Munich or Salzburg?

Neither city is anywhere near the sea, but Salzburg has the edge for a swim. Fuschlsee, Wolfgangsee and Mondsee lie between half an hour and forty-five minutes away. Their water is clear and green and gets slightly warmer in high summer, and you go in from lawns, jetties and small pebble shores with steep Salzkammergut hills around you.

Munich's Starnberger See and Ammersee take a little longer, though they are easy to reach by S-Bahn. What Munich has that Salzburg lacks is swimming in town: the gravel banks of the Isar around the Flaucher, where families sunbathe and barbecue on warm days. In Salzburg the Salzach is too cold and fast for that.

Munich offers more to eat. Its six big breweries run vast beer halls and chestnut-shaded gardens, the Viktualienmarkt beside Marienplatz is good for grazing, and there is a respectable tier of starred restaurants. There is also enough Italian, Turkish and Balkan cooking to give you a break from roast pork and white sausage.

Salzburg's strength is its coffee houses and the cake and Salzburger Nockerl that go with them. The Augustiner monastery brewery in Mülln keeps the same bring-your-own-food beer garden custom as Munich. Elsewhere, old-town menus are aimed at tour groups, and the better Austrian cooking is out in the inns of the suburbs and the hills.

Munich has the greater collections. In the Kunstareal, the Alte Pinakothek, the Pinakothek der Moderne, the Glyptothek and the Lenbachhaus with its Blue Rider painters are grouped within walking distance of each other. On top of that come the Residenz, Nymphenburg and the vast Deutsches Museum, which together could fill several days of serious museum-going.

Salzburg gives you less to see but a more complete townscape. The prince-archbishops' Baroque centre is UNESCO-listed and largely intact, while much of Munich's old town was rebuilt after wartime bombing. Hohensalzburg looks down from its cliff, and St Peter's catacombs and Mozart's birthplace are close by, but the whole city fits into two or three days.

After dark Munich has far more going on. Beer halls are the usual start, and the Glockenbachviertel and Gärtnerplatz have a dense run of cocktail and gay bars. Schwabing and Maxvorstadt fill with students, and a few serious techno and house clubs run until morning at weekends. In late September the Oktoberfest takes over the Theresienwiese.

In Salzburg the usual evening is a concert, dinner and one drink, and the old town is quiet by midnight. Rudolfskai and the streets near the university have a few later bars during term, but there is very little club life. Locals who want a big night take the train to Munich.

Both cities are excellent for the outdoors, but the mountains sit at different distances. In Salzburg they start at the city limits. You can walk the Mönchsberg and Kapuzinerberg from the old town, ride the Untersberg cable car to about 1,800m, paraglide from the Gaisberg, or reach the Königssee in about half an hour.

From Munich the Alps are a backdrop on clear days, and the walking country around Garmisch, the Zugspitze and Tegernsee is about an hour away. In return, Munich has the English Garden, one of Europe's largest city parks, where surfers ride the Eisbach wave. The flat Five Lakes country around it is good for cycling.

Munich has the longer and more varied list of day trips, and almost all of them run by train. Augsburg is half an hour away, Nuremberg about an hour, and Regensburg, Salzburg and Innsbruck within two. Neuschwanstein and the other royal castles make the classic full-day outing.

Salzburg's excursions are more about lakes and salt. Hallstatt is the famous one, along with St Wolfgang, the Hallein salt mine, Werfen's clifftop fortress and Berchtesgaden across the border. They are memorable, but several of the lake villages are far easier to reach with a hire car than by the slow buses.

Munich is the easier city with children. Transport takes pushchairs, the parks have playgrounds, and there is plenty to fill the days: the Hellabrunn zoo along the Isar, the hands-on Deutsches Museum, the transport museum and the Sea Life aquarium, with Legoland about an hour and a half away by car.

Salzburg is calm and safe and has some memorable treats. Children love being soaked by the Hellbrunn trick fountains and riding the miners' slides in the salt mines, and the Haus der Natur and the marionette theatre are good too. But the cobbles are hard work with a pushchair, and there is less to keep children busy beyond a few days.

Munich's transport works at the scale of a real city. A single network of U-Bahn, S-Bahn, trams and buses reaches Nymphenburg, the Olympic Park, the airport and the lakes, and regional trains handle most day trips without a car. Delays on the central S-Bahn line are the main irritation.

Salzburg barely needs transport in the centre, since its main sights are within about fifteen minutes' walk of each other. Trolleybuses cover the rest of the city, but there is no metro or tram. The slow regional buses to the lakes are why so many visitors hire a car, something Munich rarely requires.

Munich is the better city for shopping. Maximilianstrasse and the Theatinerstrasse arcades carry the luxury houses, Neuhauser Strasse and Kaufingerstrasse have the department stores, and Glockenbach and Schwabing add independent design boutiques.

Salzburg's Getreidegasse is lovely to look at, with its wrought-iron guild signs, but behind them are mostly chains and souvenir shops, and there is little luxury. Both cities are good for Tracht. In Salzburg it extends to made-to-measure loden jackets and leather goods, and its Christmas market on Domplatz is one of the oldest in the region.

Neither city is cheap, and in both the hotels hurt most. Munich's rooms jump during the Oktoberfest and the big trade fairs, while Salzburg's become scarce and much more costly during the summer festival and Advent.

The ways to save differ. In Munich you can take a picnic to a beer garden, enjoy the free parks and lakes, and visit museums that charge only a token fee on Sundays. In Salzburg the city card bundles transport with the fortress and most museums, and staying across the river or in the suburbs keeps the room bill down.

Both are serious music cities, but the rhythm is different. Munich offers depth all year round: the Bavarian State Opera in the National Theatre, three orchestras of real standing, chamber opera in the rococo Cuvilliés Theatre, operetta at the Gärtnerplatztheater, plus a respected jazz scene and big touring acts at the Olympic Park.

Salzburg concentrates its music into festivals. In summer the Salzburg Festival fills the Felsenreitschule and the Festspielhaus, and Jedermann is played in front of the cathedral. Mozart Week and the Easter Festival come at other times of year, and tickets need booking well ahead. In between, chamber concerts in Mirabell and the fortress run almost nightly.

Munich has the stronger bathing culture within reach. The Art Nouveau Müller'sches Volksbad and its Roman-style steam bath are in the city itself, the public saunas follow the German textile-free custom with infusion rituals, and the huge thermal complex at Erding is about forty minutes away.

Salzburg has no springs of its own. It does have the Paracelsus Bad in the city park and quiet walks on the Mönchsberg once the day-trippers leave. It is also a little closer to Bad Reichenhall's brine spas, and the Gastein valley's radon springs are about an hour and a half south.