Part 22: It's Christmas!

Everyone raves about the German Christmas markets. They start around the last week of November and run through Christmas. We’re so close to Germany and we had a free weekend, so we decided to head to Germany to check out a couple. After looking at some websites, it seems that just about every town in Germany has their own market with a little different spin. Cologne is probably the largest city in Germany that we could make a day trip out of, so we headed there.

We heard that Dusseldorf had some nice markets and it’s on the way to Cologne, so we stopped there first. Unfortunately, on the way I realized I had forgotten the camera. We were too far along to turn back, so our first order of business once we arrived was to buy a disposable camera (pictures will be forthcoming once we get them developed and scanned in). After finding a camera, we needed to get some lunch. We stopped at the first bratwurst stand and dug in. Next door was a potato cake tent, so we tried some of those, too. Not too healthy, but very yummy!

After eating, we started walking through the markets. There were stands selling candles, glass ornaments, wooden ornaments, puppets, honey, candy, toys, crafts and more! The stands themselves were set up along the sidewalks in a busy shopping area of town. The first market we went to looked like a log cabin village in a forest. We found another market that had angels everywhere. It seems that each market area had its own theme.

Jacob also had his first ride on a carousel. We couldn’t tell if he liked it or not, but we sure thought it was cute!

After walking around downtown Dusseldorf for awhile, we drove on to Cologne. Since we’d already been to Cologne, we knew the basic layout of the city. We were able to hit 2 of Cologne’s markets before heading back to Voorburg. Cologne’s markets were much larger and more crowded. The first one we walked through was right next to the massive cathedral. They had a brass ensemble playing Christmas music nearby. It definitely put us into the Christmas spirit. We didn’t purchase much, but it was really fun to walk through all the stands and see what was there.

The one thing that surprised us was that we didn’t buy more. We saw a lot of neat items, but didn’t purchase anything. This suited Dustin quite well, but left my Christmas list a little empty. Next year we’ll have to pick out a couple of other towns to check out.