Brno or Leipzig?

Leipzig is the better place for a swim. The flooded mines south of town, the Cospudener See and Markkleeberger See, have sandy shores, clear water and beach bars, and you can reach them by tram or by bike. On a hot day you can spend the whole afternoon there.

Brno's answer is the reservoir on the Svratka, with grassy banks and small beaches, but algae can spoil the water in hot spells. The Nove Mlyny lakes are an hour away. In neither city is swimming a reason to book.

Neither city is a food destination, and both serve filling regional cooking with dumplings and roasts. The difference is in the glass. Brno is in Moravian wine country, so light whites and Frankovka reds from vineyards less than an hour away are poured by the glass. It also has a strong specialty coffee scene and the Zelny trh market.

Leipzig's drinks are beer and coffee with a long history: the salty, sour Gose and coffee houses going back to the early eighteenth century. Its casual international kitchens and beer gardens in the Südvorstadt and Plagwitz give a little more variety than Brno's lunch-menu places. In both cities, fine dining is hard to find.

Both cities fill two or three days, but the subjects are very different. Brno's draw is architecture: Mies van der Rohe's Villa Tugendhat and a rare concentration of interwar functionalist buildings. Underground there are the Capuchin Crypt's mummified monks and the ossuary under St James's.

Leipzig's sights tell the story of music and of the end of East Germany. Bach is buried in the Thomaskirche, the Nikolaikirche prayers led to 1989, and the Runde Ecke is the former Stasi headquarters. The trade-fair arcades and the Grassi museums round it out, and its range of museums is a little broader.

Leipzig is the place for a big night out. Its club culture grew up in disused factories and warehouses, electronic music runs past dawn at weekends, and the doors are easy-going. Away from the clubs, there are bars along the Karli, in Connewitz and in the canal-side mills of Plagwitz.

Brno's evenings are smaller and quieter. Its specialty is the serious cocktail bar, often behind an unmarked door or down cellar steps, along with wine bars and student pubs around Jakubske namesti. It is excellent for a long night of drinks, but there is little dancing. Both cities go quiet when the students leave, Brno especially in July and August.

Brno has the more varied countryside. Half an hour north, the Moravian Karst holds more than a thousand caves, and at the Punkva Caves a boat runs along an underground river below the 138m Macocha Abyss. To the south are the limestone Palava hills and the Dyje valley in Podyji National Park.

Leipzig's nature is flat and watery. The Auwald floodplain forest runs right through the city, canoes can paddle in from Plagwitz, and the mine lakes suit sailing and cycling circuits. For hills you need a two-hour train ride to Saxon Switzerland or the Harz.

Both cities make outstanding bases, and the choice comes down to what you want to see. From Brno the trips are rural and Baroque: the chateaux and parkland of Lednice-Valtice, the Austerlitz battlefield, UNESCO towns such as Telc and Trebic, and wine towns like Mikulov. Vienna and Bratislava are each about an hour and a half away.

From Leipzig you reach the great names of German culture. Dresden and Weimar are each a little over an hour away, and Wittenberg, Naumburg, Dessau's Bauhaus and the Wartburg also make easy trips. Berlin is closer than Vienna is to Brno.

Leipzig is easier with children. Its zoo is one of Europe's best, and the covered Gondwanaland hall saves a rainy day. In summer the lakes have sandy, shallow shores, Belantis theme park is next door, and the flat centre is easy with a pushchair.

Brno is safe and simple to get around, but it has fewer places aimed at children. The VIDA science centre, the hillside zoo and the Anthropos mammoths fill a couple of days. The boat through the Punkva Caves is the outing children remember best. Cobbles and hills call for a sturdy pushchair.

Both have compact old towns that take about a quarter of an hour to cross on foot, with trams covering the rest. In Brno, one integrated ticket also covers regional trains across South Moravia, which keeps wine-country trips simple, though the streets up to Spilberk and the cathedral are steep. Leipzig is completely flat and full of cycle lanes, so a bike is often quickest, and an S-Bahn line under the centre runs south to the lakes.

Leipzig is the better place to shop. Its covered trade-fair arcades make browsing pleasant in any weather. In the west, Karl-Heine-Strasse has design, vintage and record shops, and the Spinnerei mill opens its galleries and studios for weekend tours.

Brno has the usual chains on Ceska and Masarykova and a few independent shops in the side streets. The best things to take home are bottles of Moravian wine, bought from a cellar on a day trip.

Brno is the cheaper of the two across the whole stay, and the gap shows less in the hotel bill than in what you spend once you are there. It also costs clearly less than Prague, so it is one of the easier places in central Europe to stretch a vacation over extra days. Its specialty coffee and cocktail bars are the only places where a bill catches up with home, and even they rarely change the overall picture.

Leipzig is closest to Brno on accommodation. Mid-range rooms within walking distance of the old town are plentiful and cheaper than in most big German cities. The difference grows with every meal out and every round of drinks, so the longer you stay, the further apart the two become. A night at the Gewandhaus or the opera is fair for the quality. In both cities a big trade fair fills the hotels, and in Leipzig rates climb sharply, so check the fair calendar before booking.

Leipzig is one of Europe's great music cities. The Gewandhaus Orchestra faces the opera house across Augustusplatz, and the Thomanerchor sings Bach in the church where he worked. The Bachfest fills the churches each June, and every Whitsun the Wave-Gotik-Treffen brings a huge gathering of goth music fans.

Brno has a fine stage life of its own, built around Janacek. His operas lead the repertoire at the Janacek Theatre, and Mozart once played at the Reduta. The Brno Philharmonic gives a regular season. Much of the drama is in Czech, so visitors are better off with opera, ballet and concerts.

Neither city has thermal springs, and in both, wellness mostly means pool complexes with saunas. Leipzig has the edge through German sauna culture and a few lakeside saunas, and the spa towns of Bad Düben and Bad Lausick are a short drive away. Brno's calm is found in café afternoons, Luzanky park and the Spilberk slopes, while Leipzig's is found on long walks in the floodplain forest.