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| The girls are ready for their gluhwein photo! |
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| Finally all ready for our gluhwein in a hut picture!!! |
Sorry for the long
posting gap folks, life got a bit busy, as it is wont to do in fits
and bursts.
Long story short, these
days I'm a bit of an nomadic snail, bumming around Europe until early
January, at which point I leave to be a nomadic snail in New Zealand
for a couple of months, then I'll probably resume my life of
frantically rushing from one location to the next at the drop of a
hat.
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| Is that really what it looks like? Yes, yes it is. Somebody knitted for a tree. |
It's not that I haven't
been busy seeing lots of places recently, I have, just that I was so
busy frantically rushing about that I didn't get a chance to gather
my thoughts (or pictures) together coherently. Most recently I have
been (back) in Germany for a holiday- Berlin for a few days (another
post altogether) and the Christmas markets around the Frankfurt
region. I have an easy afternoon today, just sitting on a coach from
Frankfurt (where I left my Christmas market holiday friends) to
Cologne, where I will meet up with an old school friend who I haven't
seen in about nine years, aside from one day earlier this week! And
aside from running about Germany, I've also been doing work related
things like conferences, and talking and networking and generally
schmoozing.
Anyhow, lets get on to
the Christmas markets, because they are well worth knowing about!
Christmas is rather a big deal in Germany, it would seem. Every town
has Christmas markets to some extent I am told, but some are bigger
and better than others. Big towns have numerous ones, they were all
over the place in Berlin!
There were lots of
exciting things in the Christmas markets, in particular Gluhwein,
mulled wine to warm you up while you stroll the cobbled alleys
between stalls examining all manner of Christmas decorations, from
hand-carved hanging tree decorations to free-standing, highly
decorated glass candle-holders and munching on deep-fried potato.
It's amazing how many different ways there are to deep fry potatoes,
I had no idea! Surely the most versatile food sources to ever exist!
It's actually hard to capture the atmosphere of the Christmas markets
with words, and the pictures quite assuredly don't do it justice at
all. For starters you can't taste the sugar-coated almonds or
chocolate-dipped bananas (yes, it's a bit of a sugar overload,
particularly for me, I seem to be getting more sensitive to it by the
day!), or watch your breath coming out in little steamy puffs while
you get into the Christmas spirit. I was rather captivated by the
Christmas ornaments though, they're just endless in variation, it's
really quite impressive. I have declared that if I ever do something
so boring and grown up as owning a house, then I will surely be
coming back to Germany to deck it out for Christmas! I do like
Christmas.
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| A mystery musical instrument! |
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| Two of our party with markets in the background. |
Your might already be back in NZ but if you will be passing through Wellington at some point in the future during your NZ travels it'd be great to catch up (this is Helen C btw).
ReplyDeleteAh, and I did try to track you down via those boys too! But obviously not hard enough :-( I only had a couple of days in Wellington. But Hi!!!!!! *hugs* Would've been great to see you! Next time, hopefully! Or if you find yourself in Europe somewhere :-)
ReplyDeleteAh probably should have given you more info on how to contact me and ect. But that's fine I understand how busy one gets at such times. *Hugs back*. I'm hoping to visit my sister in Italy (Trieste) at some point before September next year.
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