Christmas Markets...

Well I promised a post about the christmas markets, so here it finally is, time to get nostalgic a whole month after Christmas. Better late than never I guess. 

So yeah, Christmas markets. They are (were) bloody lovely, and this place doesn't feel the same without them. Most people probably have a decent idea about what a German Christmas market looks like, having seen all the poor imitations in town centres all over the UK, but I think I need to explain what it is that makes these Christmas markets the original and best.

Glühwein: this is the German word for mulled wine, and literally means 'glow wine', presumably referring to the warm fuzzy feeling it gives you on a harsh winter evening in industrial Germany. The key differences are the stronger and less sweet taste, the shot of Amaretto or Rum chucked in there to enhance the warming feeling, and the cups they are served in, which are individually designed for each individual town (I don't think its just bias when I say Dortmund's is by far the best). Couple that with the sweet little wooden stands which serve the stuff, where people sit and huddle around wooden benches, and you have a very gemütlich little experience.

The Rat Pack reincarnated

Entertainment: Missed out on a lot of this, but things I saw on the big stages include Santa Claus singing about Santa getting off with some kids mum in German in Cologne, a children's Christmas recorder choir in Bochum and the German answer to the rat pack in Dortmund (at which me and my brother sang along and an old woman was so overjoyed that we were actually joining in she kept coming over and hugging us and telling us how wonderful it is that young people get involved in things like this. Makes you wonder about how dull and grey life in this place is). They were all cool (and funny for all the wrong reasons) as fuck.

Christmas tree: its time to get specific on this one: the Dortmund Christmas tree was really something to be seen to be believed. A total height of 50m, with 40,000 lights and some really naff candles is certainly something to mark your town out as something 'special'. Never mind the carbon footprint and the fact that it was absolutely ridiculous, this was something that Vegas might have rejected for being a bit too over-the-top, and I loved it for that reason alone.

Köln

Düsseldorf

Essen

Writing this now some time after Christmas, the huge squares which housed these wood-carved cinammon-flavoured delights now seem embarrassingly bare. Makes me wish that the Wizzard song could come true and it really could be Christmas every day, now THAT would give me incentive to stay in this place.