In search of Europe's best Christmas market |
After years of sweating through summer festivities in Australia, one family swapped sunscreen for snow – and found festive bliss in an unexpected European capital.
Timber chalets were festooned with twinkling lights, a merry-go-round twirled gracefully and the smoky scent of grilling sausages drew us deeper into the town square. It was Christmas market season and our family of four was ready to indulge.
Every year, we celebrate Christmas in blazing heat, downing roast dinners and plum pudding with slicked brows and sticky backs. With the festive season squarely in the middle of the Australian summer, we have little choice. While the thought of such warmth might appeal to some, we had long hankered for a wintery Christmas. With our eldest offspring now officially an adult, it was now or never. We packed our winter woolies and boarded the long flight from Melbourne to London.
The plan: a train journey through seven countries and eight cities, with time to enjoy every Christmas market along the way.
To travel is to eat. It’s a motto our family lives by, and one that often dictates where we go. Christmas presented a particularly tasty opportunity. We wrote down lists of regional dishes we wanted to try in each city and never tired of tracking them down.
Each market dished out delicious seasonal snacks. We munched our way through kartoffelpuffer (potato pancakes) in Mainz, devoured klobása (Czech sausage) with mustard and bread in Prague and loved langos (deep fried flatbread) in Budapest. Our kids could not get enough chocolate-covered fruit sticks. It was not the time to count calories.
Of course, all that delicious food needed washing down, and mulled wine was the obvious choice. We discovered endless variations – cherry, apple and blueberry – but it was a version from Nuremberg that stole our hearts: the feuerzangenbowle.
Feuerzangenbowle is steeped in history – and rum. Burning blocks of sugar laced with the spirit sat above a 9,000-litre punch bowl, slowly dripping sweet, toasty goodness into the wine. It seemed socially acceptable to imbibe at any time of day, and we dutifully complied, finding frequent excuses to stop at the riverside stall for our fix.
Beyond filling our bellies, we delighted in sights and sounds unlike anything back home. Carol singers drew us towards the 1,000-year-old cathedral in Mainz, where we discovered a nativity scene of hand-carved, life-sized figures. While too old to join in the fun, we still appreciated the tinkling tunes from ornate rides each time we passed the dedicated children’s market in Nuremberg.
Beautiful crafts abounded in Budapest and Bratislava, and we wished for more luggage space to carry home the delicate watercolours, jewellery and ceramics proudly displayed by artists. Some concessions were made, however, and we steadily built a collection........