Many of the Weinachtsmarkts are
very much the same. They have booths where they serve food, various
Christmas giftable items, and Glüwein. Some look exactly the same.
Every one has at least one pyramid. They're a little hard to describe, but they're a many-sided building with a fan like thing at the top.
Glüwein is
basically what we'd call mulled wine. It's a hot beverage served in a
mug. The interesting thing is that when you buy a Glüwein, you also put a
deposit on the mug you'll drink it in, sometimes as much as 5 euros. (Called a
pfand.)
When you're done, you bring the mugs back and get your pfand refunded. Unless you want to keep
the mug, then it's a bit of a grey area. We bought a few by asking the
vendors to buy a mug rather than just "keeping" it. I'm not
sure if just keeping it is cool or not. Is the pfand intended to cover the cost of the mug itself, or is just a
deposit?
I fell in love
with the kinderpunsch. (child punch) of every flavor. Those who know me know that I'm basically a 6'4" child.
The food was outstanding as usual. Consisting mostly of sausages and steak sandwiches,
but at a good Weinachtsmarkt you can also get plank-cooked salmon (lachs). Beth
got this at every markt we visited. It was served in a baked potato.
Last time I was at
the Karlsruhe Weinachsmarkt, Robin and I got pulled pork. (!). It was
actually pretty good, It had a kind of slaw on top (that of course, had
corn in it. Everything seems to have corn in it.) they also served
bacon wrapped dates that were to die for.
You can get
roasted chestnuts, lots of sweets, stollen, and lebkucken (gingerbread, sorta.) Also something called Lango, a deep fried dough topped with sweet or savory items.
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| A typical sweets booth. |
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| Stollen |
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| Those are the dragon cups from Durlach |
You can also get many other favorites including something here in south western Germany called
schupfnudeln. In it, there is interestingly shaped pasta (is it a kind of spätztle?) that
also has as less appropriate nickname. I won't repeat it here.
It looked good, and I
wanted to try it. Perhaps tonight.
We went to
"normal" Christmas markets, and one Middle Ages market, which was
medieval themed. (in Durlach.)
At the Middle Ages
market, they had cups hand carved with simple dragons, booths where you can
shoot arrows, etc. It was quite fun. We went to this one twice.
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| I WISH it was snowing when we went. |
We also drove over to Nuremburg, because Josh wanted to visit a famous Lebkuchen store called Schmidts. 2.5 hours of driving to get there, 2 hours there, and 3 hours driving back. Worth it.
In the Karlsruhe markt, they have a Santa that flies in over the square (on wires), in his sleigh. He's called Weinachtsmann and is basically Santa Claus. I did not see Rudolph.
In Nuremberg (German: Nürnberg) , they had someone called the Christkind, who was a young girl, dressed in a beautiful dress with a crown.
Side note, Donner and Blitzen are German for Thunder and Lightning. It's also a river in Oregon. (!)
All-in-all, the Weinachtsmarkts are a blast, and if you get over to Germany in December, you need to visit one.
