Beers, bratwurst, fast cars and lederhosen: Germany remains my top holiday destination and Scotland's Euro 2024 fans will love it

Germany is where I will be bound. For the twentysomething time. Truth be told, I’ve lost track of exactly how many trips I’ve undertaken to the land of chemical-free beer, bratwurst and leather shorts. I know the first time was in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I would have been in my early 20s and had always fancied a road trip to somewhere on the Continent that wasn’t France, where I had been on a couple of family camping trips.

That initial adventure was just that. Just me, a little Fiat Uno, no satnav, no mobile phone, no real planning. Subsequent visits have sometimes been solo, sometimes with friends - always by car. Okay, there was one pilgrimage by train, or rather three trains, from Edinburgh to Cologne, via London and Brussels, but every other occasion has involved fuelling up and making a ferry connection or hopping on board Le Shuttle.

Over the 30-odd years since that inaugural vacation I’ve seen a fair bit of the country. Plenty of big cities - Munich, Stuttgart, Hamburg and Cologne among them. I’ve also enjoyed some scenic drives, centred on the Rhine and Moselle valleys, with their enchanting villages.

My upcoming jaunt is not Euro 24 related. In fact, I suspect that I will be the only Scot heading in the wrong direction on my return leg as the Tartan Army marches south. Where I am destined the sporting action takes place on a race track rather than a football pitch and at considerably greater pace. The 13-mile-long Nurburgring has become a tick-box Mecca for petrolheads. I’ve only ever experienced it from the passenger seat of a racing BMW and that was sufficiently white knuckle for me.

So, a wee trip to watch others slip and slide before trekking around the Eifel hills where the Ring nestles, followed by some ice-cold pilsners and a sauerkraut-smothered sausage. I might give the lederhosen a miss. There again, while in Germany…

Scott Reid is a business journalist at The Scotsman