Cologne Christmas Markets

Today, we visit the Cologne Christmas markets. This is a long day!  There are so many of them. I am staying on the west side of town, and almost all of the Christmas markets are on a straight path from here to the river. So I decide to forego the public transport and just walk from one to the other, seeing the sights of the city along the way. 

Cologne is much, much bigger than I expected. This is not a quaint German village; it’s a huge modern city. The buildings are tall. There are so many people. There is an abundance of restaurants and shopping. There’s also lots of graffiti. It definitely feels very urban. European, but a bit grungy. There are really cool buildings with lots of cool 3D decorations on the outside. They were mixed in with more modern, square buildings, all touching. There is no extra space here. It’s an endless maze of buildings and streets.

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Nikolausdorf

I enjoy my walk until I get to the first market, the market at Rudolfsplatz. This one is called “Nikolausdorf”, which is like, Santa Claus village. This is the smallest of the 5 I will visit today, and yet I think it’s still larger than the largest one in Luxembourg. It’s cute and the decorations are very pretty. Unlike the other 2 cities, the booths here are considerably more permanent feeling structures, and they are decorated with really elaborate decorations. I wander through the market, looking for breakfast. There are a few gluhwein stands, advertising ‘hot drinks’, but no coffee. You can get hot wine, and many places branch out and offer things like ‘hot mojito’ or ‘hot caiparinha’. And there’s tea. Later in the day, I even found some gluhbier…. a hot spiced Belgian kriek beer, which I could not bring myself to try. How do you even serve a carbonated drink hot? Anyway, as I walk around and get more hungry, and am in need of coffee, I go with the only option I find: McDonalds. Of course I didn’t eat there, but I did get a McCafe…. I had a latte and it was fine. But I do need my coffee in the mornings.

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With that, I walked back out and ordered my first German potato pancake, called Reibekuchen. I also saw it spelled as reivekooken, or some such, which I found very strange. They are advertised as Reibekuchen, nach Hausfrauen Art…. made in the style of housewives. Anyway, this was amazing. Life-changing potato pancakes. I suppose it’s not even right to call them pancakes. They are actually more like fritters. They are flat, but they aren’t cooked in a pan, but rather deep fried. They are flavorful and crispy and amazing. Clearly German housewives know what’s up. The secret is, shockingly, not apples. It’s onions. And eggs. The shredded potatoes are combined with seasonings and shredded onions and eggs and flour. It doesn’t look like a hash brown patty before being fried. It’s almost like a cake batter. The spoon it into the hot oil, then use a spoon or fork to spread it out into a patty. They taste amazing. Fried onions make everything better. I really enjoyed my breakfast of Reibekuchen. 

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I then stopped at a booth selling Christmas Stollen and had a slice of stollen for breakfast dessert. This is a fruitcake covered in powdered sugar. It is quite good, but I think the sugar-cured fruits get kind of lost in the cake. I really enjoyed just eating the fruits by themselves. The cake was a good compliment to my coffee, and I finished my breakfast while wandering the Nikolausdorf market. There is a Finnish honey booth, lots of candles, tons of German woodworking with nutcrackers and ornaments. And of course, there are a ton of gluhwein booths, and some yummy looking sausages. 

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Markt der Engel

From there, I wander further to Neumarkt, and visit the “Angels Market”. This one is considerably larger, and there are maps handed out when you walk in. It’s in a plaza in the middle of some very busy streets and train tracks, so they have only 2 points where you can enter or exit the market. All of the booths are white and the decorations are angels. There’s a really pretty bar called “Gabriel’s” serving gluhwein, with lots of very pretty decorated tables. This market seems to be much more for shopping, rather than eating, though of course, there are lots of food options. There are hand made candies and gingerbread hearts, as well as another booth of Reibekuchen. This is the market where I learn that Cologne is fantastic at branding its city. Where I was unable to find any Luxembourg-themed things, Cologne offers every possible option for trinkets and souvenirs with “I <3 Köln” and you can get pretty much everything in the shape of the Köln Dom. The Dom is  a huge gothic cathedral. Very tall. Lots of flying buttresses. And as I wander the market, I find ornaments shaped like the 2-pointed Dom. And jewelry. And cookies. Even Belgian waffles. It’s almost like being in Paris where every single iteration of the Eiffel tower can be purchased from keychains to aprons and berets. Cologne has their trademark Dom. The Angels market is very pretty, also quiet and pleasant for walking around. There is a booth making Baumkuchen, the tree cakes I had in Luxembourg, fresh right in front of you! I had a sample and made a mental note to come back and pick one up to take home. I walked through a very fancy wooden ornament store, Käthe Wohlfahrt, and picked up some adorable German Christmas ornaments. I got a Schwarzwald-style cuckoo clock and a Bavarian blue and white heart with 2 little Oktoberfest people in it with steins, in lederhosen and dirndl. 

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Dom Market

After the Angel’s Market, I walked to the Christmas market in front of the Dom. On the way, I passed the Kölnisch Wasser (Cologne Water/Eau de Cologne) building. It’s a super fancy building, reminded me of the Tiffany building in New York. The windows are beautifully decorated and the inside is full of fancy perfumes and chandeliers. I happened to be there right at noon, and was able to watch the glockenspiel play. There are bells that ring individually and play a tune while the circle part in the middle spins and shows a little parade of characters. From there, the rest of the walk to the cathedral was through a huge shopping district. Blocks and blocks of essentially an outdoor mall. Everything you could want, from fancy designers to H&M and TK Maxx (I don’t know why it isn’t TJ Maxx there…). The pedestrian-only mall is huge and full of people. Everything is lit up with Christmas lights and there are Christmas trees everywhere. There is even a really old church in the middle of it all. But this is one of the strange things about Cologne: the modern buildings and the really old buildings are completely mixed together. There are glass-facade buildings right next to Roman churches. Everything is together. And the new buildings are really right next to the church. There isn’t even enough space to back up and see the whole thing. But this is what Cologne is known for, having 12 cathedrals in the town. I suppose you can’t make every one of them a special landmark. 

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I keep walking until I reach the Dom Christmas market. This is where everyone wants to be, or at least, where everyone is. It is shoulder-to-shoulder. The decorations and the lights in the center are pretty, and the Dom is beautiful and tall and majestic. But none of the booths at the market have anything that isn’t at any of the other markets. Somehow this one market is unbelievably packed. And here, unlike in Strasbourg, everyone doesn’t seem to like the idea of just slowly moving through the booths at whatever speed the crowd is moving at. The people have no sense of personal space… People are certain that they can get through the crowd faster than the crowd is moving. And they do this by literally elbowing and pushing their way through. It happened a few time at the Angels market, but I thought it was probably just a coincidence. But no, this seems to be a culturally acceptable practice, as people are constantly pushing me out of the way, putting their arms out and spreading the crowd. No one seems bothered or annoyed. I think it’s just normal. I do not find this endearing. It’s already enough work to try to be aware of your surroundings and avoid getting pick-pocketed in a big city without also having people constantly pushing you and bumping into you. I found this market untenable and made my way to the outer fringes. 

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Just down a few stairs is an out-post of the market, with another 10 or 12 booths, with a Christmas Pyramid in the middle. I decide to catch my breath and hang out here for a few, so I order a kölsch at the nearest stand and walk through this little hidden market. One of the booths sells the fruit-on-a-stick covered in chocolate. But wait one second… what is *that*?  They have chili peppers covered in chocolate at this booth…. who thought this was a good idea? I didn’t see anyone eating it.
This little market has a lot of people, but not an unpleasant amount. I decided that it wasn’t really worth my effort to try going back to the Dom market, as even if I wanted to purchase something, I wouldn’t have been able to get to the counter. 

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Heinzel’s Market

After this, I walked to the Heinzel’s Market. Heinzelmännchen are gnomes from a Cologne fairy tale.

“The little house gnomes are said to have done all the work of the citizens of Cologne during the night, so that the inhabitants of Cologne could be very lazy during the day. According to the legend, this went on until a tailor’s wife got so curious to see the gnomes that she scattered peas onto the floor of the workshop to make the gnomes slip and fall. The gnomes, being infuriated, disappeared and never returned. From that time on, the citizens of Cologne had to do all their work by themselves.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinzelm%C3%A4nnchen  

This market seems to be geared more towards children. There is a huge ice skating rink. There are little gnome characters everywhere, and lots of adorable decorations. There are gnomes skiing down the sloped roofs of the booths. There is also a little ferris wheel, which has rain covers on the gondolas. This wheel is small and moves very fast, so I don’t go for a ride. There is a silversmith making jewelry, and of course a million food and drink options. Everything looks and smells delicious. Except the candles. There are candle booths with ‘herbal’ candles and they just smell like an infinite amount of licorice. Ick. But almost everything smells wonderful. The ice rink is full of people skating, and there are even people playing a curling-type game. The gluhwein stand at this market is huge, 2 floors tall, and has a bunch of balconies with people watching the ice skaters. It is a playful and fun market with lots of character. 

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Lunch time

At this point, I’ve been outside in the cold, gray day, sometimes in the rain. And I’m tired. My feet hurt, and I’m not really interested in eating festival food while standing up. Fortunately, this market is in the middle of a square, and I am surrounded by tasty looking restaurants. I wander around briefly before deciding to eat at Gilden on Zims. I was lucky and managed to get a table right before a large swarm of people showed up, and several were turned away. I was seated on the second floor and the restaurant was so very warm; my cheeks were instantly red. It was a pleasant change from the cold damp outside. The waiter brings me a menu, and comes around with a wheel of kölsch. He offers me one, and I accept. He flips down a cardboard coaster, puts the beer on it, and makes a tic-mark with an ink pen. After last nights Rheinland feast, I decided today to enjoy a more traditional German meal of schweinhaxe with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes, this time served with a kölsch beer sauce. After some time, he returned with my meal and it was huge!  Perhaps the biggest one yet, with a giant steak knife jammed in the middle of it. The schweinhaxe was very good, well prepared. The skin was crunchy, though thin. The potatoes were fine. But the sauerkraut was somehow sweet. I’m pretty sure it had a lot of apples in it…. like a *lot*. I found it a little off-putting, as it didn’t go well with the salty/herby flavors, and I really enjoy having the tangy smokey kraut flavors to cut through all the pork fat. Otherwise the meal is delicious and the waiter keeps returning, bringing little glasses of kölsch to every table, and marking the coasters. I sit in the restaurant for a couple of hours, watching the Christmas market down below, enjoying a few beers, and trying unsuccessfully to polish off this huge portion of pork knuckle. 

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Heavenue

After lunch, I went back outside, but at 5 p.m., the Heinzels market is now absolutely impassable. I decide to just walk back to my room and rest a bit. There is one final market that I want to see tonight, but it has a schedule and there is a band playing at 8. So it’s more of an evening event. I get home and have a bit of a rest. It starts to hail just as I get to the street I’m staying on, so I was glad to be indoors for a bit. I spent about an hour relaxing, chatted with Joe for a bit, before heading out to the 5th market of the day. The final market I visited is called “Heavenue”, and it’s advertised as the ‘Gay Christmas Market’. There’s a few performers tonight, and it’s hosted by the owner of a local leather bar. This should be an interesting break from the other markets.

I walk down to the plaza where the market is being held and it’s actually huge and crowded. There’s loud music, as I arrive to the sound of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”, very on-brand. There are lots of food options, including the usual Reibekuchen, but also lots of exotic/foreign foods. There is a churro booth. There is a Louisiana kitchen booth with very questionable looking food. And there is, by far my favorite: a Southern Pulled Pork BBQ booth, with a poster of a very fit, very veiny shirtless guy. It’s still drizzling rain, and there’s an overpass covering half of the market, so most everyone is squished in together under this overpass, which also houses a water fountain whose lights have been covered in rainbow cellophane and it looks like the water is making rainbows. It’s all very colorful and loud and fun. I snag a beer and a potato pancake  and find a path to see the stage. There are 2 women in skimpy Mrs. Claus costumes singing. Behind them are like 20 guys in leather dog full face masks. They’re back-up dancing. They sing a couple more songs, then crank up YMCA and the crowd goes wild. It was amusingly cliche, and also kind of similar to places I went 20 years ago. I’m pretty sure it was cliche then, too. It was a fun event, and everyone seemed to be having a great time. I watched the rest of their show and then walked back home. 

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Walking home 

The path home took me back through the first market of the day, the Nikolausdorf market. I stopped and had another kölsch and enjoyed it under a castle-y looking tower. Then I picked up a dozen Belgian poffertjes covered in vanilla sauce for dessert and ate them on the way home. These are little tiny pancakes that are made in a special pan. The pan has little indentations for the batter. They let the one side cook until it’s golden brown, then take a fork and flip the pancake. The other side is still liquid, though. So when they flip it, the liquid batter falls into the indentation, and the already cooked part stays as a dome over it, so that the end result is a hollow puffy pancake, almost a little sphere. I polished off this sweet treat on my way home and then crawled into bed, exhausted but full. 

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