Fast, sleek and efficient, Germany’s trains are the epitome of hassle-free travel. Eating up the journeys at speeds of up to 320 kph, DB trains are modern and comfortable with both open-plan seating and six-seater compartments with onboard announcements usually given in both German and English. High speed ICE trains have a restaurant car where you can sit for a meal and a bar buffet where you can buy drinks and snacks. Some services even have WiFi with power sockets for laptops and mobile devices around tables. If you have a first class ticket you can even relax in a private lounge with complimentary refreshments before boarding your train, in stations including Cologne, Berlin, Dresden, Frankfurt, Munich and Nuremberg.

Getting to Germany from London is also faster than you would think. A journey to Cologne for example, takes around four and a half hours including Eurostar check-in.  Unlike with flights, there is only a 30 minute check-in for the Eurostar and no real weight restriction (beyond what you can feasibly carry). The journey through the Channel Tunnel to Brussels takes around an hour and 50 minutes and then the connecting high-speed ICE service to Cologne leaves from the same station. There are other connections to other destinations in Germany either direct from Brussels, or via Cologne.

Compare this to the equivalent journey by air, and the time difference is very slight. In the case of Cologne, for example, the flight itself would take around an hour and 10 minutes – though that would not include travel to your London terminal, the two hour check-in, collecting bags at the other end and then the 30 minute journey by public transport to get from Cologne-Bonn airport into the centre.

And once you’ve decided on a rail-based option, then it opens up lots of travel possibilities where the getting there is all part of the fun. Why not spend a day in Paris, for example, and then take one of the high-quality City Night Line services overnight to Munich or Berlin?

If you are looking for scenery, some of Germany’s railways travel through stunning rural landscapes. For example, there is a high speed service direct from Brussels to Frankfurt but you can also choose to change in Cologne and take the slower, more scenic route along the Rhine Valley, past fairytale hill top castles, vineyards and the famous Lorelei Rock.

Travelling by train is a wunderbar way to explore!

During the research for my new travel book Tales from the Fast Trains: Europe at 186mph, I made three trips to German cities, travelling from London St Pancras. The first was to Frankfurt, with an ICE train from Brussels for the last leg of the 5hr 56m journey. It arrived seven minutes late, and as we pulled into the Hauptbahnhof, a steward very politely announced in English: “We are very sorry. Zere was a problem with ze high-speed line in ze run up to Liège.”

My girlfriend and I were taken aback – delays of much more than seven minutes go without apology back in Britain (as any British traveller knows only too well).

But, for me, catching trains in Germany has always been a punctual affair; I remember travelling by train between Nuremberg, Frankfurt and Cologne to report for The Times on the England football team’s venues before the 2006 World Cup and being flabbergasted by the way we moved away precisely on time.

On this occasion our weekend in Frankfurt – seeing Goethe’s old house, drinking Ebbelwoi (apple wine), climbing the Frankfurter Dom – was also memorable for a tour we took of the red light district around the Hauptbahnhof. We met our guide at the station, learning from her of the importance of trains when Bismarck was unifying Germany in the 1870s, and then going on a tour highlighting the problems of prostitution and drug use in the streets nearby. Junkies literally injected right in front of us. It was a sad and shocking experience.

There weren’t junkies by the station in Cologne, where I arrived bang on time with an old university friend: 4h 9m from St Pancras. Cologne seemed like a perfect high-speed weekend destination, right next to the station, with so many fine art galleries, history museums and Brauhäuser serving cold Kölsch (Cologne beer) close by. There are plans for direct services on ICE trains from 2013, and I’ve got little doubt that 186mph tourism from the UK will really take off soon.

My third journey was actually by slow train for a short day-return hop to Trier after travelling down high-speed tracks to Luxembourg. What a lovely little city… and so unusual to see so many Chinese tourists heading for the house where Karl Marx was born in 1818. Like all the other trains, the Trier service arrived and left just as scheduled.

If only, if only, if only… it were the same in Britain.

Tales from the Fast Trains by Tom Chesshyre is published by Summersdale, price £8.99

Surprisingly, this trial wasn’t greeted with jingoistic headlines in the British red-tops about the Germans finally invading via the backdoor, and if there were jests about the unrolling of towels on the sunloungers of St Pancras, I didn’t see them.

No doubt there will be some reactionary old buffers in England who will think that the world is about to come to an end.  They will hold up the example of the Russians, who deliberately changed the gauge of their railway tracks for the specific purpose of preventing any outside powers from being able to run their trains straight through. Well listen up, guys, it’s too late: Deutsche Bahn has already established a sleeper cell, and is currently running all the rail services of Newcastle upon Tyne.

So let’s embrace their arrival. These days, high speed trains are competing head to head with low cost airlines in terms of journey time from city centre to city centre, and the onboard experience is far superior.  Comfort aside, you can get the feel of a place from a train, looking into people’s back yards. Whereas in a car you just stare at the back end of the lorry in front, and on a plane all you can see is the backs of other people’s heads.

And then there are the stations. St Pancras is a fabulous place to begin a journey, Gare du Nord has tons of character, and Cologne has a wonderful location right by the Rhine and the soaring Cathedral. Passengers heading for Germany would be delighted to miss out that (current) change of trains at the dump that is Brussels Midi.

At the moment the debate is about safety, and in particular about power cars: Eurostar has two, one at either end, but the ICE only has one, so is perhaps more vulnerable to breakdown. Surely that will be resolved eventually, and we could start getting some competition into St Pancras. In France, the TGV now has full service trains and low-cost equivalents, both on the same journeys. Sounds like a good scheme to me.

And then there are the sleeper possibilities. Thus far, no high speed train journey has been long enough to justify having sleeper trains, but if they can run through the Tunnel, that could change. Deutsche Bahn’s City Night Line is the best sleeper service in Europe, so I look forward to the time when I can have dinner in London followed by breakfast in Munich, having slept soundly all the way between. The Golden Age of rail travel could be about to return.

And by the way, Germany is not just good at state-of-the-art trains. Have a look at the Harz Mountain Railway.