Christkindlesmarkt

Friday, December 1, was the official opening of the Nuernberg Christkindlesmarkt (http://www.christkindlesmarkt.de/english/). We just missed the prologue by the Christmas Angel, because we were looking for parking. In Chicago, I would leave earlier than usual for special events, because I knew it would take longer to find parking. For some reason--maybe because Nürnberg is only about 500,000 people instead of several million--I assumed it would be no problem to find parking right beside the Hauptmarkt.

Chicago has its own version of a German Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas market) at Daley Plaza and Block 37, but it's not as festive as the markets here. It doesn't have the feel of a carnival. The Nuernberg market is the best, because they have old-fashioned wooden carousels. They also have a lot of booths with arts and crafts for kids to make, and candy, cookies, and Kinder Punsch, which is the non-alcoholic version of Gluehwein. By the way, here you can buy a bottle of Gluehwein for about 1 Euro and 79 cents. In Chicago, we were paying $6, or even $10.

We were told that the Christmas market in Nürnberg had for a long time been the only such market. Now every town and village has one. Forchheim, the town where Bob worked when we lived in Erlangen before, has a very good market. They use the windows of the Rathaus (townhall) as a giant Advent calendar (http://englisch.forchheim.de/forchheim/special_events/adventcalender/).