Berlin or Leipzig?

Neither city has a sea, but Berlin's lake bathing has more to offer. Strandbad Wannsee, with its long sandy shore and wicker beach chairs, and the Müggelsee are long-standing summer haunts. Forest lakes such as Schlachtensee and Plötzensee are a short S-Bahn or bus ride from the centre.

Leipzig's lakes are flooded lignite mines south of town. The Cospudener See and Markkleeberger See have sand, clear water and beach bars, reached by tram or by bike through the floodplain forest. They are pleasant on a hot day, but there are fewer of them, and in both cities swimming is really a July and August affair.

Berlin eats better, mainly because there is so much more variety. Decades of Turkish migration fill Kreuzberg and Neukölln with bakeries and grill houses. Vietnamese, Korean and Levantine cooking are everywhere, and there is a serious fine-dining tier above the currywurst stands, plus market halls, beer gardens and natural wine bars.

Leipzig's table is plainer and more local: Saxon roasts with dumplings, the marzipan Leipziger Lerche and sour, salted Gose beer. Its coffee-house tradition goes back three centuries, and Auerbachs Keller, the cellar from Goethe's Faust, still serves food. For anything more varied you head out to the Karli or Plagwitz, and fine dining is thin.

Berlin is in another league for sights. Museum Island alone, with Nefertiti and the Pergamon collections, could take days, and the Gemäldegalerie and Charlottenburg Palace add more. The Reichstag, the Holocaust memorial and the Wall memorial on Bernauer Strasse make the twentieth century something you walk through, not just read about.

Leipzig's sights are fewer and closer together. Bach's Thomaskirche and the Nikolaikirche, where the 1989 Monday prayers began, stand a few minutes apart among the trade-fair arcades. The Runde Ecke and the Grassi museums are worth seeing, but two or three days is enough, where Berlin can easily fill a week.

Berlin is the one people travel to for clubbing. Its techno clubs in old power stations and factories have no fixed closing time, parties run into Monday and the doors are famously strict. Around them, Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg have smoky Kneipen, cocktail bars and canal-side beer on summer nights.

Leipzig draws on the same industrial, electronic tradition on a smaller scale, with friendlier doors and a student crowd. The Karli, Connewitz and the converted mills of Plagwitz make for good nights. Outside term time and weekends, though, it can go quiet, which Berlin rarely does.

The two are broadly level, both flat and green with no hills, but the green is laid out differently. Berlin's open spaces are big and spread out: the Tiergarten, the old Tempelhof runways for cycling and kite-surfing, the Grunewald forest and the Havel lakes for sailing, plus the Wall Trail as a long, easy bike ride.

Leipzig's nature runs through the middle of the city. The Auwald floodplain forest and a web of canals let you paddle from Plagwitz almost into the centre. The mining lakes add a white-water canoe course, and the sandstone towers of Saxon Switzerland are about two hours away by train.

Leipzig is clearly the better base for excursions, because it sits at the hub of central Germany's railways. Dresden and Weimar are each a little over an hour away, and Erfurt and Halle take under an hour. Naumburg's cathedral, Wittenberg, the Wörlitz gardens, Meissen and the Wartburg extend the list well beyond a week.

Berlin has one outstanding trip in Potsdam, where Sanssouci and the Prussian palaces fill a whole day, plus the Spreewald canals and the Sachsenhausen memorial. Wittenberg and Leipzig are within reach, but Dresden is a long day, and after that the choice runs out.

Berlin gives children more to do. It has two zoos, the Zoologischer Garten with its aquarium and the vast, leafy Tierpark, as well as the dinosaur skeleton at the Natural History Museum and the trains and planes of the German Museum of Technology. Flat streets and trains make prams easy.

Leipzig has one big draw in its zoo, whose covered Gondwanaland hall works in any weather. It also has something Berlin lacks, the Belantis theme park beside the Cospudener See, along with the Panometer panoramas. Once those are done, though, the list thins out faster.

Both are easy to get around, with flat streets, good cycle lanes and no need for a car, but they work differently. Berlin relies on its rail network: U-Bahn, S-Bahn, trams and buses on one ticket, with trains running all night at weekends. You will need them, because Mitte, Kreuzberg, Prenzlauer Berg and Charlottenburg are separate centres.

Leipzig is a city you mostly walk. The old town sits inside its ring with most sights in or near it, and trams cover the outer districts. Regional and long-distance trains leave from the same main station on its northern edge.

Berlin offers far more choice. The Kurfürstendamm has the big brands and KaDeWe's food hall, the streets around Hackescher Markt have concept stores and young designers, and Kreuzberg and Prenzlauer Berg are full of vinyl and vintage. Sunday at Mauerpark or Boxhagener Platz, digging for East German curios, is a Berlin ritual.

Leipzig's covered arcades make browsing pleasant in the rain, but mostly hold familiar chains. The more individual finds are in Plagwitz, along Karl-Heine-Strasse and in the galleries of the Spinnerei cotton mill, with sheet music and instrument shops for musicians.

Overall the two cost much the same, and neither is a budget destination. The difference lies in where you save. Leipzig's advantage is the room: central hotels and apartments cost less than in most big German cities, unless a trade fair is on, and concert and opera tickets are reasonable.

In Berlin the saving is more in eating. Döner, Vietnamese canteens and corner Kneipen keep daily costs down, and a day ticket covers the whole city. Its museums and restaurants, though, make a culture-heavy trip add up.

Berlin has the deeper stage. With three opera houses, the Berlin Philharmonic in Scharoun's Philharmonie, the Konzerthaus and the Friedrichstadt-Palast revue, plus jazz cellars and experimental venues, there is something worth seeing every night. Its famous theatre is mostly in German.

Leipzig's music is remarkable for its size, and it owns the Bach story. You can hear the Gewandhaus Orchestra and the opera house facing each other across Augustusplatz, or the Thomanerchor singing cantatas where Bach led it. The June Bachfest and the Whitsun Wave-Gotik-Treffen give it festivals of its own.

Berlin is the better place to unwind properly. Its large sauna complexes offer infusion rituals and quiet rest rooms in the clothes-free German manner, and the columned halls of Stadtbad Neukölln make a swim and sauna feel like an occasion. Brandenburg's thermal resorts are about an hour away.

Leipzig has the same sauna tradition in modern pool complexes and a few lakeside saunas, but nothing as atmospheric. Its calm comes from the city itself: walks in the floodplain forest, an uncrowded Sunday and spa towns such as Bad Düben visited separately.