Frankfurt to Munich
The German Intercity-Express

Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof is the busiest terminus in Germany by train movements - 350,000 passengers and 1,800 train departures daily through 24 platforms. The station's 1888 Wilhelmine building - three barrel-vaulted iron-and-glass sheds behind a sandstone facade - is one of the great pieces of railway architecture in Central Europe. It sits at the western edge of the city's banking district: the Commerzbank Tower and the skyline of Mainhattan are visible from the taxi rank on the Kaiserstraße.

The ICE to Munich departs from the main hall platforms - typically platforms 1 to 12 - and accelerates south-east through the Frankfurt suburbs and into the Main valley. The river accompanies the line briefly before the train turns south towards the Odenwald and the Franconian highlands. Within an hour the landscape is definitively rural: hillside vineyards, market towns, and the red sandstone architecture distinctive to this part of central Germany.

Frankfurt Hbf is the beating heart of Germany's ICE network - and Munich is just three hours due south.

Nuremberg Hauptbahnhof sits beneath the medieval city - the old town walls are a 3-minute walk from the platform, and the castle above them is visible from the station entrance. Germany's third most-visited Christmas market fills the Hauptmarkt each December; the Nuremberg trials courtroom is a short tram ride away. The city carries its complicated 20th-century history with remarkable candour.

Most ICE services stop here for three to five minutes. South of Nuremberg the train moves onto the Nuremberg–Ingolstadt high-speed line (NBS) - 90 kilometres of concrete viaducts, deep cuttings, and three tunnels built across the Franconian plateau. This is where the ICE 3 hits 300 km/h: the landscape becomes a blur of pale limestone, dark spruce, and pale sky. The Franconian Alb - a gentle limestone plateau between Nuremberg and Ingolstadt - disappears at this speed into impressionistic bands of colour.

South of Nuremberg the ICE 3 hits 300 km/h and the Franconian plateau becomes a long, luminous blur.

Ingolstadt - the city where Mary Shelley set Frankenstein - passes in seconds. South of Ingolstadt the land flattens into the Bavarian plain and Munich begins to assert itself: the BMW headquarters, Allianz Arena glimpsed to the north-east, and then the city's concentric rings of suburbs closing around the train as it decelerates into the final approach.

Munich Hauptbahnhof is one of Germany's busiest stations by passenger numbers - around 450,000 daily. The current building is a post-war reconstruction (the original was destroyed in 1944) and lacks the grandeur of Frankfurt's Victorian sheds, but its efficiency is formidable: U-Bahn, S-Bahn, trams, and regional trains all connect directly from the platforms, and the central city is a 10-minute walk in any direction.

The Marienplatz - Munich's historic centre, with the Neues Rathaus and its famous Glockenspiel - is reachable in 3 minutes on the U-Bahn from the station. The English Garden, one of the largest urban parks in the world (larger than Central Park), begins around 35 minutes' walk from the northern exit. The Oktoberfest grounds at Theresienwiese are directly on the U4/U5 line from the station.