Snowy with a chance of... sausages?

QUICK! Think of three things that complete the perfect Christmas scene. What were the first things to come to mind?

Mine are as follows: Snow, lights and hot beverages. (Don't judge, this is my Christmas fantasy... yours can be different ;) For me, Christmas is not Christmas without those three things. 

Now, imagine a Christmas without those things. Kinda sad right? Well I was feeling a little down myself this year when I realized my Christmas here in Spain wouldn't quite live up to my traditional Christmas fantasies.

Enter: a best friend and a proposed trip to Germany. Now, to be honest, I've never been particularly interested in the German language or German culture. Blame it on the overbearing presence of Spanish in my life but I guess I had just never really given it much thought (except for maybe studying the Holocaust in the 8th grade and that didn't exactly get me hyped up to learn more).

Oh how my mind changed stepping off the plane in Hamburg at the beginning of December. You see, there is this magical thing called the Weihnachtsmarkts or "Christmas markets" in Germany and they are like a Christmas dream come true. The weihnachtsmarkts are various clusterings of gift, food and drink stands in the German architectural style complete with a healthy coating of snow, garland, and twinkly lights as far as the eye can see. Generally they are packed with people staying close together to stay warm. And when that's not enough they crowd around the food stands that sell a hot mulled wine called gluhwëin. Snow, lights, hot beverages... thus completes my perfect Christmas scene and so also begins my new love affair (don’t tell Spain) with Germany. 

My friend and I spent the weekend in different cities peeking into the various gift stands of the weihnachtsmarkts, eating our fill of German sausages and pretzels and taste testing the various flavors of gluhwëin. The markets in Hamburg alone were so extensive that, along with a short tour of the city hall and two churches, our first day in town passed by quickly.

One of our most interesting stops was at St. Nickolai’s church in downtown Hamburg or, at least, it’s museum and what remains of it. The actually church cathedral was burned down in the bombings of World War II. You can still take an elevator up 76 meters inside the steeple and, after wrapping your scarf a little tighter in the frigid air, snap a few photos of the city from a bird’s eye view.

Next to the remains of the church is a small museum in which you can see before and after photos of the city from the 1940’s and stand in disbelief of maps indicating the amount of destruction caused by bombs from Allied aircraft during the war. Hamburg was one of the most targeted cities in Germany with 42, 388 buildings destroyed, 37, 797 damaged, 35,000 people killed and approximately 120,000 injured. Just before leaving for Germany I mentioned in an email to my Grandpa that I would be headed to Hamburg. To my surprise, he told me his mother’s family emigrated from that area in the 1800’s. That knowledge, combined with the statistics and photos from the war got me to thinking how different things could have been for my family if they hadn’t made that one decision to move. As an American, I can hardly imagine what a war carried out in my own country would be like. The photos and the statistics in that museum really opened my eyes.

On the second day, and on a lighter note, we took the train (only my second ever at the time = totally thrilled :) to Lüneburg, a town my friend had studied in for five months in 2010. Going there was a great excuse to see small town German life and sample, yet again, another array of weihnachtsmarkt stands. Although the markets were quite similar to Hamburg’s, it was nice to walk around the cobblestone streets, take in the warm lights coming from the cute little German houses and wonder what Christmas might have been like in this city so many years ago.

On the last day of our travels we decided to conclude our Christmas market adventure in a small town called Schwerin which is a few hours outside of Hamburg and also happens to be home to a perfectly picturesque castle in the middle of a snow covered lake. Nowadays the castle is very well kept, fully restored to its 19^th century glory and used for parliamentary business, but it is estimated that the original castle that stood there was built in the 10^th century. After oogling over the castle and its decor for a couple hours we headed back outside and to the nearest weihnachtsmarkt. We ordered some eggnog, hot chocolate and sausages and suddenly, as if on cue, huge fluffy snowflakes began to fall, completing the already fairytale like scene.

In that moment it was decided… Germany had won me over and I would definitely be back for another round, preferably at Christmastime ;)