Nürnberg Weihnachtsmarkt

We had the opportunity to go with the Merkel family to the most famous Christmas Market in this area of Germany.  We drove for about an hour and half to Nürnberg south of Hof.  Sister Merkel drove.  We went on a Saturday which is the day all the tourists in the entire world go to this market.  Since there are still American military in the area we also heard more English than we have heard in a year just wandering through the crowd.

A Christmas Market is usually booths set up in the town square, in this case the old inner city area, for the month of December selling food and Christmas goodies.  This market was comprised of several themed markets.  The regular one, a children's one and a sister city one having booths from cities around the world; Shi Lanka, Brazil, Montenegro and many others including Atlanta Georgia. 

The Children's market had lots of rides and booths with toys as well as goodies to eat.  It made me glad, however, that I did not have a child with us.  The crowd was so compact that I would fear losing the child.  I only lost Dave twice.

  This is the regular market packed shoulder to shoulder with crazy shoppers.  A big part of any Christmas market is 'Gluhwein',  a warm mildly alcoholic drink which warms from the inside and outside and makes people stop in crowds near those booths.  The above is a "Where's Waldo".  Can you find Lynn?

 Lynn insisted on a Post Coach ride through the crowd.  They had two different coaches which were replicas of the ones used for many years taking people from town to town.

We loved the old inner city of Nürnberg and will go back on some sunny day before we leave Germany this time.  The buildings in this part of town are very charming and historic and quite a bit of the old wall still surrounds the inner town.