Why do we choose our destinations? Sometimes for the strangest reasons. I'd read that Nuremberg had a nice Christmas Market and one MUST try the famous Nuremberg sausages. And so we went to Nuremberg on Sunday.
From the main train station it's an easy walk to the old city. There's a tunnel passageway that leads directly from one to the other, bypassing the crossing of tracks and streets. From there it's dead ahead into the city.
As we walked along the street there were a few scattered huts, leading us to believe that the market was one of the smaller ones. At the first square, the trail of huts led off in two directions. We headed first towards the street labeled Children's market.
Here the concentration of stalls increased until we came upon a square devoted entirely to children. There was a merry-go-round, ferris wheel, ship, and train rides for the little kids. Most of the stalls were focused on toys and sweets of particular interest to children (though there was still a gluehwein stall).
The top of each stall was decorated with a holiday scene, ranging from angels, to teddy bears...
to people "doing things".
At the far end was a stall dedicated to commemorating the real reason for Christmas.
Thinking we'd seen most of the market, we returned to follow the other trail of stalls, which led us to this sea of red and white striped roofs.
If anything, in terms of number of vendors, this market is even bigger than the one in Marienplatz. The square may be approximately the same size, but the booths are crammed in much tighter, making it difficult to navigate the aisles.
Since it was daylight, I was able to photograph some of the offerings...
... including corn on the cob, which was something I never expected to see in Germany. This looked as tough as nails.
Following another trail of stalls, we found another small square featuring an international market. For some reason Atlanta is representative of the USA.
We were curious as to what the vendor thought represented us. Coca Cola...
and Hershey's...
We tried the Nuremberger sausages and found them "lecker". They're a form of Bratwurst in miniature. We were told that one story about why they're so small is that they needed to fit through the keyhole of the prison. That would be back in the day when your family fed you if you went to prison... or you died there of starvation.
Having seen the entirety of the Market, we headed back to the train station. Our original intent was to continue on to Rothenberg ob der Tauber to visit their market, but we were running behind our planned schedule and the trains were all delayed due to weather somewhere, so we opted to head back to Munich instead.
After a brief period of recovery in our room, we headed out to have our first square meal since arriving in Germany. We went back to the vicinity of Marienplatz to visit the Hackerhaus, specializing in Bavarian cuisine. The food was good, the atmosphere Bavarian, the waitress friendly and efficient. The prices were slightly on the high side, but not unaffordable.
The waitress asked me why I know such good German, which made me feel good as, earlier in the day, the woman who sold us the sausages told me I might as well speak English.
After dinner, it was back to the hotel to reorganize our luggage for traveling the next day and then vegging out until bedtime.
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