The winter challenge has begun, and with it, we can write about places and travel-related topics that we connect with winter. For me the first thing coming to mind is the Christmas markets we have here in Germany every year.
Especially here in the south of the country, in our capital - Munich, we have a lot of them. In German we call them Weihnachtsmärkte (Christmas markets) or Christkindlmärkte (Market of Crist).
During Advent, Munich has over 30 Christmas and Christkindl markets, some lasting only a few days and some throughout a whole few weeks. The one we visited in Pasing only is open on the weekends before Christmas - Saturday and Sunday from 13:00 - 19:30 o clock.
Today we went to the one in Pasing. A part in Munich, where I used to live long time ago. It is a quite small Christmas market with only 22. Stands. Here you can see an overview of them.
A friend of mine has a stand there that sells mulled wine and tarte flambée, so we went there to meet her and check out the rest of the stands.
I love how from far away you can already see all the lights and smell the different food and drinks.
Entering the market we walked along the stands. Usually, people go to these markets for 4 things:
- Food and drinks
- buying artwork
- listen to live Christmas music
- Take some rides and play games
So we started walking along the stands and checked out everything before drinking some of the mulled wine and eating the tarte flambée. It was nice to see her and her family, drinking hot drinks and eating there while listening to the Christmas songs. At the same time, I was surprised how many people were there at that time already.
Standing there for some time it got cold and foggy, so it felt even more like Christmas time and the lights were shining giving even more atmosphere. - Sorry 
The most common foods on these markets are sausages, spätzle, crepe, raclette baguette, tarte flambée and sweet things. In bigger markets, the food also gets more international serving Asian, Mexican, or Italian food.
The most common drinks are mulled wine, punch, hot caipirinha, hot Lillet, Feuerzangenbowle, hot rum, and eggnog.
The food and drinks were great as always. After that, we went to check out the artwork. Most of the time you can buy different kinds of oil, wines, beeswax candles, clay vessels, stuffed animals, decorations, jewelry etc.
The kids were enjoying the rides and some of the people were singing along to the live music.
As we were walking around the market it got colder and colder. Without the mulled wine even more. So at some point, we decided to go home again and enjoy the rest of the weekend. The visit to the Christmas market was also the start of Advent for us. From now on, the spirit of Christmas has caught up with us and the mood has been internalized, just in time for the Worldmappin Winter Challenge. ;)
Cheers, Liz