Saarbrucken's Old Christmas Market - Germany

Saarbrucken Christmas Market

Two Saturdays ago I went to Saarbrucken, a German city of about 175 000 people and capital of the Saarland region, on the border with France. It takes just over an hour to get there by bus from Luxembourg. The Christmas market begins in mid November and runs until Christmas, but on one weekend every year they have an additional market set up on the other side of the bridge from the main market.

Stall selling Christmas wreathes

Christmas markets originated in Germany, the bordering Alsace region of France, and Austria, and were a street market and celebration during the four weeks of advent, usually set up in and around the market square. They have rides for children, the nativity scene, shops selling crafts and Christmas stuff, different types of food stalls, and boothes selling Gluhwein, hot mulled wine. Normally they put on some kind of nativity show at least once as well for children. The food I've seen sold includes a huge variety of sausages and grilled meat, waffles and crepes, gingerbread and candy, popcorn and roasted nuts, and usually there are regional specialities and the occasional asian or italian stall as well. I visited the Gottingen Christmas market last year but didn't write much about it on here.

The Gingerbread house

The Christmas festivities began right near the train station, so I walked down the big pedestrian street and shopping zone in the middle of the city, taking in all of the Christmas stuff and ducking into the occasional chain shop on the way past! I reached the main market in the square first and stopped to have a good look around. I really loved the Gingerbread House stand selling gingerbread hearts. They have things like "I love you" written on them, and you're meant to buy them and hang them around the neck of your sweetheart - the only person I saw wearing one was a middle aged man, quite funny!

People drinking Gluhwine outside a stall

Gluhwine is normally served in mugs that have a logo with the name and year of the Christmas market on the side, I took one from the Gottingen market last year and decided to keep the tradition going by stealing another one this year (they take a $5NZD deposit for the cup so it's not really stealing!). Last year I couldn't stomach the Gluhwine at all, and although I've been learning how to drink red wine while travelling around Europe and found the taste a little better this year, I still hid in an alleyway and tipped most of it out so that I could throw the mug into my bag.

Mistletoe, sold by the Lions club

I then followed the crowds over the river, to the additional part of the market. Here, the market winds from a church at the bottom, along a long inclining and curving road, up to the Saarbrucken Castle. The Castle isn't much of a castle, its just like a big administrative building. This part of the market was mostly dominiated by stalls selling crafts or wares, international foods, mistletoe, christmas wreathes, and charity organisations selling or doing various things as fundraisers. It was quite cool to see the mistletoe there for sale, as we don't have it in NZ. I'd spent months this year trying to work out what all those balls were in the trees until someone in France told me what it was.

Schnitzel on a stick

I tried rostwurst, one of the many varieties of German sausages (German sausages are one hundred times better than those back in NZ) and a massive schnitzel skewer thing, three pieces of fried crumbed schnitzel on a stick, handed to me in a piece of bread. There were also a lot of casseroled mushrooms, bread spread with what looked like herbed cream cheese, and deep fried balls of something that I saw a lot of, I think some might be regional specialities, and I saw a couple of stands selling the Schneeballen that I saw for the first time in Heidelberg. I quite liked going to the market alone, so that I could stop and look at whatever I wanted without feeling guilty, but it meant that I didn't have anyone to explain all of these foods to me!

View of the end of the market from the Castle

By now it was getting late and I'd spent enough money finishing off my Christmas shopping, so I headed back towards the train station, detouring past part of the river and the town hall and into a few more shops. Arriving back at the train station was scary, there were police cars everywhere (I counted 21 before too many were arriving and I couldn't keep track) and there were police all over the place, stationed in a ring outside and at the entrance to every platform, as well as those waiting in vehicles or just milling about. Police in Germany are a whole lot scarier than NZ police as well, they wear dark clothes and army boots and carry huge guns, and these guys had what looked like riot gear on, complete with different numbers on their backs to identify their squads. At first I thought there was a bomb in the station, and then I noticed what looked like drunk right-wing skinheads standing around or talking to the police, but then someone said it was just because there had been a football match and they were preventing riots (I guess drunk right-wing skinheads and German football fans look pretty much the same!). It was pretty intimidating though, and really reminds you that you're not enveloped in the safety of New Zealand anymore, these are countries in which bombs in train stations and riots or shootings by far-right terrorists occur every so often.

The bus ride back was uneventful, and then I spent several hours wrapping the Christmas presents that will cost me a fortune to ship back to NZ. I really feel in the Christmas spirit now and can't wait to visit Strasbourg in France and their huge Christmas market next weekend.