A German Christmas Market is a unique experience; they fill a town square or along a side street with wooden stalls. You find a variety of gifts, goods, ornaments, crafts, decorations, clothing and other knickknacks for sale, as well as food, dessert and drink stalls. Sometimes you will find large beer tents or gardens. Since neither of us are big shoppers and don’t care for many knickknacks, so we tend to gravitate towards the food and drink stalls. The standard Christmas Market fare is a lot of sausages, chip (fries), meat on a stick and other food that is easy to eat by hand. In the drink stalls you will find coffee, hot chocolate, beer, specialty drinks and Gluhwein or as the Brits call it mulled wine. Gluhwein seems to fuel the markets because about every 3rd stall sells or specializes in it, and everybody is drinking it. It is a spiced wine, usually red, but not always, that is served warm sometimes with an extra shot of brandy or rum. It is really delicious and believe me, we had our fare share! One interesting thing is that usually each market has their own mug that they use to serve the wine. They charge a deposit on your first cup and when you leave you turn it back in. If you like the mug, you can keep it for a nice souvenir.
Our Collection of Gluhwein Mugs
Our initial trip planning was very optimistic, we had a list of about eight cities we wanted to hit and
multiple stops in between. After we put
it down on paper, we realized we were overshooting a bit and nailed down five
cities. Our itinerary was Rothenburg ob
der Tauber, Munich, Salzburg (Austria), Nuremburg and Aachen. We planned short stops in Brussels to spend
the night only and Ramstein to visit our friends Kyle and Kristina as well. It was a pretty ambitious trip with a lot of
driving but we were ready for it.
The Route
Our trip started on Thursday the 15th. Our original plan was to leave the area after I finished work, and try to catch a late ferry to Dunkirk where we would spend the night. Luckily I was able to leave a bit early, had phenomenal traffic and road conditions, and as a result we were able to catch a very early ferry. This allowed us to press on and make it all the way to Brussels, Belgium. We literally only spent the night at a hotel just off the freeway and hit the road running in the morning. We wanted to get to Rothenburg early because we had heard that it was a very cute, quintessential German market town with some good shopping. We were on the road early for the 5 ½ hr drive and we pulled into town around 2pm. Rothenburg is a medieval town that has a wall surrounding the outer perimeter of the city. The inner part is mostly a pedestrian zone with no cars and is filled with shops, cafes, old building, houses, and of course the Christmas Market. We spent the afternoon looking through some of the shops, pursuing the market and having some Gluhwein. For those of you from the North West, it felt like the city Leavenworth was modeled after. Most shops were filled with Christmas decorations, nutcrackers, Christmas pyramids, and glockenspiels. As we were making our way to dinner, it started to snow and it really began to feel like Christmas. We had a fantastic dinner of schnitzel and fun conversation with the owner of the restaurant. As we left the restaurant, the weather had turned worse and most of the market stalls had closed up for the night, so we enjoyed another mug of Gluhwein and decided to make our way back to the hotel.
Wine Tasting in Rothenburg
On the way back we ran into a wine bar recommended by Rick Steves. We decided to go in, get out of the snow awhile, and do a tasting of German wine. Neither of us really prefers German wine, but our selections were pretty good. The next day we were up early to try to get a little more local shopping in before we had to leave for our next destination. We were told that if we wanted to do some shopping this was the town to do it in. Buy our things here and then spend the rest of the time just browsing and enjoying the markets. In Europe there is a famous Christmas store called Kath Wohlfahrt that specializes in decorations, especially nutcrackers and other traditional German Christmas decorations, that is based out of Rothenburg. We wanted to find a Christmas pyramid and nutcracker and couldn’t think of a better place to find them. Well we found that there were about seven different Kath Wohlfahrt stores and we weren’t without a lot of choices. After we made our purchases we had a lunch of sausages, German thin crust pizza, and a potato dish that is like a hashbrown and made our way towards Munich.
One of Munich's Many Christmas Markets
Selection of German Pasta at the International Festival
We started our first day by
hitting the Marienplatz. As we walked
out of the subway, we were surrounded by hundreds of stalls and a ton of
people. Our first stop was for Gluhwein of
course! We found something interesting
about the Munich markets; each stall had their own unique mug, if not multiple
mugs. I chose the boot looking mug and
continued on to browse the Market. This
was by far the biggest market we had been in, and it was a little
overwhelming. We shared a sausage for
lunch and set out to explore more of the town.
Online, it said that Munich has more than 20 different Christmas Markets
and I believe them. As we walked through
the town, it seemed like on almost every other block there was another Market,
each with their own theme, food and Gluhwein stands. We found a Pink themed market in the gay
district, a medieval market, a market that specialized in nativity scene
figures and our favorite an international winter festival. The international festival had all sorts of
food, drinks and interesting stalls.
Beers at Hofbrauhause
The two days in Munich went by in a blur. We hit about seven different market places, ate all different kinds of food, and looked at more stalls then I care to remember. We spent a few hours at the Hofbrauhause listening to oompah music and enjoying a liter of beer, walked through their version of central garden, which had a Christmas Market in the center, and did some shopping. We tried a new dessert, where they take strips of dough, roll it over a rolling pin looking thing and bake it. After it comes out, they cover it in melted butter and sprinkle cinnamon and sugar all over it. It you wait a minute, the sugar melts, hardens and becomes crunchy…delicious! Overall Munich was amazing! The snow was falling in big flakes, people were in a festive mood and we had a blast.
Salzburg Market
On our third day in Munich we took the train into Salzburg, Austria. It was about a 2 hr train ride and a few minute walk into the town. Salzburg is only a few miles into Austria, so it feels a lot like Germany. They had a very nice market. Their stalls had the nicest quality Christmas decorations, but their food was lacking. We shared a pretzel, toured the fortress on the top of the hill, and had a pretty good lunch of goulash and schnitzel. We spent a little time in an Austrian beer hall to warm up and get out of the snow, and toured around the city. The city is very picturesque. The Sound of Music was based in the area around Salzburg. We ended the day with a meal of fantastic Austrian food and took the train back to Munich. We pulled into the Munich train station around 9pm and made the decision to go back to the international winter festival. The day earlier we had seen people drinking drinks that were on fire, needless to say we were intrigued and wanted one. How could we leave Munich and not say we had the “flaming drink” as we called it. The drink is basically Gluhwein with a strong liquor pour on top, lit on fire. They also put a sugar cube type thing on the rim of the glass and soak it in the booze and light it on fire as well. It was really cool to stand there in the snow, with a flaming mug of Gluhwein in the middle of Munich. A perfect evening.
Salzburg Fortess
Merry Christmas!
Our next stop on our whirlwind tour was Nuremburg. Nuremburg is another medieval town that had market stalls in their main square and all through the main part of the city. We quickly checked into our hotel and went out to explore the city. Our first stop was to try the famous Nuremburg sausages. These things are everywhere. They are like your traditional bratwurst, except small (about the size of a Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage) and usually come three to a bun. They were really good, but after so much German and market food, this was going to be our last sausage for a while. We walked around for a while and decided we were about “marketed” out for a while so we decided to proceed back to the hotel to rest our feet and relax before we had dinner. On the way to the hotel we founds a local brewery and decided to pop in for a pint. Boy am I glad we stop here, the beer was phenomenal! I start with just a glass of their seasonal Christmas brew but then saw that they offered sampler trays so I had to order one. The sampler consisted of a lager, dunkel, amber, weisbeer and to top it off a small glass of their apple brandy. All the beers were good, but the brandy I could do without.
After leaving the brewery, we decided it was time for dinner. We were on a mission to find something other than German or market food. We had seen a Mexican restaurant earlier in the day and decided to give it a go. Dinner tasted great and was exactly what we needed. We finished out the night, exploring a little more of the town enjoying the lightly falling snow. Little did we know that you shouldn’t eat Mexican food in Germany! We were woken up by a surprise late evening, both Andrea and I were sicker than dogs! I couldn’t believe it, we both had food poisoning. Nothing is worse than being in a hotel and sick. We asked for a late checkout and decided to forego the decision to walk the town in the morning and stayed in bed until we had to leave.
Beer Tasting
Luckily our next destination was Ramstein to visit with our friends Kyle and Kristina. We rolled into Ramstein around 4pm and pretty much plopped ourselves down on their couch and didn’t really move much. We felt horrible that we were being such party poopers and not fun house guests but it gave us a lot of time to chat and catch up. After an amazing night’s sleep, we started to feel human again and went onto base with Kristina to do some shopping on base. Ramstein is huge, and has amazing facilities, restaurants, and shopping compared to Mildenhall so we wanted to take advantage. After a tasty soup lunch from Macaroni Grill we were on our way to our final stop on the trip.
Aachen At Night
Aachen is another German town known for their market; mostly because it is the closest to England and gets a lot of international travelers. The Market is spread throughout their entire downtown area, concentrated around the base of their cathedral. We debated if we should even go in to the market or just curl up in bed. As the day progressed, we were starting to feel the effects of our German Mexican food and had no desire to walk the streets and smell sausages and gluhwein. We decided to suck it up and proceeded into the market square. What a cool Market! The layout was very cool, the market stalls were unique and beside the International festival, had the best looking food. Unfortunately all we could eat were french fries and a small thing of vegetarian noodles. We stayed out as long as we could and made our way back to the hotel. Another early night, but a great night a sleep and we woke up feeling a lot better. We had breakfast in the hotel and ventured out to find the Chocolate Company we had seen the night before to have coffee and load up on the hot chocolate spoons that Andrea loves for making hot chocolate at home.
As we sat enjoying our coffee, we decided it was time to pack it in and head home. Germany had done us in and we were ready to get home. I was a little sad as we left Germany and said goodbye to the autobahn. Traffic was light and the roads were clear. As we neared the ferry terminal we started to get excited because it looked that we might have the chance to catch an earlier ferry than we planned. As we pulled up to the ticket window we saw the ferry pulling out so we had to wait. Either way it gave us time to read a little and to talk about our trip. Overall we both agreed it was a great trip. The food poisoning tried its best to take us out, but we still were able to see everything we wanted to and got to enjoy all the markets on our list. Germany really help get us in the Christmas spirit which is good because we were only going to have Christmas eve to get ready for our Christmas. We had to wrap all our presents which arrived in the mail while we were gone, shop for our Christmas day dinner party, finish decorating, and recover from that dang Mexican food. We made it though and had an amazing Christmas and enjoyed a fantastic meal and evening with friends. We are really lucky to be stationed here in England and be able to take advantage of all the opportunities that so near. We hope you all had a great Christmas and have an amazing New Year.
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