I met one of my friends from college (actually from a summer program I did at the National Severe Storms Lab) in Cologne and Aachen this past weekend to tour the Christmas markets there. We started in Cologne, where there are 8 separate markets. We went to 5 of them while I was there but my friend, Alison, had gotten to the rest earlier in the day before I arrived. Below are some pictures of 3 of the 5 that we went to (the last 2 we didn't spend much time in as we'd both been to them already). Another 3 markets can be seen in my post from several years ago about the Cologne Christmas markets.
Our first stop was Nikolausdorf. A very small but atmospheric market.
The next stop was the gay and lesbian market (yes there is a specific gay and lesbian market in Cologne, I'm not sure what it means though - if all the booths are run by gay people or if the market is sponsored by some GLBT association or what). They play fun dance music there instead of Christmas music, all the booths are covered with brightly colored foil, and they serve something called verpoorten punch instead of Glühwein. I do NOT recommend drinking it! It's orange vodka mixed with cream and spices and maybe some chocolate. It was disgusting.
Our third market was the Engelmarkt, which is the oldest Christmas market in Cologne. I apologize but every photo I took of this gorgeous market came out blurry! It was also pouring rain while we were there (see the radar pic below). It was a really pretty market with all the stars in the trees and the white lights on all the buildings. And, bigger than the previous two markets which was also nice.
We had to take refuge in a wine bar to wait out the rain. :) We each had a nice glass of Tempranillo and a goat cheese and apple tart wrapped in phyllo dough, which was amazing.
We wandered by the market at the Dom so I snapped a picture of the Dom at night, lit up by the market at its base. The Cologne Dom is one of the most striking churches from the outside because it's almost black from years of coal trains driving right by it.
My haul for the night - 4 new mugs!
On Saturday morning, we got up and took a train to Aachen (about 50 minutes away). We had several goals in Aachen: 1. to see the Dom, 2. to eat Printen cookies, and 3. to see the Christmas markets. We succeeded on all three counts. Pictures of the Dom, cookies, markets, and crowds are below. The inside of the Dom was gorgeous. It's not easy to see from the pictures but the inside was all mosaics, on every floor and ceiling, and there was beautiful stained glass in the whole front of the church.
It was freezing cold and raining in Aachen, so we stopped a lot for tea and cookies. We basically ate Printen cookies all day long between our tea stops and all the free samples that they gave out in the stores and market stalls. And, every store window looked like this:
Alison wore her awesome Christmas squirrel sweater:
In the markets (I think it's all one market, but it curls around the Dom and Rathaus so it's rather spread out and in several sections) we ordered Feuerzangenbowle, which is like Glühwein but a rum-soaked sugarcone is set on fire above the wine and it drips into it. However the stalls in Aachen took the lazy way out and just lit a sugar cube with a sip of rum on it on fire and sat it on a spoon over the mug! It takes a lot of fun out of it when there's no huge sugar cone on fire for you to watch.
Some pics of the market and the stalls. It was so crowded that we quit early even though we hadn't seen the whole market yet. There was only so much rain, cold and crowd that we could take!
While this doesn't look like much, it was a delicious apple pancake. The best apple pancake, ever. FYI.
No comments:
Post a Comment