Today I learned in Germany: 21 Dec 2016

We managed to go to something like 5 Christmas markets in 6 days while Josh was here recently. Christmas Markets are called Weinachsmarkts in Germany. Sadly, they've been in the world news recently, and our hearts go out to Berlin.

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.

A typical sweets booth.

Stollen

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.

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.