar New York. Close on 500 Asian companies alone now have their European base of operations here – and it is also home to the wide-bodied Airbus A380 aircraft and a world centre for medical technology and biotechnology.
More than five million people emigrated through this bustling port between 1850 and 1934, making it the premier gateway to the New World and it remains a major starting point for ocean cruises.
Set on the Elbe and with its huge city-centre lake fed by the Alster tributary, the city is 120 km from the North Sea but has a truly maritime flavour, especially down around the old fish market – which is the place to hit for a reviving Sunday morning walk-about, breakfast and early-morning rock fest following a Saturday night out on the nearby Reeperbahn, the city’s infamous ‘Street of Shame’, with its clubs, bars and strip joints.
Close by are the moored-up Mare Frisum sailing ship, available as a business entertainment venue, and the lavishly restored warehouses that were once the world’s transhipment repository for spices, coffee, cocoa, rubber and more and are now back to life as a burgeoning business centre. The city also has a massive exhibition and conference centre, with multiple halls.
The horrific fire storms created by the Allied bombing raids of 1943 devastated Hamburg but it has arisen like a Phoenix and amazingly can still boast many historic buildings and a pretty little old town.
The Kunsthalle Art Museum, the State Opera, 31 theatres, six music halls, 10 cabarets, 50 museums and more than 4,000 restaurants are part of the mix.
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main, to distinguish it from its much smaller namesake – Frankfurt am Oder, in former East Germany – has developed into one of the world’s great financial centres, now home to the European Central Bank.
It’s the only German city to be dominated by skyscrapers, most of them in the Bankenviertel financial district. Besides the ECB’s soaring Eurotower there are, among others, the 257-metre tall MesseTurm and the 259-metre Commerzbank Tower, which was the tallest building in Europe until supplanted by Moscow’s 268-metre Naberezhnaya Tower C.
Towering over them all though is the 337.5-metre Europaturm TV tower, with its revolving entertainment floor popular for corporate entertainment. Then, out in the nearby forest, there’s the 43-metre Goetheturm, Germany’s fifth tallest wooden construction.
Each May, the Skyscraper Festival gives around 1.2 million people the chance to visit the skyscrapers and enjoy the amazing views.
Other festivals abound, including an annual celebration of the new season’s asparagus crop, when that delicious item turns up in everything from soup, to main course, to ice cream. It’s accompaniment? Not beer, nor wine, for while both are good in the region, this is a cider drinking society at special occasions.
Germany’s second largest metropolitan area, Frankfurt Rhine Main has a population of 5.3-million, with 668,000 living in the city itself.
Fairs were held in this strategically sited city as long ago as the 12th century and today it has the third largest exhibition centre in the world, hosting, among myriad other events/ the world’s largest car show, largest book fair, largest plant engineering fair and largest consumer goods exhibition.
The oldest folk festival here – now more of an amusement fair – dates back to the 14th Century while three-million are attracted to the Riverbank Museum Festival each August in a city that has 14 first-rate museums, and the massive Sound of Frankfurt music festival will return this year after a three-year break. Frankfurt was, incidentally, the birthplace of techno, pioneered by deejays like DJ Dag, of Dance 2 Trance.
The pedestrianised Zeil is one of Europe’s busiest shopping streets and other attractions include the Konstablerwache and Hauptwache plazas, the Alte Oper (‘Old Opera House’), St.Bartholomew’s Cathedral, where Holy Roman Empire kings were elected and emperors crowned. Paulskirche (St. Paul’s Church) and the ornate city hall, known as the Römer.
With three runways and serving 265 non-stop destinations, Frankfurt rates as the second or third busiest airport in Europe depending on whether you are counting flights or passenger numbers, and handles 52.8-million passengers annually. Beware! The much smaller Frankfurt Hahn Airport used by low-cost carriers is not in Frankfurt at all but a whopping 75-miles (120-kms) away.
Munich
The words ‘Munich’ and ‘beer’ are synonymous around the world. Weissbier, made from wheat, is today’s fashionable brew but you’ll find everything from pale-coloured pils lagers to the dark amber Starkbier, containing a whopping 6.9 percent alcohol by volume.
All can be enjoyed in countless bars and some 20 major beer gardens or you can really go to town at the annual Oktoberfest, which actually kicks off in the last days of September.
Food-wise, you should try the delicious weisswürste sausages, traditionally only eaten before noon – a throw-back to pre refrigerator times – as well as Munich’s speciality brazen (pretzels), leberknödel soup (made from dumplings with liver and onions), leberkäs (Bavarian sausage loaf) and the formidable schweinshaxe (a massive roast knuckle of pork accompanied with cabbage and bratkartoffeln (pan-fried potatoes).
Besides the electronics giant Siemens, BMW, the Man truck company, gas manufacturers Linde, the Allianz insurance company, defence contractor EADS and Munich Re re-insurance, Munich headquarters the European operations of Microsoft, Precision Plus and McDonald’s. It also has more publishing houses than anywhere other than New York City and is home to both the leading public broadcasting and the top commercial broadcasting networks in Germany.
Prosperity reigns and Munich’s people have more purchasing power than the inhabitants of any other European city of more than half-a-million population.
This beautiful Bavarian city of 1.3-million city has a superb, fully integrated transport system, with efficient and seamlessly networked underground, surface train, tram and bus services.
You’ll need them if you want to enjoy all that beer and also get around efficiently for parking is at a premium and congestion heavy.
A magnetic levitation train is planned to link what is Germany’s second busiest airport and the city’s main station and will reduce to just 10 minutes the current travelling time of 40 minutes.
Sites to see include the four grand royal avenues, the National Theatre, and, just outside town, the massive baroque palaces of Oberschleissheim and Schloss Nymphenburg.
