Heidelberg or Innsbruck?

Neither city is a place to swim, but Innsbruck offers a little more. Its small plateau lakes, the Lanser See and Natterer See, warm up nicely in high summer and come with mountain views. The long, clear Achensee is beautiful even if it stays cool.

Heidelberg's options are its outdoor pools and the gravel-pit lakes out on the Rhine plain, about half an hour away. These are fine for a hot afternoon but have little to make the trip memorable.

Both cities eat heartily and on a similar level, but the pleasures differ. Heidelberg's strength is wine: Riesling and Pinot from the Bergstrasse vineyards at the edge of town, the Palatinate villages close by and white asparagus every way in spring. The better tables are in Neuenheim and the side streets rather than on the Hauptstrasse.

In Innsbruck the best meal is often at a mountain hut, with Gröstl or Kaiserschmarrn after a climb, or cake in a Viennese-style coffee house. The wine comes from elsewhere in Austria, and the restaurants around the Golden Roof serve mainly tour groups.

There is about as much to see in each, and each sees a visitor through in a couple of days, but the history differs. Heidelberg's story is Romantic and academic: the red sandstone castle ruin, the Old Bridge and the graffiti-covered Student Prison of the university founded in 1386.

Innsbruck's is imperial. The Golden Roof, the Hofburg and above all Maximilian I's tomb in the Hofkirche, ringed by bronze figures, show its Habsburg past, and Ambras Castle adds a Renaissance cabinet of curiosities.

Both are student towns with small, friendly scenes and few late venues. In Heidelberg everything gathers on the Untere Strasse and in old fraternity taverns, and it goes quiet out of term, so anyone wanting a club takes the train to Mannheim or Frankfurt.

Innsbruck's bars and small clubs fill the brick arches under the railway viaduct and stay open late at weekends. In winter, much of the partying moves out to après-ski in the resorts.

This is where the two are furthest apart. From Innsbruck's old town a funicular and cable cars reach a ridge at about 2,300m in under half an hour. Behind the ridge is the Karwendel, and across the valley lie glaciers, ski areas, via ferratas, paragliding and rafting.

Heidelberg's outdoors is woodland on a smaller scale. You can walk the Philosophers' Walk, ride up the Königstuhl at 568m for forest trails, or cycle the Neckar past castles. The setting is lovely, but it is for walks and bike rides, not mountain days.

Heidelberg has the denser set of outings within easy reach. Speyer and Schwetzingen are half an hour away, Worms, Lorsch and Maulbronn are easy, and Mainz and Frankfurt are about an hour by train, much of it on a single regional ticket.

Innsbruck's trips cross more borders but take longer. Hall in Tirol is ten minutes away, but Munich, Salzburg and Bolzano over the Brenner each take around two hours, and Neuschwanstein is best reached by car.

Children are well catered for in both, in different ways. Heidelberg relies on the funicular ride, the small fairy-tale park on the Königstuhl and, within half an hour, the Technik Museum Speyer with a space shuttle and submarine to climb into. The cobbled, sloping Altstadt is tiring with a pushchair, though.

Innsbruck's Alpenzoo has ibex, bears and lynx on a hillside, and summer brings adventure trails and family swims in the plateau lakes. With few indoor attractions, rainy days there take more planning.

Innsbruck is the easier of the two. The station is central, the flat centre can be crossed in minutes, and the mountain lifts start at the edge of the old town.

In Heidelberg the station is well west of the sights, so most visitors take a tram in. The Altstadt is a long, cobbled strip with a steep climb to the castle. The shared Rhine-Neckar fare system does make the surrounding towns simple to reach.

Each city has one main shopping street of chains and department stores, so shopping is an afternoon in either. What you take home differs. In Heidelberg, after the Hauptstrasse's souvenir end, the best buys are Bergstrasse wine and Studentenkuss chocolates, and Frankfurt is close for fashion. In Innsbruck it is loden, Speck, mountain cheese and gear from its excellent outdoor and ski shops.

Expect similar western European costs in both, with hotels as the main expense. Heidelberg has too few rooms for its visitors, and congresses and graduations push prices up, so many people stay in Mannheim and come in by train.

In Innsbruck the ski season and Christmas raise prices, and cable car tickets add up on an active trip. Spring and autumn are noticeably cheaper there, and the city cards bundle lifts with transport.

Each runs a full provincial season of opera, drama and orchestral concerts, and each has a festival worth timing a trip around. Heidelberg's is the summer castle festival, with plays and musicals in the ruined courtyard, along with the Heidelberger Frühling for chamber music in spring. Mannheim's larger opera house is twenty minutes away.

Innsbruck has the Festival of Early Music in the Spanish Hall at Ambras, plus folk evenings with yodelling and brass.

Neither has thermal springs of its own, but Heidelberg's warm water is closer. The Kraichgau thermal baths, with their saunas and saline pools, are about half an hour away, and Baden-Baden is about an hour south. From Innsbruck, the large spa complexes in the Ötztal and Zillertal take about an hour to reach.

The calm itself differs in kind. In Heidelberg it comes from slow afternoons in wine taverns and quiet forest paths above the Philosophers' Walk. In Innsbruck it is Alpine: a hotel sauna in Igls looking out at the peaks, or an evening in a mountain hut.