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Published: December 2nd 2006
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Aachen isn't what you'd call a major Christmas market. It's certainly not "up there" with the likes of Cologne, Nuremberg, Stuttgart etc. Its main selling point (and the reason why we included it in our trip) is that it's on the Thalys/ICE route from Brussels to Cologne. As this was the fourth day of our six-day tour, we needed to start moving towards London, or we'd be faced with a jumbo return journey, and neither Jasmin nor I fancied that. This is how we found ourselves on the Thalys for the short hop (just 35 minutes!) from Cologne to Aachen, in the general direction of Brussels.
Aachen has a typical German
Weihnachtsmarkt that somewhat lacks the charm of Cologne's Christmas markets, but still seems to attract the crowds, particularly locals and visitors from Belgium and the Netherlands, as it's so close to the border with both countries. The atmosphere was cheery, the sausages delicious, the potato cakes so-so and the gluhwein warming, but we noticed that the stuff on sale was a little on the tacky side compared to what you'd find in Cologne - more "cheap and cheerful" than "tastefully expensive" if you know what I mean.
One
thing that I still remember almost a year later is how packed it was. Not sure if that's because it's truly popular or because the stalls are too close together, but at times we could hardly move for people. I'd seen pictures like this
http://aclubbrussels.hostrocket.com/gallery/christmasMarketAachen1.jpg before we set off, and in reality it was like that and worse, even though (or maybe because!) we were there on a Sunday night.
We wandered round the Christmas market, stood and listened to a performance by four middle-aged men in caps singing German Christmas carols with great gusto (but not such great tones), tried some
printen (see below) and ended up at a cafe just off the city centre where the waiters spoke little English but were very friendly, and brought us mouse-shaped marshmallows to dip in our hot chocolates. 😊 By that time we'd started getting tired and thinking of home. It wasn't that we'd been away for too long - just 4 days - but I think it was because we knew that our trip was nearing its end. Just one more day and we'd be back in London. So we had a quiet evening at the cafe, looking out
Nobis cafe
This is where we got "café au lait with lots of lait" on the dark street through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and thinking how nice our little trip had been and all the great places we'd seen along the way (and how Aachen wasn't really one of them, but we were still having a nice time and loving every minute of it).
Printen is the local delicacy, a kind of gingerbread biscuit that looks like this:
http://www.andreasherrmann.de/fotos/printen/1871_printen_01.jpg It's sold all over Aachen, either as plain square bisquits or in various shapes, some of them elaborately decorated. The cake shop windows were to die for, they certainly take their trade seriously. This is a picture of a fairly typical window:
http://www.andreasherrmann.de/fotos/printen/1874_printen_04.jpg See what I mean? Being dedicated foodies, both Jasmin and I bought several bags of printen from Nobis, a patisserie/cafe round the corner from our hotel, as presents for friends, family and colleagues (as well as a couple of small bags for ourselves).
The next day we didn't go back to the market, but wandered round the city. We went to one of the Nobis cafes for breakfast, where we had a very interesting exchange with the lady that took our order at the till (it was self service) who seemed
to have as much English as we had German (not a good combination). Jasmin is a caffeine freak, so all she had to do is order a
kaffee mit Milch and she was done. I'm more of a tea or decaf coffee person. Since I didn't know the word for decaf (I bet it's something simple, like dekaff or something) and I like my tea strong and milky (which is not how it's served in Euro-land) I thought I'd keep things simple (hah) and have a very milky coffee instead. But how do you say that in German? We tried asking in English - nothing. We tried "latte mit extra Milch" - ditto. Until Jasmin had a brainwave.
Café au lait? The lady at the till nodded.
Café au lait with lots of lait please! Another nod and the milkiest coffee I could hope for was placed on my tray by the beaming lady (who I guess spoke even less French than English). Communication works in funny ways. For a start, I never imagined French would come handy in Germany. 😊
We were pleased to find that the shops in the town centre were more impressive than the Christmas
market. We found a shop selling some great Christmas tree ornaments on the way to the train station, but by that time we'd already bought too much (remember I was carrying a notebook and 4 boxes of Christmas cards all the way from Amsterdam, as well as candles and Christmas potpourri, ornaments and more Christmas cards from Cologne, and bags of printen from Aachen). Jasmin was a bit more restrained and could fit most of what shopping she'd done in her tiny wheelie case. I, on the other hand, had started to look like a bag lady, so I settled for taking photos of all the lovely things we spotted in shop windows. The joys of travelling light!!
We found a post office which was accessed through an atrium (handy as it'd started raining by then) and what's more, there was a card shop and a cafe-bar in the same complex. I imagine if you've been reading my journals you'll have no trouble guessing what we did next: we bought postcards and sat at the cafe-bar to write them. Interestingly enough, Germany had the cheapest stamps of all the countries we visited, and the postcards we sent from Aachen reached their recipients ahead of all the other postcards we sent from Brussels, Amsterdam and Lille. The worst for value-for-money was Belgium. I wonder what that says about the EU? Hmmm...
We were so happy sipping mineral water and writing cards that we were late for our train (again) - we only arrived at the station with one minute to spare. Thankfully the timetable had changed (either that, or the fancy ICE train was running a couple of minutes late tsk tsk) so we had time to get to the plarform and catch our breath before our train pulled into the station. The journey from Aachen to Brussels was the only ICE journey we took, and we were well impressed by Germany's flagship train service. We found that our seats were in the smoking carriage (a smoking carriage in the express train, when in the UK there's talk of banning smoking
on the platforms 😱 well, me thinks the Germans have got it right!). Anyway, neither of us smokes, so we moved forward to the the next carriage along, which happened to be behind the driver's cabin. This was an experience not to be missed, as the door separating the driver from the passengers was see-through glass, and the ceiling of the driver's cab was also glass, so if you leant sideways from your seat you could see all the way through to the train track ahead. WOW.
In the same carriage as us was a young Australian couple who were travelling round Germany and Benelux. They seemed nice enough so we spent some time talking to them. The boy was very chatty but the girl gave us the cold shoulder - we could only imagine she wasn't too happy about her boyfriend getting too friendly with us, which is funny, not only because we both have partners, but also because the boy in question must have been at least 6-7 years younger than us! I'd better keep up the beauty routine then (hehe)... or perhaps he has an eye for the older woman (ughhhhh). Anyway, if you Aussie guys ever read this, we were only being friendly, OK? 😊
Our next stop was Brussels and from there we'd get on the Eurostar to Lille, which we'd heard has a
Marché de Noël très sympa. We didn't expect another Cologne, but we hoped for a market at least as nice as Aachen (but perhaps with a little less tat).
More about Lille in my next journal...
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