Christmas Market Season

Christmas is a great time of year over here in Germany.  One of the oldest holiday traditions here are the Christmas markets.   They are full of music, festive lights, delightful aromas, and booths selling wares for the season.  There is just nothing quite like the Christmas markets here and we look forward to going to them.  Here are a few of the markets we have gone to so far and I know there will be more we will visit before Christmas comes!

The Wurzburg Market is the first one we went to this year.  It gets you into the Christmas spirit!

One of the best things about the markets is the food!!  I love the crepes!!  Soooo good.  Katriana likes them too.

There are booths selling toys, ornaments, candles, housewares, food, etc. etc.

I recently learned that mushrooms are good luck here in Germany!  They have white stems and red tops with white spots on them. I see them everywhere.  I bought a couple of good luck mushroom ornaments to add to our tree.

 

This was just a really pretty street in Wurzburg.  We were there during the day, but the lights at night look beautiful.

 

No Christmas market is complete without Gluhwein!!  It is heated mulled wine with spices.  At first I didn't care for it too much, but I think I like it now.  It really helps you get warm on those cold days!

We like to collect the mugs that the Gluhwein comes in.   We find the ones with the name of the city and sometimes the year is on them.  Makes a good memento.  This is the mug we found at the market in Bamberg.

We are in Bamberg now. Did I mention the market food?  Katriana loves the chocolate covered strawberries!!

Here we are in our "home" city of Schweinfurt.  They have a pretty nice market here.

A row of booths with the Schweinfurt Rathaus in the background.  We ended up buying ourselves a nativity set - can you believe we didn't have one?

Every city Christmas market has a tree!  This is the one in the Schweinfurt market with the nativity scene in front of it.

Again.......did I mention the food?   We all love bratwurst (except for Katriana)!

Even the little villages have Christmas markets.  Usually they only last one day and go from late afternoon into the evening.  Our neighboring village of Poppenhausen had one this past weekend and the Kindergarten kids opened the market by singing some festive songs!  This is the Poppenhausen Mayor saying words and then they dressed him up like an angle.  Not sure what that was all about but the Germans near us thought it was funny.

Gretchen was reluctant to go up on stage, so her teacher said Josef could go with her.   Josef even tried to sing the songs and had a couple of lines in the microphone!  I think he misses it there a little bit.

 

 

I am too short.....the top board of the stage was at the perfect height that it blocked Gretchen's head.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was freezing outside that day!!  What better thing to do than have a nice cup of hot chocolate when we got home.

 

 

 

Enjoy this holiday season!!  Frohe Weihnachten!!