The essentials:
Where: Strasbourg
Market not to be missed: Place de la Cathédrale
Most unique market: Place Gutenberg
What to eat for dinner: choucroute, potatoes latkes, spatzle with ham, onions, and cream sauce
What to eat for dessert: dark chocolate covered gingerbread rings, gingerbread and clementine dipped in white chocolate
Best hot beverages: hot rosé with cherries, hot apple juice with spices
Price of hot wine: 2.50 euros
My favorite thing on earth is the Christmas season, which is why I’ve taken it upon myself to do a grand tour of the European Christmas markets. I started in Strasbourg, France, “le capital de Noel”, or as I like to think of it, the place where Christmas as we know it was born. The name is well deserved. The tiny city of Strasbourg houses twelve Christmas markets. You can’t walk five minutes without running into another one. The streets are lit up with sparkling fairy lights hung from roof to roof. Giant Santas and gingerbread men hang on storefronts. At the center of Strasbourg, in the Place Kléber, is the largest Christmas tree in Europe (the Rockefeller center tree in New York is still taller though!).
My friends and I took it upon ourselves to try and make it to every market in the city during our two days there. We drank sweet, hot rosé with cherries at the Place Broglie, and ate choucroute, a heavy German dish of sausages and bacon cooked with cabbage and vinegar. We wandered over to the market by the cathedral, where the wooden stalls were decorated, some with lights, others with mechanical scenes of angels or animals at the top. We browsed the intricately painted candles, decorated with scenes of Strasburg. We saw stuffed animal dogs that barked and mechanical scenes of little ice skaters in winter wonderlands.
Each year, one of the Strasbourg markets hosts another country. This year, the featured country was Georgia. The market in Place Guntenberg was devoted to Georgian goods. There were warm hats and colorful jewelry, and a caramel type dessert that you ate out of a little bowl with a spoon. Nearby at the place Kléber, a stage was set up for a traditional Georgian ballet. The dancers jumped and leaped so energetically that sweat was flying off of the men. They changed costumes for each new scene, the women wearing dresses of every color, the men wearing military uniforms and at one point, huge, curly wigs that looked kind of like afros. The music sounded Scottish with an Oriental twist.
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At the Temple Neuf market, there were tea samples set out to be smelled, and so we smelled every single one of them. Next we snuck into the nearby church to catch the end of a classical Christmas concert. One of my favorite markets was the Place d’Austerlitz, a market that specializes in gingerbread and brioche. We stepped into a tent to see a bread-making demonstration. We watched as balls of dough filled with chocolate chips were cut into the shape of little Santas, and then placed into the oven. We ate one freshly baked, and I’ve never tasted anything so light and fluffy. Many of the stands at Place d’Austerlitz offered us little tastes of gingerbread. The most memorable was a piece of chocolate gingerbread, offered by a friendly lady who insisted that we try it whether we were planning on buying it or not.
Not far from the Place d’Austerlitz was a market devoted to foie gras. You’ve got to love the French. The market also had dégustations of escargot. However, the most memorable dégustation of our weekend was a porcini mushroom soup at the picturesque little market in la Petite France. My friend Aria also tried a cup of hot, blueberry nectar, which was delicious.
As a Christmas market fanatic, my weekend in Strasbourg was like a fairytale. I felt like I’d walked into a Christmas paradise, or the North Pole. Around every corner were the scents of gingerbread mingled with hot wine and freshly baked waffles. You couldn’t walk down a street without seeing Christmas lights or window displays of polar bears. Whether you’re Christmas Crazy or not, the markets of Strasbourg should be on your list of essential things to do before you die. An added perk, the city is cheap and easy to navigate! Just make sure you book your lodgings in advance if you’re planning on visiting during the Christmas season, as it is obviously a very popular destination. This was definitely my favorite Christmas market yet, but check back soon for my reports on the Christmas markets in Berlin, Paris, and Belgium!