The Place Royale is full of men in bowler hats. A huge boulder floats above them, defying gravity and good taste. From a distance it looks unfathomable, but when you come closer you realise the boulder is a hot-air balloon and the bowler hats are plastic.

This cobbled square is full of surreal knick-knacks (white pianos, wrapped-up statues) but most people don’t take much notice. They are too busy queuing [...]

Behind the humdrum high street of an unassuming market town, a new gallery has just opened, built to house one of the country’s best collections of British art. If it was anywhere else in Britain, this treasure trove would be impressive, but here in sleepy Bedford, it seems downright surreal, rather like finding a huge stash of old Masters in a drab suburban semi.

On the top floor of this [...]

There was good news for fans of Morecambe and Wise this Christmas, when the Yorkshire Post announced that a statue of Ernie Wise is to be erected in Morley, his Yorkshire home town, ten years after his death (and ten years after the Queen unveiled a statue to Eric Morecambe, in Morecambe). Ernie's statue will stand outside the Pavilion Theatre, where he performed as a child.

It sounds like a [...]

When England beat Germany in Berlin on 19 November, I must have been the only English football fan who wasn't celebrating, because ever since I was a kid I've (secretly) cheered on the German national team. I was born and raised in England but my father was German, born in Dresden, and the more my English friends ridiculed and abused "the Krauts", the more I grew to like them.

There [...]

Often, when I return to Hamburg, I see the ghost of my German grandmother, walking the streets where she spent her youth during the heyday of the Third Reich. I sometimes see her promenading along the path that runs along the River Alster, or window-shopping on Jungfernsteig in a fur coat that's seen better days. She still looks the same after all these years - tall, robust and indestructible, more [...]

I never liked Rubens until I went to Antwerp, and even then I didn't warm to him straight away. His paintings always seemed too slick, too showy and accomplished. But then, in a quiet church on the edge of the old red-light district, I came across a picture that made me change my mind.

Most of the Rubenses I had seen before were ingratiating tributes to rich despots. Even his [...]

In a little alley called the Brodgasse, a short walk from Mozart's birthplace, you can buy a souvenir that encapsulates Salzburg's strange relationship with its most famous son. A Mozartkugel looks a bit like a Ferrero Rocher. Each one is made of pistachio and marzipan, wrapped in nougat and dipped in chocolate. They cost about 65p each. Naturally, they work out a bit cheaper if you buy in bulk, and [...]

Beneath the Brandenburg Gate, just around the corner from Dunkin' Donuts, is a new museum, devoted to John F Kennedy, that sums up Germany's waning love affair with the United States. JFK spent less than eight hours in Berlin during his tour of Germany in June 1963, but the speech he made here was the defining moment of his presidency, and he knew it. "We'll never have another day like [...]

On the stage of Brighton's Theatre Royal, Nicholas Parsons, Su Pollard and a vast throng of luvvies are gathered around a gigantic birthday cake. But this isn't Pollard's birthday party, or Parsons's for that matter. It's the 200th birthday of one of Britain's oldest theatres, a theatre that has played a leading role in the story of Britain's greatest seaside resort.

The Theatre Royal Brighton opened in 1807 on the [...]

The man in the Dynamo Dresden shop was fed up. It was a busy weekday morning and the streets were full of shoppers, but I was his only customer. Yes, last summer's World Cup had been a big success, he said, but almost all the matches had been played in western Germany. A few foreign football fans had found their way here from Leipzig, the only World Cup stadium in [...]