Bamberg or Lausanne?

Neither city is a beach destination, but Lausanne at least has real summer swimming. From late June to early September, Lake Geneva is the city's pool. People swim from lawns, piers and pebble shores at Vidy and Bellerive, and the old Bellerive lido makes an easy afternoon.

Bamberg's options are smaller: the river bathing spot in the Hain park, gravel-pit lakes on the edge of town and the public pools. That is enough to cool off, nothing more.

The food is about equally good, but the two cities eat and drink in different ways. Bamberg is about beer: smoky Rauchbier poured from wooden barrels in old brewery taverns, Schäufele and dumplings, and summer evenings at the hillside Bierkeller. There is little beyond Franconian cooking, though.

Lausanne is about wine. Lavaux Chasselas is poured in village caveaux, alongside lake perch, papet vaudois and fondue. It also has a top tier of celebrated restaurants that Bamberg lacks, but cheap everyday meals are harder to find.

Bamberg is the stronger choice for sightseeing, and most of it is in the streets themselves. Its whole old town survived the war and is listed by UNESCO, from the four-towered Imperial Cathedral and the Bamberg Horseman to the Old Town Hall on its island in the Regnitz and the fishermen's houses of Little Venice.

Lausanne turns this round. Its Gothic cathedral and steep old lanes are lovely but compact, and the bigger draws are indoors: the Olympic Museum at Ouchy, the museums of Plateforme 10 and the strange, memorable Collection de l'Art Brut.

Lausanne offers more of a night out. The Flon, an old warehouse valley in the centre, packs clubs, late bars and terraces into old industrial buildings, and on Friday and Saturday nights it fills with students from the university and the EPFL. Weeknights are quiet and drinks are expensive.

Bamberg's evenings are spent in brewery taverns, the student bars of the Sand quarter and the beer cellars in summer. It is sociable but mostly over early, and anyone who wants to dance goes to Nuremberg.

The gap is wide here. From Lausanne the French Alps rise straight out of the lake, and the Lavaux terraces between Lutry and Saint-Saphorin make a superb walk. Villars, Les Diablerets and Glacier 3000 are about an hour away for hiking or skiing, and the Jura is just as close.

Bamberg's surroundings are pleasant rather than dramatic. Franconian Switzerland has rock towers and caves, the Steigerwald has beech forest, and cycle paths along the Main link villages that each have their own brewery. Expect rolling hills, not big mountain views.

Both cities make good rail bases, and Lausanne has the richer choice. Vevey, Montreux and the Château de Chillon are a short ride along the lake. Geneva, Bern, Fribourg and Gruyères are all easy day trips, and boats cross to Évian on the French shore.

From Bamberg the trips are mostly to towns. Nuremberg's castle and Würzburg's Residence are each about an hour away, there is opera history in Bayreuth, and the baroque Vierzehnheiligen and Banz Abbey face each other across the Main valley. Rothenburg is possible at the end of a long day.

Lausanne has much more for children. They can try the hands-on Olympic Museum, see river and lake creatures at the aquarium-vivarium, and visit the animals, pedal boats and wooden lookout tower at Sauvabelin. A paddle-steamer trip on the lake is an outing in itself. The drawbacks are steep streets and expensive family meals.

Bamberg is safe and relaxed, with playgrounds and rowing boats at the Hain park and children playing among the beer-garden tables. Once those are done, though, the sights are mostly churches, up cobbles that are hard work with a pushchair.

Getting around is easy in both, but the experience differs. Bamberg is a walking town: the island town, the cathedral hill and Little Venice are minutes apart, bicycles suit the flat lower town, and only the short climbs on cobbles take effort.

Lausanne is built in steep layers. The m2 metro takes the strain, climbing more than 300m from Ouchy up to the old town, and fast Swiss trains and lake boats connect it to everywhere else.

Neither city is a shopping destination, but Lausanne has a little more to offer. Rue de Bourg has Swiss watches, jewellery and chocolatiers, and the Flon adds a few design shops, which makes it a sensible place to buy a watch or a box of chocolates.

Bamberg's shopping is mostly high-street chains. The finds worth taking home are bottled Rauchbier, produce from the market gardens and the antique dealers near the cathedral.

This is where the two differ most. Bamberg has ordinary Western European prices, held down by cheap local beer and tavern meals that cost less than in big German cities. Since everything is walkable, getting around costs almost nothing.

Lausanne is expensive in the Swiss way. Hotels, meals, wine and taxis all cost far more than elsewhere in Europe. Budget travellers there rely on bakeries, supermarket picnics and the free lakeside promenades.

Lausanne has the busier stage life, and dance leads it, with the Béjart Ballet, the Prix de Lausanne and the Théâtre de Vidy's touring productions. It also has its own opera season and a respected chamber orchestra, and the Montreux Jazz Festival is a short train ride away in July.

Bamberg's strength is narrower but real: the Bamberg Symphony, an orchestra known well beyond Germany. Add drama at the ETA Hoffmann Theatre and organ concerts in the cathedral. For opera you go to Bayreuth.

Both cities are equally good for slowing down, though in different ways. In Bamberg the rest comes from the pace: mornings by the river, afternoons in shaded beer gardens, and an old town that empties of visitors by evening. The brine pools of Bad Staffelstein are about half an hour away by train.

Lausanne has more polish, with spas in the grand lakeside hotels and quiet lanes through the vines. Thermal water is an easy trip away at Yverdon-les-Bains and Lavey-les-Bains, but the steep centre itself is not especially restful.