All aboard for the big German voyage: A week of luxury on the world's best cruise ship - with no sausages or schnitzel in sight

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Would you choose to cruise on a ship that is owned by Germans, crewed by Germans and almost exclusively filled with Germans? Not sure? I had my doubts, too.

Would the food be super-sausaged, schnitzeled and sauerkrauted, the entertainment a mix of oompah bands and the slapping of bottoms in lederhosen?

Would I be ‘Herr Villy No Mates’, afloat in a sea of Teutonic banter? Would anyone speak English?

Not a sauerkraut sort of place: Europa 2 has been ranked as the world's best cruise ship

Maybe it was time to shake off all those deeply embedded prejudices and step on board Europa 2.

One good reason for choosing to cruise on Europa 2 is that she is now rated the world’s best by the authoritative Berlitz Guide To Cruising, with five-plus stars. Guess who Europa 2 knocked off the No 1 perch when she arrived in 2012? Her older sister, Europa 1. That’s sibling rivalry for you.

Europa 2 is a space ship.

She has the highest ratio of space per passenger than any ship afloat, with wide corridors, high ceilings and floods of natural light. Designed to appeal to a younger market, her look is gently contemporary. There is even a Damien Hirst and a Hockney among her 1,000 original works of art.

Other high-spec components include a 15-metre heated pool with a fully retractable roof, an excellent spa, a cookery school, seven different restaurants, a jazz club, a plush theatre and a cigar bar with 37 different varieties of gin.

All very elegant: The ship's atrium comes with its own grand piano and a definite air of refinement

Like everyone else in the mainly German crew, Alex the barman could not only speak English but could even do a convincing range of accents, Brummie to Scouse.

Luxury is all pervading. Each of the 250 suites comes with a verandah and a bed that can be hardened or softened at the touch of a button. I soaked in a proper, full-size tub while watching a TV screen embedded in the bathroom mirror.

To my right, I could see global atrocities on BBC World News, then, turning the other cheek, I tuned into a view of the ocean, framed by the arid landscapes of the Moroccan coast.

More than a simple ship: Step on board, and you feel that you are checking in to a luxury hotel

I had joined the ship in Lisbon and sailed due south to Casablanca, home to the immense mosque of Hassan II, a hassle-free souk with the usual spread of pouffes, banana slippers, mint tea sets and fashionable candle lamps, and Rick’s Cafe, owned and hostessed by ex-U.S. diplomat Kathy Kirker - and modelled on the one created in Hollywood for the Bogart/Bergman movie.

At Agadir, I went to the beach. An odd thing about cruising is that while the focus is all about the sea, you rarely get a chance to dip you toes in it.

Luxury on Europa 2, curiously, is as much about what it doesn’t have as well as what’s there.

You won’t find a casino, entertainment overload, set times or places for dining or formal nights. I didn’t see a tie all week, let alone a black one. And another thing missing was noise, with none of the usual barrage of announcements telling you what the weather is like and where the napkin-folding lessons are taking place. It was also easy being a Briton on board.

Inga, a waitress from Wuppertal, told me that in the crew’s quarters there is a huge photo collage of every passenger, which helps them put names to faces before we try to order our first breakfast of haferflocken (porridge) or hoppel poppel (scrambled egg with bacon and sausage).

Night time attractions: The ship has a host of restaurants and bars where you can while away the evening

Of course, the most luxurious ship in the world doesn’t come cheap. Reckon on £500 a day, including gratuities, but excluding shore excursions, drinks and flights.

But perhaps the biggest surprise was finding that Europa 2’s owner, Hapag-Lloyd, is now part of the vast TUI family, making her a cousin, once removed, of Thomson, First Choice and the rest of that familiar clan.