German Christmas Market!

Today my mum, brother and I went to the German Christmas market after ordering our turkey from a local farm shop (this may be the most middle class sentence I have ever written!) Apparently, the Christmas market in Birmingham is the biggest outside of Germany and Austria, and I love it. It gets horrendously busy at weekends and in evenings but going during a Friday daytime was really pleasant – there was plenty of space and I didn’t feel trapped by crowds. Access wise it was mostly quite good – although having two people with me definitely helped as there were some things I wouldn’t have been able to reach. Most of the market is on a level surface, but part of it is up a step (the new part for this year, I think, in the grounds of the Cathedral) – they did have ramps, so kudos to them on that, but they were so steep that I wouldn’t have fancied pushing myself up or down them – points for effort, I suppose?

We had sausage and doughnuts for lunch, and I bought a Schoko-Erdbeere stick (which I am very much looking forward to eating later!) and had a hot chocolate. The Glühwein and hot chocolate with Baileys were both so tempting, but as I’m not supposed to drink on the medication I’m on, I decided to be sensible… I managed to extract a promise from my brother that he’ll get my favourite sweets (they’re kind of boiled strawberry sweets, but so much nicer than that makes them sound!) from there next time he goes. 

When I was younger, we used to have school trips to the German market, ostensibly to practise our German, but really it was a good excuse for lebkuchen and wurst and stollen! Today I didn’t get much opportunity to speak German (dare I suggest that there might be some kind of link between Brexit and what like a much lower proportion of German-speakers on the stalls?) but, despite the cold, I had a really good time at what is always one of the highlights of my December!