Nürnberger Christkindlmarkt

The Christmas market in Nuremberg was loads of good fun last night. So much so that we are considering going to another Christmas market tonight in a smaller town that's just a quick car ride away. We saw all of the things we were hoping to see and more as we wandered from stall to stall. We timed it perfectly as well, arriving around 3pm and leaving around 6pm. When I say we timed it well it is because it didn't rain a drop until we were about to leave and then it began to pour. (It's too warm for snow right now and that's unfortunate because it has been raining so much this past week that if it had been snow I'm sure we'd have well over a foot of accumulated snow at this point. Too bad.)

When we got there the sky was just beginning to darken and so the pictures of lights weren't that great. I kept meaning to get this again in the dark but everything else was so distracting that I forgot.

This is the market area at night. There were loads of people there. From what I've read/heard over two million people from all over the world come to this particular Christmas market every year. I believe it since I heard several different languages being spoken.

This was one of the booths I liked. They had these festive paper star lights and all sorts of fun candles and such. There were many more just like it because all of the booths sell similar wares: prune men, candles and lights, angels, Gebrannte Mandeln (candied almonds/nuts) and chocolate covered delights, straw and wreath decorations, ornaments, all the bread and cookie products, jewelry, lovely wooden handicrafts, cheeses, wurst and other traditional foods, and of course the Glühwein and other hot beverages.

There are beautiful carriages drawn by Clydesdale looking horses carrying people around the market.

Here is a picture of the wooden crèches, just a few of the many items made from wood that we saw.

These are some of the Zwetschgamännla I was telling you in my earlier post. They have prunes for arms and legs and dried figs for their bodies and walnuts for heads.

This was one of the stands that sold the various hot drinks and the Glühwein. It smelled pretty good so we got some Glühpunsch instead. We weren't sure exactly what it was that we were getting but we didn't really care because we just wanted the mugs that came with the beverage. Every year they have special mugs made just for the Christmas market in Nuremberg. You pay about 2.50 euros as a deposit for the mug (and then the drink itself is 2 euros). At the end of the night you can return the mug to get your deposit back. We just wanted to keep our mugs to take home as a souvenir so we just kept ours. If we go to the Christmas market in Amberg tonight we are hoping they have their own special Amberg mugs and if they do, we'll get some of those too. As for the punch, it was really tasty.

Mr X and his mug.

Lebkuchen, Magenbrot and various Stollen. (Breads and gingerbread cookies, etc)

These were some of the more strange chocolate covered items. I'm not really sure exactly what's in those pigs and mice, but they looked like hard work from an inventive mind so I took a picture of them.

These were the 1/2 meter wurst that were being sold. They were crazy-long! We couldn't help but stare. I saw a lady buy one and I was all excited for a second until they cut it in half and stuffed it in a roll for her. I was really hoping that she would be attempting to eat some giant sausage wrapped in the middle with a tiny little roll. I was all ready to take pictures of the event. *sigh* Oh well.

This was called a Kartoffelpuffer. Mr X got an order of them. They were like 3 little potato pancake things that you dipped in some sort of apple marmalade. Strange but surprisingly good.

In any case, I'm really looking forward to the next market tonight.