Bavaria: Nürnburg Christkindlmarkt

Saturday, December 1
Considering that we would only be in Germany for about 40 hours, Clemens put us on a rigorous schedule to best take advantage of our time. This including waking up at 7 a.m. Saturday morning. Why waste time sleeping?

So at 8 the next morning I staggered, freshly showered but still groggy, into the kitchen to find Clemens and his family sitting around the breakfast table. His sister Contance, who I'd met earlier in the summer, his warm and friendly mother, and his smiling father. Clemens' mom, who's name I never learned, is a certified English and French translator and chatted happily to me. His father doesn't speak English, but I knew he understood much of what we said. Especially when we used the keyword "pig".

After our traditional breakfast of sliced meat, cheese, and hearty bread, we were sent on our way. Clemens drove, Dave joined him in the front, and I napped in the backseat.

We arrived in Nürnberg (that's "Nuremberg" to us Americans) around 10 a.m. and walked through the town toward the center. Clemens pointed out famous landmarks, complete with history lessons. It's sad how so many stories about these beautiful buildings include chapters about "the war".

Finally in the center of Nürnberg, we found ourselves at the infamous Christkindlmarkt. It was everything I'd been looking foward to, except for the rain: the giant, ornate church, the red and white striped covered stalls, the ornaments and treats hanging from every surface.

Well, you can imagine I wanted to dig in right away, but we were a bit hungry and Clemens had been enticing us with promises of sausages. So we found a bratwust stand and bought rolls with three hot, browned sausages inside. Mmmm. Then Clemens bought us cups of "gluhwein", which is pronounced "gloo-vine", which sounds a little bit like the translation, "glow wine". Literally hot wine. It did wonders to warm our bellies, and I got the added bonus of a buzzed warmth for another hour following.

The rain was a bummer, but the boys indulged me for a while of surfing the stalls, buying small ornaments to bring home and poking our noses into food stands. Eventually they got bored and dragged me away, to the other side of the city to see the Nürnberg tower and an impressive view below.

After a few more treats, chocolate-covered fruit and fried potato cakes, we decided to get back to the farm before it got dark. Didn't want to keep the pigs waiting!