We’ve had the opportunity to visit no less than seven
Weihnachtsmarkts in different cities and towns in south Germany this year. When we lived in Stuttgart 14 years ago, we
loved its Christkindlmarkt, one of Germany’s largest, and also visited one
other city. This time around, we were
determined to sample a wider variety of these outdoor winter festivals, and we
were lucky to see some very choice examples.
Our first of the season was in Heidelberg, the charming
tourist town every American visits. We
had visitors from the US that weekend, and we wanted to show them one of these
markets. Heidelberg’s was among the few
to open before November 28 (when the vast majority opened). The open squares strung along Heidelberg’s
main street were filled with a small but satisfying selection of food and gift
stalls, in the charming setting which Heidelberg does so uniquely well. We heard lots of American voices during the
afternoon but as evening came on, more and more locals came out to enjoy the
Gluhwein and sausage together.
We happened to be visiting Saarbrucken a few days later and
took the opportunity to see what its Christmas Market was like. Saarbrucken has long been desirable to both
France and Germany for its former coal and steel industries, but it’s not much
of a tourist town. The weather was
terrible—rainy and chilly—and it was a weekday afternoon so the crowds were
thin. However, there were plenty of nice
holiday stalls (we bought some “handmade” French sausages) as well as the most
attractive rubbish bins I’ve ever seen.
On purpose to enjoy the Weihnachtsmarkt, we went to
Nuremburg for the opening night. So did
all of Nuremburg, and probably every other American in Germany that day. The place was mobbed. The market was much larger than any we’d
seen, and very beautiful in its Hauptmarkt (and other squares) setting. For the opening ceremony, all the lights of
the stalls were turned off, and children’s choirs sang familiar German
carols. A lovely young woman appeared
dressed as the Christmas Angel (we of course couldn’t see her) and read a long
poem about inviting Jesus and his mother Mary to come enjoy the Nuremburg
Advent Market. As soon as the last carol
ended, the lights came back on and the crowds mobbed all the food and drink
stalls. In Nuremburg, we spent more than
a day trying to see everything in the
amazingly extensive collection of the German National Museum, which
showcases the history of the Germanic peoples of the area from 5,000 BC to the
20th Century. While I loved
eating the pork Shashlik in the Christkindlmarkt, I could have done without the
crowds.
We also spent a day in Augsburg, an extremely old town south
of Nuremburg and about 45 minutes west of Munich in Bavaria. One of Germany’s oldest Christmasmarkts,
documented back to over 500 years ago, Augsburg sets firm standards for the
ratio of food and drink stalls to gift stalls (high) and the percentage of goods handmade in Germany (also
high, and high quality). We timed our
arrival so that we could view Augsburg’s Angel performance on a weekend evening
at 6 o’clock. Twenty-four girls with
grace, beauty, and musical ability are chosen to wear angel costumes and blond
wigs, and to appear at the windows in Augsburg’s fine Renaissance City
Hall. They mime playing musical
instruments to the sacred music of (in this case) Bach, and the whole thing
lasts about 10 minutes. It was unique! Plenty of locals came out to enjoy the
performance and one another’s company over a mug of Gluhwein or Christmas
Punch. And the gifts for sale were so
nice we bought quite a few to bring home with us.
We felt obligated to visit Karlsruhe’s Christkindlmarkt
since we have enjoyed living there so much this year. Our building managers were touchingly excited
about the display of lights and the charm of the market stalls, and their
excitement proved to be well-founded. We
went there on a weekend night, and it seemed the whole city was out there,
hanging out in the Gluhwein areas, shopping, or ice-skating. It reminded us of Munich’s Oktoberfest: attractive to visitors, but really a
city-wide outdoor party. We found some
unique gift items, as well as more reasons to love this livable city.
Near Karlsruhe is Durlach, a town whose founding predates
that of Karlsruhe’s. It’s full of
half-timbered buildings, and retains fragments of the old town walls and
gates. Durlach’s Weihnachtsmarkt
specializes in harking back to the Middle Ages and had a unique interest and
charm of its own. The stalls are mostly
old-fashioned canvas tents, and the amusements are simpler and less glitzy than
at “modern” Christmas Markets. The
gluhwein tent had skins on the benches for our greater warmth and comfort. Stall holders all wore “period” outfits. It all gave us an idea of what those early
Advent markets 500 years ago were like.
Our final Christmas market was in Frankfurt. Among Germany’s largest, it has a stunning
setting in its old city center, and featured a huge, live, and fully illuminated
Christmas Tree. We visited on a Tuesday
night, expecting a thin crowd. Not
so! Although we heard a few American
voices around us, mostly this was a German crowd, meeting friends after work
and celebrating the season together.
By our seventh Weihnachtsmarkts, some truths had come home
to me. Germans do love to meet outdoors
and party together in any season, and hot mulled wine makes this possible in
cold temperatures. Certain traditional
celebrations have hundreds of years of history behind them, and Germans love
repeating what was fun in the past. But
I think there’s something more meaningful behind their celebration of Advent,
the season when Christians await and anticipate the birth of Christ. Germans
have known more recent, and more prolonged, periods of privation than we
Americans. They’ve learned to find joy
in just the anticipation of better times to come. They work hard, save, and conserve, and take
the time to build and deepen friendships.
We could all use more of that wisdom in our lives.
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