Spandauer Weihnachtsmarkt

On Thursday night, we took the kids to their first Weihnachtsmarkt. These are outdoor markets that open for the month of December with stalls of food, decorations and gifts. It is a great reason to go outside in the dark (which is about 2/3 of the day by now -- there is daylight from 8:00 to 4:00 and even that is halfhearted with the sun barely rising above the tops of the buildings).
Here Maddie and Will are standing on a fountain which they enjoyed running up and down on until Maddie fell in.
Here is a stall with wooden decorations that we stopped at. This is (in Rob's humble opinion) the best and only place to buy Christmas decorations. These days, there are some less traditional offerings too, like handknit Bolivian hats and new age lights.
At the entrance was the Rummel, which is filled with loud carnival rides like carousels, slides, and a fun house. This keeps the teenagers busy and Will begging during the whole trip. At the other end was a life sized creche with live donkeys and sheep next to the church. It was lovely and quiet at that end, except for the sheep nibbling on the low branches of the trees and Will yowling about how he wanted to ride on the big, blue slide. We let him ride, and his sister too, and to his credit, he liked it and he didn't ask for anything else. Sebastian rode on a carousel.

We also stopped in for hot chocolate and Thuringian bratwursts. The traditional foods here are candied almonds, lebkuchen, marzipan, heart-shaped cookies, and gluhwein (a hot alcoholic wassail sort of drink). Sebastian is a big fan of the candied nuts, served in paper cones, still warm. He's begun to sniff them out of my pockets.

There are several Weihnachtsmarkts in Berlin and surrounding areas. Each one has a little different emphasis to it. The one on Schlossplatz has more carnival rides; the Opernpalais market specializes in handiwork; the Gendarmenmarkt is more traditional. We could probably attend a different one every night between now and Christmas!

Comments

liesl said…
If I had to choose just one day to teleport myself over to join you guys, it would be to go the the Weihnachtsmarkt. The only problem would be restrainging myself from spending an entire month's salary on Erzgebirgische Holz decorations. This is especially true since we just opened up the Christmas bins here in Provo and I find our decorations depressing instead of exciting. Oh well. The kids have enough excitement for all of us!
2:46 PM
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