Vineyards and cars are key threads in Stuttgart life. The city in the Neckar Valley is home to Porsche, Mercedes and lots of hi-tech industry. It is a leafy place with acres of parkland. The suburbs slip into the vineyards and forests which surround the city – all in all, it is a very pleasant mix. Stuttgart is an affluent city with prices to match. But some of the city’s pleasures come for free. The Schlossgarten is a huge area of open space where the merest hint of sunshine brings out the crowds. It runs north-east from the city centre to beyond the railway station.

Aah, yes... the station. Stuttgart’s Hauptbahnhof lies at the heart of one of the greatest controversies in modern Germany. The redevelopment of the station area has involved demolition of part of the classic station building. Everyone in Stuttgart has strong views on the project which is called Stuttgart 21. For the next few years, the station will be a building site. But the trains still run, with ICE services leaving every hour for Cologne, Frankfurt and Munich. Trains for Berlin and Hamburg leave every two hours.

Stuttgart has a good range of international services. It’s a three-hour journey from Stuttgart to Zürich on a route that takes in some very pretty Swabian countryside along the way. There are four or five fast TGV trains to Strasbourg and Paris each day. The journey from Stuttgart to the French capital takes 3 hrs 10 mins. There are regular EuroCity services to Salzburg and a number of other Austrian cities including Graz and Klagenfurt. Stuttgart also has direct daytime EuroCity trains to Ljubljana and Zagreb. Closer to hand, Stuttgart is a good jumping-off point for journeys by train into the nearby Black Forest and to Lake Constance.