One of our "bucket list" items for travel in Europe was to visit one of the famous German Christmas markets, or Christkindlmarkt. We had been to the Christmas market in Chicago a few times and loved it, and knew we had to see the real deal. After asking around, we decided to visit Nuremberg in southern Germany.
We flew out on a Tuesday in early December out of London Stansted. The departure was overly dramatic as there was a fire alarm in a different terminal, which resulted in lots of extremely loud and repetitive announcements in various languages, alternated with emergency sirens, for about 25 minutes. After the sirens and announcements had finally stopped, the crew at the gate decided to evacuate us to the tarmac. So down several flights of steps we went, carrying Charlotte and her stroller and all our baggage. As I was about to set foot on the tarmac, the crew changed their minds and ordered us back into the terminal. Up, up, up we went again. Then they began the boarding process to get us right back to the tarmac, where we waited forever for buses to take us to our actual airplane. In the meantime, Charlotte was yelling "I WANNA GET ON THE AIRPLANE" on repeat despite our attempts to keep her more quiet. I'm sure that endeared her to our fellow passengers. The flight itself was uneventful, and we found Nuremberg's metro system very easy to navigate. We arrived in the city center and walked to our AirBnB apartment.
The apartment itself was lovely, as was the host -- but I will definitely be more aware of which floor the apartment is on for our next rental. The website did state that it was on the 4th floor (which means 5th floor in Europe), but I didn't quite register that it was a walk-up and that we would have a toddler, a stroller, and plenty of luggage to, well, lug. By the time we knocked on the door to meet our host, we were panting like crazy. She showed us around and gave us a city map, we quickly toddler-proofed the apartment to the best of our abilities, and we headed out to explore!
[FYI: I separated our trip into two separate blog posts; I'm not sure the division makes sense but I will discuss the Christmas market here, and the town itself and the Nazi historical site we visited in the next post.]
We stayed only a 5-10 minute walk from the main square of town, where the Christkindlmarkt is located. There are about 8 or 10 long aisles of stalls, probably 1/3 of which sell some sort of food item. The top foods to try in Nuremberg are Nurnberger sausages ("three in a roll") with mustard, gingerbread, and gluhwein (mulled and spiced red wine). Charlotte recommends the "shaushagesh" (sausages) wholeheartedly. When you purchase a mug of gluhwein, you pay a deposit for the mug itself and then can get it refilled at various stalls for the price of the drink only. At one point, mine was declared "too sticky" and the stall owner exchanged it for a much less adorable mug -- Paul saved the day by going to another stall and exchanging it out again :) We love our matching souvenir mugs and plan to use them as Christmas decorations in the future!
The other stalls are full of mostly Christmas themed, German made items. We enjoyed doing a bit of Christmas shopping for friends and family while we were there, and were glad we had decided to take an extra suitcase with us for gifts on our return flight. Lots of beautiful hand-crafted glass and wooden decorations and toys to be had!
We enjoyed listening to a couple of German choirs perform on the stage underneath the big church in the square; the second night, Charlotte found a few little friends to run around a large Christmas tree while we listened to English language popular Christmas songs in adorably German-accented voices.
A few blocks away was the children's market, which had a few rides and a large model train set behind glass to enjoy. Charlotte seemed to enjoy the rides after settling in, and loved watching the trains with the other children. She briefly got into a debate about whether a train was indeed a "train" or "[the German word for train]" with another young girl. It was pretty cute.
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| Looking at some stalls in the Christkindmarkt, with the famous church in the background. Charlotte loved seeing "the clock" each time we passed through the square. |
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| Riding the carousel at the Children's Market |
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| Riding a "train" at the Children's Market |
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| The clock face on the steeple in the main square; at noon, there is a several-minute-long event, not unlike a very fancy cuckoo clock, where multiple church leaders rotate across and "bow" to the Holy Roman Emporer. |
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| The symbol of the Christkindlmarkt, the Rauschgoldengel. |
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| The Rauschgoldengel above the entrance to the market |
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| Performing chorus on stage the second night we were in town. |
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Looking down the crowded aisles of the Christkindlmarkt; it really got busy in the early evening as
locals came together to visit and drink gluhwein for happy hour! |
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Charlotte and I sharing some Kinderpunch (non-alcoholic gluhwein), seeing the
sights, and listening to the German choirs perform! |
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| The entrance to the Children's Market at night; we went back for dinner on the second night. |
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| Charlotte watching the model trains at the Children's Market |
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| Charlotte and her "debate" partner |
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