Spretnak The Blog: The Nuremberg Christmas Market

"Baked potatoes" made of marzipan for sale at the Nuremberg Christmas Market

Next stop: Nuremberg, Germany. I have now completed the Austro-Hungarian Empire part of this vacation and have moved into Germany. I have come from the Christmas Market.

Nuremberg is reputed to have the oldest, the biggest, and the best Christmas Market in all of Europe.

And it was much much bigger than the biggest I saw in Vienna, although Vienna had Christmas Markets scattered all through the city.

No need to take the horse drawn carriage to get there:

My hotel is right in the middle of the action.

But, first, a church.

This is the Frauenkirche Nürnberg. This is the Catholic Church that is right in the middle of the Christmas Market action.

Almost Lutheran-like in being austere. In Vienna, the Catholic churches went over-the-top in being ornate, ushering in the Baroque style, a branding move done to "compete" with the austere, stripped-down Protestant churches. I guess in this part of German there was more of a "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" ethic.

Lots of Christmas trees lit up for the occasion. Germany did invent the Christmas tree, after all.

And booths selling the seasonal grog. The local grog seemed to be more hot mulled wine, rather than the more alcohol-intense rum punches in Vienna.

Let's move over to the children's section:

The booths all have things up on their "roofs".

Santa and his sleigh.

Angels. Who I presume we have heard on high.

Elves.

Even Teddy Bears.

They had a carousel.

And what had to be the shortest railroad ever in the history of the world. That is one tight circle.

And they had a stone statue of that gentleman, although I'm guessing he's a permanent resident and not here just for the Children's Christmas Market.

They did have many of the same booths in the children's section as they had in the main section.

And they had a nice wooden creche, off to the side, out of the way.

And they had food. Supper was one of those hot pretzels, covered in gooey cheese and salami. Huge, tasty and filling. What more do you want from street food?

The market just spills all over the old town part of Nuremberg.

This is the part of the city within the city walls. No time to explore the walls or anything else in Nuremberg.

I've got only one night here and the whole point of Nuremberg being on the itinerary is this:

Or more like this:

Food! Dessert! Christmas confections!

I got one of these, which is a giant marshmallow. This is the rum flavored. The marshmallow was not stiff and chewy as I expect. It was creamy. Like a marshmallow cream, or a sweet meringue. It was very good, but almost too sweet. Almost. (Time to cue up the Dean Martin. CLICK HERE if you dare. I heard Dean's "Marshmallow World" playing here at this Christmas Market, too. It's becoming the theme song for this Christmas. This youtube clip is even better, because Dean sings with a cigarette in hand.)

Should I have gone for the more traditional cookies instead?

Church break. Time for a church break.

This is the Lutheran church in this part of Old Town. Sebalduskirche Nürnberg. St. Sebald's Church.

This may have been the coldest church in which I've ever been in.

That is not a metaphor for Lutheran austerity. Well, not intentionally.

But all of the stone made this much colder than it was outside.

It was beautiful.

But, then again, so is Christmas capitalism. Here, at least.

There's always someone dressed in an animal costume.

As I said, my hotel, the Sorat Hotel Saxx, is right on the square. After a week-plus of tiny hotel rooms with European-sized bathrooms and showers, it is nice to have a hotel room with a double bed and a nice-sized bathroom. The room is not American business hotel huge. Who needs that much space in a hotel room anyway? But it's nice to sleeping in a room that's bigger than the bare minimum that will fit me in it.