Happy Heiligabend, which is the night before the first day of Christmas, as they say here in Germany. BTW, December 26th is also a holiday in Germany; we’ve seen it referred to here as the second day of Christmas.
Anyway, just in time for the end of the Christmas holiday season, I’m posting photos I took in December of 2011 of the Middle Ages Christmas Market in Esslingen. Unlike the modern-day Christmas markets here in Germany, the market in Esslingen is manned by people who dress in costumes from the Middle Ages, make food and drinks as they would have made them in the Middle Ages, and speak in a German variant from the Middle Ages as well. Well, that’s the idea, at least. Even if we couldn’t swear what the people were speaking — we couldn’t always understand them, so it at least wasn’t standard German —nor could we swear whether the food was authentic Middle Ages grub, it still was fun to experience a modern-day take on a Middle Ages Christmas market.
Stalls were filled with mostly handmade and/or artisan items, plus the food was cooked on big grills or pans over fires, which added to the atmosphere (and what we sampled was pretty tasty, too). The entire market is held outdoors, which meant the weather added to the atmosphere as well: it was super cold that day. The hot mead and warm glühwein drinks definitely came in handy during our visit. After dark, the illumination was provided by torches with fires, not by streetlights with electric bulbs, and people huddle around the fires warming up toward the end. Actually, you’ve already seen an example of that, since I posted a photo of Chris by the fire a couple of weeks back.
I haven’t put detailed captions on the photos, but I think they are all pretty self-explanatory. Make yourself a cup of hot chocolate or spiced wine and sit back and enjoy a little time travel back to the recent past — December 2011 — where you can experience the essence of the Middle Ages Christmas market in Esslingen.
First, I liked the pictures that reminded me of German architecture –#3 the tower with the balancing figure, #4 the bridge between two towers, #12 the fireater in front of the town hall. Then, I liked the pictures which were unique and in the case of #17, theman with a pot of flowers on his head was shocking!. The cooking pans were the largest I have seen and the last two were mysteriously fascinating. I can’t image of flame in the midst of the eggs; and the last picture was just plain trick photography!
Thanks for all the comments, Stan! I can’t figure out what that balancing figure hanging off the tower is supposed to be – the town looks so medieval and traditional, that it’s hard to imagine why they have the modern art on the tower you see just as you come into the town. The scary outfit in #17 was just one of many odd characters in a little parade that happened all of a sudden – he was the only one I managed to get a photo of, they came through the crowd so quickly. And the last photo is real, not any kind of trick photography. But I agree, it does look that it could have been a trick!