Bah, Humbug? Not in Hamburg!
These Markets Are Stocked With Christmas Cheer

By Terry Ward
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, December 21, 2008

For an American raised on shopping-mall Santas and Christmas Eve drives through the suburbs to ogle people's decorated houses, there's nothing quite like walking around a German Weihnachtsmarkt, or Christmas market.

Unlike Oktoberfest, which is really a Bavarian thing, Christmas markets are found in cities and villages throughout Germany every December, with some stretching into the new year. Berlin, Dresden, Frankfurt, Nuremberg and others, they all have markets.

It's a frosty evening when I leave my sleek hotel room at the Sofitel in Hamburg's city center to meet a fellow American, Casey Hassenstein, at a nearby Christmas market.

The contrast between the contemporary Sofitel (Germans really like their high-design hotels, and this one's as minimalist chic as it gets) and the traditional holiday scene playing out at the Christmas market just around the corner hits me like hot gluehwein on a cold night. For all their love of streamlined design in everything from eyeglasses to home decor, this is a people that likes its Christmas traditions as old-school and warm and fuzzy as they come.

The Fleetinsel market is one of the smallest of Hamburg's nine Christmas markets. It's set in a square surrounded by office buildings at the end of the posh Neuer Wall shopping street. By the time Casey and I show up at 6 p.m., office workers are beelining it to the most popular tent, where giant vats of gluehwein, or mulled wine, are being drained into mugs for the bundled-up masses. Casey and I plunk down four euros each for a steaming mug -- that includes a two-euro deposit on the mug (you can keep it as a souvenir in exchange for the deposit) -- and join a group circled around a fire pit for warmth.

A guy in a suit is recounting the astrological reading he just received from the market's resident tarot card reader. "I will travel a lot for business and have many ups and downs with love and money," he tells his friends, who laugh and raise their mugs for a toast.

Around us, the white tents are mood-lit to perfection, strung with fresh garlands of greenery and dotted with red bows. Formal-looking signs (old-fashioned gold-and-red surrounded by gold scrollwork) announce the goods for sale.

In one tent, big, heart-shaped cookies with corny sentiments written in German in curlicue frosting read "Grandma, you're super," and "With you, I'd go to the end of the world."

Another tent, festooned with animal skins and antlers, is doing brisk business in bread bowls filled with wild boar goulash and wild mushrooms sauteed with berries. A group of friends tries on funky handmade wool hats at a stall nearby.

Casey, originally from Chevy Chase, has been in Hamburg since 2006, when she married "Hermann the German" and made the move overseas. Adjusting to living and working in Germany, she tells me, hasn't been easy.

"I'm normally homesick for the U.S. all the time, [and] the language thing is really frustrating," she says. "But I feel a little less homesick during December. No other country does Christmas like Germany."

"It's the best time of year to be here, especially in Hamburg," Casey adds. "People are in such a good mood, and they really enjoy the holidays: being outside, drinking the gluehwein, meeting up with each other."

Her German colleagues at the international real estate firm where she works make a yearly tradition of a pub crawl through the Christmas markets, Casey tells me.

Casey has to leave, but I decide to follow suit and check out a market nearby.

It's a short walk to the Rathaus Market, where I meet Joern Loeding, who leads guided tours of Hamburg, to scope out the city's most famous market, in front of the Rathaus, or city hall.

A village of wooden huts designed by a famous circus director from Cologne has taken over Hamburg's main square. Kids ride atop vintage boats and firetrucks in a 1950s-era carousel, and a Japanese tourist, shivering beneath her fur hat, poses for a photo under the entry gate nearby.

Loeding leads me to a heated tent labeled "Kaethe Wohlfahrt," a leading Christmas store. There's a doorman for crowd control, and he hands us baskets to collect our purchases as he ushers us in. I feel like a bull in a china shop as my purse swings into a wall display and rattles the hundreds of wooden and metal ornaments hanging there.

"There are ladies who make a science of how to decorate their tree; they're here for this," says Loeding, pointing to the rows of determined women, heads tilted in concentration as they sift through delicate elk, angel and Christkind, or Baby Jesus, ornaments.

"And you can be sure these women will have real candles lighting their trees," Loeding adds. "Using electric light is just a compromise: They'd be seen as unfeeling by their neighbors."

We squeeze our way through the crowds, past displays of snow globes, baskets of plastic animals for creche scenes and Christmas pyramids topped by balsa-wood paddles that spin when candles are lighted beneath them. I'm relieved when we emerge back onto the street without having broken anything.

We join the masses strolling past vendors selling handmade goods. Wooden toys abound, and Loeding is drawn to boxes of colorful wooden sticks tipped with magnets that can be used to build geometrical shapes. "That's something I would consider buying for my son," he says, and I get the feeling he's surprised to find an item he would actually consider purchasing that's not edible. "I haven't seen that before."

Other huts offer handmade brass stamps, hand-dipped candles and delicate metallic wrapping paper printed on-site. I stop to ponder a ceramic apfelbraeter, a Bunsen-burner-like device with a tea light that's used to steam a single fresh apple under a domed top. "It takes just one hour, then you eat," the vendor tells me, and for a moment I'm tempted. Then I snap to my senses.

The Christmas markets are tchotchke central, to be sure, but this American tourist will be in the market for a warm scarf before she spends her euros on an apfelbraeter. It's the food stalls that interest me the most, and there I am happy to part with my money.

One hut is devoted to all things marzipan, with loaves of the almond paste and little soft pillows of the confection that look like bars of soap. Nearby, roasted almonds coated with ginger and chocolate are proffered in colorful paper cones. Another stand is devoted to printen: gingerbread fingers that come in different varieties, including almond and chocolate. There are mushrooms sauteing in giant pans. I gobble them up with a little wooden fork that threatens to get lost in a generous dollop of creamy garlic sauce. Bratwursts sizzle over open coals, and I can convince myself I'm still hungry. We even pass a Scandinavian section, with reindeer sausages from Norway.

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.