Kıel

Kiel calls itself the Sailing City, and each June the Kieler Woche regatta turns the Förde into one of the world's largest sailing events. It's a modest, workaday sort of fame, the kind that suits a place where cruise ships dock and ferries idle rather than expect to be recognised.

Which makes it easy to miss that this same waterfront once ended a war and a monarchy. In November 1918, sailors here mutinied rather than steam into a hopeless final battle, and within days the last Kaiser had abdicated - the spark that lit the German Revolution.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours walk you past both stories at once. Start at the cruise terminal and follow the shoreline to the Sailors' Mutiny Memorial tucked into Ratsdienergarten, then on to Kiel Castle's garden and the old Town Hall, where clerks once needed a special qualification just to ride the lift. Out at Laboe, step inside submarine U-995 and the naval memorial facing the Kiel Canal, still among the busiest waterways on earth.

Plug in your earbuds, walk the Förde, and let Kiel tell you the story behind the sails.