Bavaria, Germany: The Schloss Elmau hotel is full of surprises

It's hard to know what's most surprising about Schloss Elmau, tucked into its own valley in the Bavarian Alps. The Indian elephants, perhaps. Or the family friendliness you don't often find in hotels of this calibre. Maybe the Thai restaurant, whose twin-sister chefs conjure up the best Asian meal I've eaten in Europe, while outside the windows larch trees shiver and mountains are icing-sugared with snow.

What I least expect of a luxury hotel is that its spa is just a wooden hut precariously perched on boulders by the river's edge like a Russian banya. The air smells of pine resin and hewn logs. You let the heat of the sauna seep into your hiking-weary limbs and then hobble outside, down wooden steps and across the pebbles of the glassy-green river. A plunge into the alpine water feels like being electrocuted, but is more rejuvenating than any spa treatment.

Schloss Elmau never slips into the pretensions of many luxury hotels. It isn't uptight or uppity or discomforting. The staff are confident and relaxed. The helium-clear mountain air makes you giddy. The lacquered ladies dining at the posh Luce d'Oro restaurant are next morning naked as frogs in the steam rooms.

Yet this is one of Europe's top hotels. Its spa alone is regularly voted among the best in the world by luxury magazines. The sauna hut is just its most modest corner. Schloss Elmau has six spas, some reserved for ladies or for families with children. You can be scrubbed and massaged, get pummelled in the expansive Turkish hammam, exfoliate yourself with handfuls of salt, or simply relax in quiet rooms and gaze at jagged alpine peaks.

You can give your mind a massage as well. The hotel's concert hall puts on 200 classical music and jazz events each year, attracting top musicians. Big-name authors (some English-speaking) come to its literary events. The hotel has three libraries and a bookshop that wouldn't look out of place in Hogwarts, but nobody bothers you if you commandeer a leather chair under a chandelier and read the afternoon away.

Not everything is a surprise. The Michelin-star restaurant is expected in a hotel of this calibre. So is the tea lounge and the terraces under orange parasols. The main building's exterior is imposing, perhaps more monastic than castle-like. But where most hotels would be tempted into pseudo-cloisters and suits of armour, Schloss Elmau goes for swathes of glass and limestone, and windows large enough to take in mountain ranges. The furnishings are chunky and contemporary, the décor a cheerful orange and yellow.

The owner is German, but there's a distinctly Asian feel. Elephants wander across the headboard and cushions. Occasional tables are Indonesian and topped by bowls of orchids. Chinese antiques glow in corridors. It's disconcerting at first – I expect cuckoo clocks and repurposed farming equipment – but refreshingly so. The most German place is the Elmauer Alm restaurant, with its chequered curtains, wooden benches and plates of smoked sausage.