Looking for an alternative to a quiet New Year's Eve? Then Berlin is the perfect place to be. Join a million others for an amazing night in the German capital, and make it one New Year's Eve that you'll never forget.

Bonn celebrates with the Rhine in Flames but Cologne hosts the Cologne Lights, one of Europe's most beautiful and most spectacular musical fireworks displays, right in the middle of the Rhine – an atmospheric extravaganza that will light up your eyes and bring joy to your heart.

A smattering of Japanese is always very useful in Düsseldorf , capital of North Rhine-Westphalia and home to Germany's largest Japanese community, but especially on Japan Day, the annual event when the city's Japanese – around 7,000 people – join a few hundred thousand other Düsseldorfers and international visitors for an enthralling celebration.

For three days in May, the people of Hamburg celebrate one another, their city and in particular their port, the largest sea port in Germany. The Port Anniversary is devoted to seafarers, ships and every other maritime theme, with the whole of Hamburg honouring its great seafaring tradition through this lively festival, the biggest port festival anywhere in the world.

When it's the Wies'n – local speak for Oktoberfest – in Munich , the Bavarian capital, around seven million people make the pilgrimage to Theresienwiese. This is the world's biggest beer festival, so the catering is on a massive scale: millions of roast chickens are eaten and a veritable herd of spit-roast oxen is washed down by several million towering mugs of beer. Dating back over 200 years, the Oktoberfest is a hallowed tradition that, despite its size, still spells out what it means to be Bavarian.

The Biggest Funfair on the Rhine is organised by Düsseldorf's St. Sebastian shooting club, which dates back almost 700 years and currently numbers more than 1,500 members. It's held in celebration of the club's patron St. Apollinaris, whose feast day is on 23 July. The highlight is the historical parade, one of the biggest and most spectacular in Germany, with over 3,000 uniformed marksmen, marching bands and horse-drawn carriages.

The Rhine in Flames is a fireworks spectacular that takes place along the most scenic stretches of the Rhine every year between May and September. From Rüdesheim to Bonn , spectacular pyrotechnics and curtains of fire bathe the riverbanks and landmarks in a magical red glow, and a flotilla of illuminated riverboats glides beneath mesmerising patterns of light in the night sky – a romantic and unforgettable experience for the whole family.