Europe corners the market
Nobody does the Christmas fair quite like they do on the Continent. DEA BIRKETT looks at the very best
Look, listen, sniff, taste. There’s nowhere quite like a Christmas market to awaken senses numbed by the winter cold. From late November, mainland Europe lights up with a string of sparkling wooden huts stretching from Prague to Copenhagen, Berlin to Barcelona.
Each market warms up visitors with its own traditional Christmas tipple and fare. In Salzburg it’s gluhwein, in
Moscow sbiten (a traditional hot honey drink) and in Copenhagen, where the cobbled streets are strung with lights, it’s glogg (mulled wine). The Danish capital’s yuletide scent is the almonds being toasted at the market stalls.
In Budapest the aromas come from the kurtoskalacs (sweet Hungarian pastry) and roast chestnuts. In
Zagreb’s Zrinjevac Square, it’s a heady scent of fried apples, baked strukle and hot chocolate. The Croatian city’s Advent Festival has a spectacular ice rink on King Tomislav Square, set against the backdrop of the illuminated Croatian National Theatre. The Advent Festival has been voted the best Christmas market in Europe (www.adventzagreb.hr/en).
At Prague’s two markets – in the Old Town and Wenceslas Squares – the smell of barbecued sausages ( klobasa) mixes with that of trdelnik (warm sugar-coated pastry). The real live sheep, donkeys and goats – stars in the Old Town Square’s nativity scene – add to this heady whiff.
Dresden boasts Germany’s oldest Christmas market, the Striezelmarkt, which stretches for miles from the railway station to the banks of the Elbe. It celebrates the town as the birthplace of stollen (a German version of fruitcake). At the Stollen Festival, a giant cake weighing several tonnes is paraded through the Old Town before being cut into thousands of pieces with an oversized knife for everyone to eat.
Moscow gets two bites at eating its speciality – honeybread cookies – as the market celebrates both Christmas on 25th December and the Russian Orthodox Christmas on 7th January. Shopping for stocking fillers is a staple activity here, as at all Christmas markets. Local handicrafts such as
ushankas (fur trapper hats), lapti shoes and babushka dolls line the hundreds of stalls. At Christmas markets all over Eastern Europe, older women sit on stools, hand-painting round silver tree decorations.
Some places just can’t get enough baubles. Berlin hosts more than 60 Christmas markets. For the month of December, the city’s U2 subway line is an unofficial Christmas market express. At the Alexanderplatz stop, there’s a market hugging the Neptune Fountain outside the Red Town Hall, with fairytale readings, an ice-skating rink, and a miniature railway circling around. The next stop is Gendarmenmarkt, where Michelinstarred chefs cook up seasonal haute
cuisine in tents. At Potsdamer Platz station, you can burn off your Christmas indulgences at Winter World’s toboggan run. The end stop is Schloss Charlottenburg, with twinkling stalls in front of the 17th-century palace (www.visitberlin.de).
Berlin’s winters are snowbound and bitterly cold. But you don’t have to shiver at a Christmas market. Zurich’s old railway station stages Europe’s largest indoor Christmas market.
The 50ft-tall Christmas tree is decorated entirely with Swarovski crystals. At Zurich’s other market in the Werdmühleplatz (every selfrespecting snowy European town must have at least two), there’s a ‘singing Christmas tree’ with live people – the singers – in their red hats, acting as human-sized baubles.
Christmas markets resound with jolly seasonal music. In Budapest’s Vorosmarty Square, brass bands, string orchestras and children’s choirs perform in front of the grand Gerbeaud café, its interior twinkling with chandeliers. At five o’clock each chilly afternoon, in the windows of Gerbeaud House, a door in a giant Advent calendar opens to reveal a contemporary artwork. Oberndorf, near Salzburg, Austria, is the magical setting where the carol ‘Silent Night’ was written 200 years ago, since translated into 300 languages. But all is not jolly at the market in front of Oberndorf’s Silent Night Chapel.
Traditional fairytale characters Perchten and Krampus roam the streets after dark, disguised in bizarre costumes and fantastic masks, playing good cop, bad cop. Perchten brings health and good fortune, but Krampus punishes naughty children (www. stillenacht-oberndorf.at). That wouldn’t be a problem on the five-night Christmas market cruise from Tilbury to Hamburg (where a flying Father Christmas hovers his sleigh three times a day above the Town Hall) and
Antwerp’s Grote Markt; the Magellan is an adult-only ship (www.travelone. co.uk/cruises).
There are several ways in which you can take in many markets and still be back home in time for the turkey. Fred Olsen’s Boudicca sets out on a fournight Irish Christmas Market cruise out of Liverpool, visiting Cork, Dublin and Belfast (www.fredolsencruises. com). Cologne has its own floating Christmas market on board a cruise ship on the Rhine. Diamond Rail Holidays’ four-day train journey covers
Bruges, Ypres and Lille Christmas markets (www.diamondrailholidays. co.uk).
At other times of year, Lille is not a great attraction. But its massive festive market attracts almost a million visitors. Many Christmas markets are a destination in themselves; a bit of tinsel and some warm wine can really light up an otherwise unpromising town centre. At Lille’s Franco-flemish market, local Maroilles cheese, babeluttes (soft caramels) and delicious pain d’épices (gingerbread) is sold from wooden chalets in Place Rihour. From a seat on a giant ferris wheel, you can see all over the twinkling old town.
If you don’t feel up to braving a forest of baubles all on your own, there are a number of short guided walking tours around many of Europe’s markets with Viator (www.viator.com), including Munich (where you can shop for elegant glassware), Salzburg and Budapest. On the 90-minute
Barcelona Christmas Market Walking Tour you dive into the heart of the Gothic quarter to Fira de Santa Llúcia, the city’s oldest market, and learn about the 18th-century origins of the Catalan caganer – a small figurine placed in nativity scenes, depicted crouching with his trousers around his ankles.
Not all Christmas markets are historic. Now only in its 15th year,
Epernay’s, in the ChampagneArdenne region of France, only lasts three days. (Most markets splutter on well past the Feast of St Stephen.) Festivities are based around the elegant villas of the Avenue de Champagne, housing some of the world’s most famous champagne producers. There are son et lumière shows, gourmet tasting sessions, pop-up champagne bars and fireworks (habitsdelumiere. epernay.fr/en). It may not be as traditional as tinsel, but you can taste the champagne, smell the pâté, wonder at the light shows, and flinch as the fireworks go bang. It’s that wonderful encompassing sensual richness on a snowy day that makes the Christmas market so special.
‘They roam the streets after dark. Perchten brings health and good fortune, but Krampus punishes naughty children’