CHRISTMAS MARKETS IN GERMANY

We flew out to Germany on our next holiday on 16 December after staying the night at a hotel at Heathrow. It made more sense to stay the night than trying to battle the traffic in the morning and maybe miss our flight. It turned out to be slightly delayed anyway due to fog which happens a bit during the winter months. We flew into Munich. I had been told that the Christmas markets in Germany were amongst the best which is why we chose to go there. After arriving in Munich we took the train to the city centre where we had a hotel booked not far from Marienplatz which is the centre square of the city. We had a great room – but it is strange in Europe because they have 2 single doonahs on double beds so that you have one each – no sharing the one doonah. We went out that night to check out the markets. Our first stop was where the ice skating rink was set up and they had a huge Gluhwein bar – hot mulled wine for those who haven’t heard of this before. You paid for your mug and then paid to have it filled up each time you wanted a drink. There were many many stalls where you could buy a refill. There were also a few different types of mugs to buy with the year etc on it. We didn’t want to end up with many so we bought one to start and shared the wine.

We had German sausages in a bun with sauerkraut for tea. The Christmas Markets were essentially made up of many stalls with thousands of different types of Christmas ornaments. All very pretty and sparkly. I would loved to have filled my suitcase with them. There were also gingerbread stalls and a few other miscellaneous stalls, like lollies and a few toys.

The next day we took the train to Nuremburg which we had heard were the most famous of the markets, but I think there are now other smaller towns that may beat this one. I was surprised how small Nuremburg was as I was expecting quite a large city. The train we got was immaculate – as I had expected to see in Germany. I think they are people who keep all things pretty much in order. Even the train tracks surprised us with little to no rubbish along them and in an immaculate condition. We couldn’t help commenting on them. It was a Sunday in Nuremburg so all normal shops were closed, but we still found a great café for our morning coffee and local sweet treat. There were an abundance of Gluhwein staffs and a multitude more market stalls than Munich had. As the day wore on, there were more and more people there and it got harder and harder to make your way through the crowds. They had music playing and mid afternoon it started to snow – which we were quite thrilled about (even if it made it colder). We had a walk around the town after the markets and it is a lovely place. The buildings and their architecture is quite stunning and very intricately designed, they really did build beautiful structures back then unlike some we see today. It did enter our heads that if anyone decided to do anything horrible in the midst of all the people there, there would be a lot of casualties. It is difficult not to think that in this day and age when you get crowds together. You do feel quite vulnerable – I guess the fear had crept under our skin to a point, but not enough to deter us from doing this. We really enjoyed our time here, but we were getting really tired toward the end of the day and I wished I had booked an earlier train back, but we couldn’t change the time. It was only the next day when we heard that the Berlin Christmas markets had been driven into by a truck with several dead and many wounded. Very sad sequence of events, but I doubt it will deter anyone where we are.

The next day we had all day to wander around Munich again and all the shops were open. We had a wander around and by accident we happened upon the famous Hofbrauhaus that Scot had wanted to visit. We had to go in and experience it with a drink and maybe some food. It was difficult to find a piece of bench to sit on as it was so full. We did find one sitting with a couple of youngsters from Brazil. We ordered drinks and eventually got chatting to them. We were joined a little later by some dutch fellas and German ladies. It was a fun afternoon and I had more mulled wine than I had meant to drink and Scot had a few steins of beer, but we had to leave and see what else was to see as tomorrow we were to fly out. We had another wander around the markets and ended up having something to eat in another beer hall in Munich but this one didn’t have the atmosphere of the other one. We loved our stay here – it’s one off the bucket list that’s for sure. In the morning we had a short walk around before we took the train back to the airport and flew off up to Norway for the next part of this journey.

 

One thought on “CHRISTMAS MARKETS IN GERMANY”

  1. Eins, Zwei, G’suffa!

    Munich in Summertime is even lovelier with the parks filled with sun baking locals enjoying a nice and natural scene.

    Thanks for putting up more on your travels, glad you are still getting around and seeing lots of new areas.

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