Merry Christmas! We interrupt our chronological trip recap for a post in honor of the holiday. For our first big vacation from Cyprus, I knew I wanted to go to the Christmas markets as I’d been hoping to go for the last three years. Originally, we had planned to go to just Germany and get as wide a sample of German Christmas markets as possible, but there are only direct flights to Germany from Cyprus two days a week and the schedule didn’t work out. Sure, we could have done a layover, but we didn’t want to double our travel time by having to wait in Athens or Vienna for hours, just to catch a second one hour flight. So we coalesced around flying in and out of Vienna. I knew I wanted to go to Dresden and Nuremberg for sure; Sev proposed Czech Republic and Munich to make our trip a complete circuit.
In spite of excellent public transportation in all of these countries, the car was really the way to go, even though parking was an extra expense. On the Prague-Dresden leg, we were able to detour to the Konigstein Fortress and on the Nuremberg-Munich leg to Dachau Concentration Camp. We visited markets (sometimes multiple markets within the same cities!) in Prague, Dresden, Nuremberg, Munich, and Vienna, and though there were some similar items they all had a noticeably different vibe (and different specialty foods!)
AMANDA’S CHRISTMAS MARKET SUPERLATIVES
- Most Scenic: Prague (pictured above) takes the cake by a mile. The old square in Prague is unlike any other; I’d call it “kitschy-elegant.” It was probably the most disappointing food and shopping-wise (too much low-quality, factory produced stuff!), and it was totally destroyed by tour groups of 50+ people.
- Best for Just Hanging Out & Highest Quality: Dresden was full of local Dresden’s enjoying sausage and gluhwein. It had the highest proportion of food and gluhwein stands to shopping stands we visited. It also had tons of gorgeous handmade wooden Erzebirge gifts. We bought a beautiful Christmas pyramid here, but we shipped it back to Cyprus via Deutsche Post and it has yet to arrive :-/ Dresden is famous for its stollen, though we didn’t try any because we had overindulged on our Prague food tour!
- Best Town & Best Variety: Nuremberg (pictured below) is a medieval walled city and is totally adorable. We didn’t have enough time to fully appreciate its charms, but we were there long enough to determine its Christmas market had the best variety of high quality Christmas goods of any of the places we visited. Nuremberg’s specialty is Lebkuchen (German gingerbread) and Nuremberger sausages.
- Best Entertainment & Most Inconsistent: The night we were in Munich, there was a band/singers playing from the balcony of the rathaus. One of the singers was absolutely fantastic and singing in a style I can only describe as “somber yodeling”– I hesitate to even call it yodeling lest you think of the caricatures of German yodelers, but this was delicate and soft and serious and only faintly evocative of yodeling. It was beautiful. Munich was somewhat disappointing in terms of quality purchases, some stalls were great and others were totally junky.
- Most Overwhelming: Vienna‘s main Christmas market at the Vienna Rathaus sent Severin and I running for the hills. It had potential but it was so totally destroyed with people it was impossible to browse and enjoy. We left within 10 minutes of arriving. Vienna had a couple of nice markets scattered elsewhere in the city, though I didn’t think they had as much personality as the German markets and the only thing I bought ended up coming from Ukraine, not Austria.
Our wallets did not escape this gauntlet of markets unharmed. First, we collected four gluhwein mugs, which are different for every market (Sev had to drink a lot of gluhwein!) We also bought a tin case of lebkuchen, a Christmas pyramid, a Santa smoker, and a bunch of really neat one-of-a-kind ornaments. We are glad we will get to enjoy and remember this trip for many years to come!