The Christmas Market of Christmas Markets

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Arrival

Since Nürnberg (Nuremburg - English spelling) has the most famous Christmas market in Germany, over 150 stalls(!), so Mia and I hatched a plan to meet there and spend a weekend looking for Christmas presents and seeing the town, because neither of us had been. The Deutsche Bahn (German Railways) had problems as usual and Mia almost missed her connecting train, but we both arrived in tact. The German railway system really doesn’t live up to the German stereotypes of “organized” or “efficient”, it seems every trip something goes wrong and the trains are late. Not that I’m saying I could run it any better. One good thing though was that it had snowed Friday all across Germany and when we arrived we were greeted with a completely white Nuremburg.

We almost ran into another problem when we found our hostel. Luckily, the hostel is right next to an U-Bahn (subway) line that runs right into the altstadt, but finding the hostel was still a little complicated. We told the hostel earlier that we would be checking in around 7pm, but since Mia’s train was so late we got there more around 9pm and the reception was closed. Mia found an emergency number to call though and we were in luck, because the owner lived in the same building. We checked in and it wasn’t the best hostel, but it was ok. Since Nuremburg has the most famous Christmas market in Germany it’s packed with tourists (even Germans) this time of year and there wasn’t a huge selection of close, affordable hostels that has rooms available. Ours was a bit out of the city, but as I said it was right next to a subway station so it wasn’t bad at all. There were no huge problems, but we didn’t have towels or a trash can and then the co-ed bathrooms were a bit awkward for us Americans. Luckily, I was able to buy a towel from the reception. Only 10 Euro and it even came with a big brown stain on it! The Christmas market was already closed so we decided we would get up early and get a start on sightseeing and experience the awesome Christmas market.

Saturday

After getting bagels for breakfast (I haven’t had a bagel since I was in the US), we set off to see some sights. The subway line went right from our hostel into the altstadt so we came out at Sankt Lorenzkirche (Saint Lawrence Church), a huge landmark right south of center of the altstadt. The two big towers on it were daunting and easily seen from different places in the altstadt to give a good sense of direction. The altstadt was great and not too big at all. I think you could probably see everything in it in depth in about two days. There’s almost no buses or trams running through the altstadt, but you can walk across from one side to the other pretty quickly. The original medieval walls surround much of the altstadt so you know when you’re on the outside and which way to go from there. Another nice thing is that there are a lot of pedestrian-only zones, meaning you don’t have to worry about getting run down by a car the whole time.

From the Lorenzkirche there’s a path leading straight north into the Christmas market. We stopped at a Käthe Wohlfahrt store on the way (we found two of the stores only about a block away from each other), because I had never been in one, but Mia really liked them. She said they’re really touristy, but they have so many cool, traditional German Christmas-related items that it’s really worth going inside. We finally reached the market and it was awesome, really nice. The market consists of rows and rows of stalls and little huts with their trinkets laid out in front for everyone to see. The backdrop for the market is the beautiful Frauenkirche, which is framed by big, lighted Christmas trees. Just a few things in the market were tree ornaments, smokers (wooden carved dolls that you can put incense in and the smoke comes out of their mouths), wooden clocks, nutcracker dolls, stuffed animals, cool jewelry type boxes made out of tree limbs, other wood carved animals or nativity scenes, really random things like things you hang from your ceiling that spin, Zwetschgemännla (dolls made out of prunes), and then hats, gloves, mittens, scarves, and Glühwein (sweet mulled wine) too. The mulled wine comes in cute little mugs that you pay a Pfand for. The Pfand system is well known in Germany and it’s basically where you pay extra for the actual bottle or cup you get something in. When buying a water bottle even at Starbucks you have to pay about 20 cents extra for the bottle, and then when you bring the bottle back to the counter you get the money back. I’m pretty sure it’s to encourage recycling. You can also return bottles at your local grocery store. Other things in the market include food like sausages, sandwiches, all sorts of sweets like fruit filled bread or muffins, chocolate covered bananas (Mia got me to try one and it was the bestttt), and of course the most famous Nuremburg ginger bread.

The market really was great, but also awfully crowded. After spending about an hour there we decided to keep seeing the city, and then come back later when it was dark and the Christmas lights were turned on. We walked north to see the Rathaus (city hall) and then stopped in a café to get warm. It wasn’t the snow, but actually the wind that made it so cold all weekend, not to mention it rained both Saturday and Sunday, which wasn’t the best. We found lunch at a traditional Bavarian restaurant right next to the Saint Sebaldus Rectory, another big, twin towered church in the altstadt. Because of daylight savings it gets dark in Germany around 4:30 so we went back to the Christmas market to see all the Christmas lights after lunch. There’s also a Christmas market for kids in Nuremburg, complete with a carousel and a lot of stalls selling children’s toys. We couldn’t hang around, because we had a very important appointment at 5:45pm.

We looked online before coming and found a theater playing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in English. We had already seen the German version in Dresden, but we knew we needed to see the original version with the original voices of the actors. We found a theater playing it in the altstadt, which was really nice and not too hard to find at all. We were both pretty much frozen so we appreciated the warmer, relaxing movie theater. After the movie we went back through the Christmas market again to buy a few more gifts and then went back to our hostel for the night.

Sunday
We lined up more sights to see on Sunday. We hit the West side of the altstadt this time and started with walking to Jakobsplatz and the White Tower, and this is where things started to get weird. Well the only weird thing was the fountain next to the White Tower. The White Tower is one of the gate towers of the city from the 13th century and next to it is the “Marriage Carousel”, which was kind of confusing and more than a little weird. The carousel shaped fountain was a huge circle with different statues all the way around it depicting different good and bad things about marriage. The first statue we saw was a big fat woman eating a big turkey leg pretty aggressively with her skinny husband sitting next to her waiting for scraps. As we walked along to the right the next statue is of a man playing an instrument for the nude woman to his right. After that were two random goats, one jumping towards the outside of the fountain and the other laying along the “carousel”. Next was a man standing on top of a large block with a woman on the ground to his right. As we circled around the to the other side we see a nude man statue speaking with a woman to his left. Then after was a naked couple touching each other. Then the grand finale was a dragon-type lizard with “death” on his back. Death was naked, obviously a woman, and had a man under her, touching her. It was really really odd and needless to say we didn’t get a picture of this last one haha. If you’d really like to see it maybe you can go to Nuremburg or search google.

We walked past the White Tower and onto Jakobsplatz, which has two churches; the Saint James Church and the Saint Elisabeth Church. I really liked the Saint Elisabeth Church; it reminded me a lot of a church I saw in Prague.

The altstadt was really quite pretty overall; I especially like the half-timbered houses in the northern section near Albrecht Dürer’s house, which we saw later. From the White Tower we walked north towards Kaiserburg, a huge castle on the hill to the north, overlooking the city. We walked past the Germanisches Museum, which I would really like to see next time since it covers almost all of the history of Germany. We climbed the hill to the Kaiserburg, but decided not to pay extra to go inside. The view from the walls of the castle was worth the short climb and gave a really fantastic view of Nuremburg. We spent a while on the walls and then decided what to see next. We decided to walk southwest to the artist Albrecht Dürer’s house, which was neat half-timbered house and also had a nearby statue dedicated to the artist. The statue was kind of scary looking though. It was a giant rabbit (Albrecht’s specialty was rabbits I think) that didn’t exactly look healthy. Then laying all over the big rabbit were small rabbits with silver, jeweled eyes and some of them were just skeletons.

We kept walking southwest and decided to see a few of the different bridges in the middle of the altstadt that cross over the Pegnitz River. We first walked over the Max Bridge, which was cute and ran next to a small, canopied bridge. We went east from there and crossed over the Charles Bridge too and then a few other smaller ones too until we ended back up at the Lorenzkirche. We had a lot of time left and since we had seen everything we wanted to see, decided to see a movie again. We saw “Despicable Me” in German, which we had already seen in the US, but I hadn’t seen it in a while and it was a warm way to pass the time.

We finished the day at the Christmas market again, where Mia had me try a chocolate covered banana. It’s usually pretty hard to get me to try any sweets, but seeing as I love bananas I gave it a try. I have to say it was really delicious and I’m glad I tried it. We found a few more cute gifts and then went back to our hostel to watch “White Christmas”, an American movie I grew up with that Mia had never seen. I think she really liked it and it was good to get more into the Christmas spirit.

Monday

Right now I’m on the train back to Munich, rolling through the countryside that’s almost completely white. The snow-covered fir and pine tree forests are the only things to watch out here, but it’s relaxing for me. My family’s coming next weekend to visit so I’ll be showing them all around Munich, maybe we’ll even see some sights I haven’t seen yet and I’ll have more to write about.

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