German Christmas curmudgeons can scoff all they want, joined by their English comrades. But that'll never change the fact that the whole world, and especially American whole world looooves German Christmas markets:
Around us, the white tents are mood-lit to perfection, strung with fresh garlands of greenery and dotted with red bows. Formal-looking signs (old-fashioned gold-and-red surrounded by gold scrollwork) announce the goods for sale.
In one tent, big, heart-shaped cookies with corny sentiments written in German in curlicue frosting read "Grandma, you're super," and "With you, I'd go to the end of the world." Another tent, festooned with animal skins and antlers, is doing brisk business in bread bowls filled with wild boar goulash and wild mushrooms sauteed with berries. A group of friends tries on funky handmade wool hats at a stall nearby....
One hut is devoted to all things marzipan, with loaves of the almond paste and little soft pillows of the confection that look like bars of soap. Nearby, roasted almonds coated with ginger and chocolate are proffered in colorful paper cones. Another stand is devoted to printen: gingerbread fingers that come in different varieties, including almond and chocolate. There are mushrooms sauteing in giant pans. I gobble them up with a little wooden fork that threatens to get lost in a generous dollop of creamy garlic sauce. Bratwursts sizzle over open coals, and I can convince myself I'm still hungry. We even pass a Scandinavian section, with reindeer sausages from Norway.
And really, if we have to have things like Christmas markets -- and it appears we do -- the German variety is hard to beat. Up against the sparkling, aromatic wonders of any halfway-decent German Christmas market, the desperate, reeking 'Mall Santas' America fields are a humiliating debacle.
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