After thorough and intense research, I have come to the conclusion that Christmas Markets are to Germans what the State Fair is to people from the Midwest. There is lots of walking around and people watching, rides for the children and a variety of food and drink. Though I think the food selection in Germany is a bit better. So far, I have not found fried oreo cookies, Snickers bars or butter.
In keeping with the educational nature of this newsletter, here is a fun fact. Christmas markets go back to the Late Middle Ages. The Munich market started in 1310 and the Dresden Strietzelmarkt in 1434. So there is a reason the German's are so good at organizing these markets, they have been doing it for hundreds of years!
Bring an appetite!
While some may go to the Christmas Market to shop, I think most German's go to walk around, meet friends for a cup of gluhwein and eat the local specialties. I found in Saxony that they featured more fresh bread products whereas in Bavaria, there was lots of meat.
The top photo literally shows a pig on a stick. The second picture is baumstreizel which is bread that is baked on a wooden dowel in a wood-fired oven and coated with sugar and cinnamon. Baum is tree and streizel is the local word for Christmas so a loose translation is Christmas tree.
The third photo is the hot chocolate stand made from real milk with 30% or 70% cocoa. The fourth photo is the waffel bakery where the waffel's are thin and crunchy with a thick layer of vanilla creme in the middle. The last picture shows the stack of firewood for the baking ovens. They serve everything from a type of pizza to rolls stuffed with cheese and ham to bread - all baked in wood fired ovens.
Frauenkirche, Before and After
I realized without the before picture it is hard to comprehend the challenge of rebuilding the Frauenkirche (from my last blog post). The top photo shows the church in 1945. To the right on the ground is a statue of Martin Luther. The altar of the church would be in the shell to the right. The bottom photo shows the reconstructed altar today. Some 2000 fragments of the destroyed altar were salvaged, identified and reused. This gives you some idea of the work that went into rebuilding the Frauenkirche.
This is the cross that was on top of the Dome when the church collapsed in 1945. It fell 276 feet and was buried under the rubble until 1993 when they started to rebuild the church.