Heinrich Heine   Deutschland: A Winter's Tale (Angel; also included in the Complete Poems ). This magisterial verse travelogue describes Heine's journey from exile in Paris to his family home in Hamburg. It's full of insight into the places he passed through, and contains devastating exposés of mid-nineteenth-century German society. The Harz Journey ( Selected Prose , Penguin) is one of the author's Travel Pictures - much imitated travelogues featuring inserted poems within the narrative.

 

Patrick Leigh Fermor   A Time of Gifts (Penguin). The author set out to walk from Rotterdam to Constantinople in 1933, travelling along the Rhine and Danube valleys en route. Written up forty years later in luscious, hyper-refined prose, it presents the fresh sense of youthful discovery distilled through considerable subsequent learning and reflection. Prewar Germany is shown suffering from all the schizophrenic influences of the era, yet the country's enduring beauty is also captured.

Claudio Magris   Danube (Harvill). Absorbing, searching exploration of the great river and the places along it from the Black Forest to the Black Sea, mixing travelogue with all manner of scholarly diversions; not the easiest of reads, but rewards the effort.

Mark Twain   A Tramp Abroad (Penguin). The early, German-based part of this book, particularly the descriptions of Heidelberg, show Twain on top form, by turns humorous and evocative. There's an over-the-top appendix entitled "The Awful German Language", which mercilessly pillories the over-complexity of "this fearsome tongue".