Drivethrough Christmas market opens
MUNICH: Refusing to allow coronavirus to steal his Christmas, one Bavarian innkeeper has opened a drivethrough Christmas market, complete with artificial snow that falls as you come in.
Some 2500 Christmas markets are usually held in Germany in the leadup to the holiday, drawing millions of visitors who sip mulled wine and buy trinkets among wooden huts.
But most markets are likely to be cancelled this year due to the pandemic, including Nuremberg’s worldfamous ‘‘Christkindlesmarkt.’’
Five months after Patrick Schmidt condensed the Bavarian ‘‘Dult’’ folk festival experience into a drivethrough during the first wave of the pandemic, he is now trying to recreate the Christmas market feeling while sticking to guidelines for social distancing.
‘‘I thought the Dult drivein also worked so why not a Christmas market drivein?’’ he beamed at the market’s opening yesterday in Landshut, some 60km northeast of Munich. — Reuters