Earlier this month, Matt and I joined our friends Ross and Sascha for our second annual German Christmas market escapade. This year the stop was Dusseldorf.
We packed in the car on a Saturday afternoon, after Matt and I spent a harrowing morning running errands, like buying a spiky Christmas tree and carrying it all the way home from the flower market and satisfying my bagel with cream cheese craving (this last task was non-negotiable). A short, laughter-filled 3 hours later, we arrived at our hotel in Dusseldorf. We bundled up and hit the town, which was bustling with people at 4:30. In true Christmas market fashion, our aim was to scope out the tents for the best sausage stand, but the waiting was treacherous, especially smelling those delicious sausages so we bit the bullet at the second one we saw. It was so crowded with people in giant coats, taking crunchy bites out of their sausages right in your ear (a disgusting sound), bumping into you and stepping on your feet. But everyone is in good spirits and no one gets upset by a little jostling - which is more than I can say for the Christmas shoppers in NYC, who all look miserable and ready to fight.
The town of Dusseldorf was much more quaint than I expected - somehow I was anticipating a cold, industrial city, but it was quite the opposite. There were decorations all over, and great shopping, and the Germans were incredibly nice, as always. The only surprising thing was that every restaurant seemed to be Spanish/Argentinian. Random, when German food is so good!
This year I had to opt out of gluwein, obviously, which was not that upsetting to me since after the first one I'm ready for something else. I don't really know how people can drink multiples of those. Instead I imbibed on hot cocoa with cream, absolutely delicious. The drawback is the delirium it caused - I was so tired but the sugar kept me up unnaturally, so I started making no sense after a while, which was just fine since the rest of the party was drunk. I probably made perfect sense to them! After about six hours at the markets, we called it a night.
The next day we went into town for breakfast and more sausage. Again, we didn't do any actual shopping. The Dusseldorf markets were similar to the ones at Muenster - not much of interest to buy except for the food. And eat it we did.
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