Bah, Humbug? Not in Hamburg!

Loeding and I stop for a sample of mohnkuchen, or poppy cake.

"If you eat enough," he tells me, making a sign with his hand that is international for feeling buzzed, "it gives you a turn in your head, you can be sure."

From the looks of the ruddy-cheeked crowds at a nearby gluehwein tent, there are plenty of heads spinning in the immediate vicinity.

"The most important thing at the Christmas markets," Loeding confirms, "is the alcohol."

In addition to gluehwein, all forms of hot toddies are on offer: hot chocolate with cherry liqueur, vodka with fig, Armagnac with plum. Feuerzangenbowle, a punch made by melting a rum-soaked cone of sugar into mulled wine, is particularly potent and fun to watch being served, with crowd-pleasing pyrotechnics. There are also nonalcoholic hot ciders and chocolate beverages.

"People come here after work for a drink, or they come during lunch to have a sausage," Loeding says. "This is where the evening starts for many people during Christmastime."

Later, I meet Jane Powell and Patricia Daniel, two septuagenarians from England who have cruised into Hamburg's harbor aboard the Saga Rose from Southampton and are visiting the city as part of a European Christmas market tour.

"There's a lot of drinking, a lot of mulled wine," Powell says. "For old people, it's a bit of a push and shove."

The women have picked up a few magnets for their refrigerators and some gingerbread and marzipan to take home for family and friends.

"When you get older, you don't need to buy too many things. You only have to get rid of things," says Daniel with a laugh, as if that's not such a bad thing.

The women are tuckered out and keen to leave the revelry behind for dinner on the ship. It has been an exciting week but a tiring one, they tell me.

Just a few days before, they were at the Christmas market in Lille, France.

"And Belgium, too, isn't that right?" Powell reminds Daniel. "We nearly had our eyes poked out with umbrellas, it was so crowded and rainy."

"Yes, Belgium, too," Daniel confirms. "The French and Belgians have copied the Germans with the Christmas markets, but the Germans have definitely done it best."

Terry Ward last wrote for Travel about the beach clubs of Hamburg.