A December day in Munich

Before heading to H's, we gifted ourselves with an overnight stay in Munich, in a pension near the Englischen Garten. We set out mid-afternoon, walking through the garden and tempting smart crows with bits of apple. We passed through the Christkindlmarkt at the Chienesischen Turm--where basteln, roasted chestnuts, and Gluehwein were, unsurprisingly, the bulk of the attractions--to the Monopteros built by Leo von Klenze in 1837.

Monopteros

View from Monopteros. Dome on the left is the Residenz;
twin domes in the center are the Frauenkirche.

Carly is traveling with us

We continued on through the garden...

past the Residenz. On our way, we had a brief altercation with the bishop St. Nikolaus and his henchmen, shown huddling here:

S said, to the crony to the bishop's right, "Krampus?" The crony replied, "Nein! Klaus!" and swatted S on the behind with a straw broom. We think, post-googling, that he was supposed to be one of a crotchety host of Pelznickeln--literally, fur-clad Nicks. Krampus is an entirely other harbinger of Christmas terror. German folk legends are not for the faint of heart. 

We continued on into old town Munich and paused for a tasty Vietnamese dinner. (When in the bustling metropolis, do as the bustling metropolisians. We have another two weeks to feast on Kaesespaetzle mit geroesteten Zwiebeln.) Then it was on to Alten Peter; we climbed the 299 steps to the top of the church tower for some great views.

St. Peter's church all decked out for Advent

Look! On the horizon! It's the Zugspitze, Germany's tallest mountain!

The Viktualienmarkt down below

Nifty shadows on the exterior wall, cast by light
shining up through the iron grill work.

View of the Heiliggeistkirche, with the
world's biggest mobile ferris wheel in the background (installed April 2019).

The Frauenkirche (L) and the tower of the Neue Rathaus (R) above Marienplatz

More nifty shadows

This sign was at the top of Alten Peter, and was probably installed to demonstrate that tourists don't read signs. The exterior walkway at the top of the tower is pretty narrow--about a meter wide at its widest--and the boards are a little springy, and the ground is a long way down, so the sign is attempting to direct tourists to walk around the top all in the same direction. But why do that when you could pile up in both directions on the beautiful Marienplatz side of the tower?

This next sign provides some history of Alten Peter, which was originally a three-nave Romanesque basilica in 1050. The sign skips over how it went from basilica to the current gothic church--the interwebs put that between ca. 1181 and 1278--but it does include details about multiple fires and a lightning strike. In 1951, the church was restored to its "old [gothic] form." The bells date from 1382, 1605, and 1720. 

A view from the street to the top of the tower, ~96 meters up.

Afterward, we browsed the Christmas market in Marienplatz with several hundred other tourists. When a choir and brass band began performing from a balcony of the Neue Rathaus, hundreds of cell-phone cameras simultaneously turned north to begin filming. I didn't get a good photo of that phenomenon because the crowd was so big and we were in its midst, but imagine the photo below multiplied 20 times, and you get the idea.

From there, S and E took the U-Bahn to the Christkindlmarkt in Schwabing, near our hotel, while I walked the distance (to see more sights and get more exercise). En route, I passed this window dressing at a Louis Vuitton store...

...as well as the sign below in Schwabing. It looked to me to mean something like "people are required to appear before a judge here" or "people will be compressed into confined spaces here," but S says it means "meeting point."

After three Christmas markets in one day, we expect tomorrow morning will involve a museum or two before we continue on to Steinebach am Woerthsee.

The jewel in the crown

The obligatory Christmas preparatory frenzy came to an end late this afternoon, when activity all over Germany came grinding to a halt and almost everyone sat down for coffee and Gemütlichkeit (coziness). At Helen's in Steinebach, gemütlich it was, with peppermint tea and hot coffee, clementines and apples and pommegranate seeds, and Plätzchen, Plätzchen, and more Plätzchen (Christmas cookies).

There is no shortage of Plätzchen in this part of the world, because German industriousness kicks into a wild bacchanal in the kitchen during Advent. In mid-December, while I was busy scouring the internet for a brownie recipe that would actually work with German ingredients in an electric oven with a broken temperature gauge*, every other woman in Germany was busy creating magic with nuts, egg whites, butter, sugar, and chocolate or an occasional form of fruit (candied orange peel, lemon juice, raspberry jam). In Freiburg, where Plätzchen are called Brötle, Paul's mom gave Elias a tin of homemade cookies, and then the ravioli guy gave us a bag of cookies, and then we had dinner with Familie M. and there were more homemade cookies, and then Familie R. gave us a veritable sack of homemade cookies for the road (Christina's Zimtsterne topped with meringue Baiser were pretty much the best Brötle I've ever tasted). Despite being nearly blind, Helen herself must have made at least 250 cookies in five different varieties, and she has received cookies from so many different friends that it's no longer possible to keep track of who made what. Fortunately, keeping track is not really an issue anymore, as we ate most of the remaining cookies this evening.

Then it was time to open presents. Ever romantics, we gave Helen a clothes dryer, because even if you're a pro-environment, industrious, robust German willing to schlepp your wet clothes from the basement of the little Häuschen next door all the way up to the attic of the main Häuschen (the only place at Helen's where clothes can dry quickly in the winter), you deserve a break when you're almost 87.

As we don't usually celebrate Christmas at home, Elias was thrilled to hand out and open packages beneath the Christmas tree. (The dryer, of course, was not under the tree, but rather in the basement of the Nebenhaus.) And while we had intended to do only low-key gift-giving, since suitcase space is at a premium right now, there were some special surprises. It is difficult for me to express in words my gratitude to my mother-in-law for the present she gave me--something so simple, yet so profound in the intimate bond it expressed. I don't think anyone has ever given me a more perfect Weihnachts gift: my very own Wadlstrümpfe (Loferl + sockies).

*I found one! For best results, use a small pan or triple the recipe, and err on the side of undercooked. If you use coarse salt, all the salt will sink to the bottom. If you're lucky, like me, the novelty of salty-bottom brownies will impress the starving graduate students in the lab where your husband has been a guest professor, because the students are happier to think you're a creative cook than an error-prone one.

Neuf Brisach and Colmar

We made a spontaneous visit to Colmar this afternoon. The Badische Zeitung has been plugging Colmar's Weihnachtsmarkt in assorted articles of late--we suspect Colmar's newspaper is likewise plugging Freiburg's market, all in the spirit of promoting international commerce--so we thought we'd go check it out and pass through Neuf Brisach on the way.

Cross the Rhine in Breisach and continue west a few more kilometers, and you reach Neuf Brisach. As the names suggest, France's Neuf Brisach is much younger than Germany's Alt Breisach. In 1648, France took Breisach from Austria; Louis XIV had the military engineer Sébastien Le Prestre, Marquis de Vauban, strengthen the town's fortifications. A 1697 treaty returned Breisach to the Habsburgers, so Louis gave Vauban the task of building a new fortress to defend the French border. Thus was born Neuf Brisach, surrounded by an octagonal defensive system of walls and gates that remains remarkably well-preserved today.

Neuf Brisach is probably right swell, but we couldn't find much to recommend it today. From the vast expanse of concrete that comprises the center square, to the piped-in organ music in the austere 18th-century Church of St. Louis, to the alcoholic in the Santa hat getting soused on a lonely park bench on a gray Sunday afternoon, Neuf Brisach offered one depressing view after another. Our ADAC guide to Elsass says the best way to see Neuf-Brisach is from a bird's-eye view, and we're convinced that's true.

We continued on to Colmar, where we drove around for half an hour with hundreds of other cars looking for a place to park. The Colmar Weihnachtsmarkt was clearly the place to be. Of course, it was the only place to be for miles around for those wanting to celebrate capitalism, since pretty much every regular store in Europe is closed on Sunday afternoons.

We barely dipped our toes into the market before deciding it was time to retreat. Whereas Freiburg's market offers an abundance of handmade crafts, Colmar's offers an abundance of factory-made seasonal kitsch. Whereas Freiburg's features real live buskers, Colmar's offers cloying pre-recorded Christmas music pumped through tinny speakers. And whereas Freiburg's offers a coordinated display of Christmas lights demonstrating German precision and restraint, Colmar's offers a multicolored array of blinking bulbs demonstrating a somewhat dizzying enthusiasm for the season.

Thankfully, Colmar also offers the stunning Unterlinden Museum, housed in an old abbey, where we withdrew for a glorious foray through 14th and 15th-century art. We especially enjoyed seeing how the gilded paintings and carved statues told us as much about Biblical stories as about 15th-century sensibilities. From one depiction to the next, Mary had long, wavy red-gold hair and pale white skin. The infant Jesus was always a miniature adult. Backdrops occasionally included European castles perched upon hilltops. In one panel, a unicorn resting in Mary's lap proved her virginity.

The crowning jewel of the collection is the Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald. Originally designed as a set of overlapping panels with wings that folded open to reveal multiple scenes, the altar has been disassembled so that museum visitors can view all of the layers in succession. The details are vivid, and the images are simultaneously beautiful and grotesque.

Later in the evening, we had the good fortune of stepping into the Église des Dominicains, where the exquisite, radiant altarpiece "Maria im Rosenhag" (Mary in the Rose Garden) took our breath away. Painted by Colmar's own Martin Schongauer (ca. 1450-91), the central panel is surrounded by gold-leaf filigreed wings. It is one of the most stunning paintings I've ever seen.

Weihnachtsmarkt

Towns all over Germany know exactly how to drive away the bleakness of interminably gray late-autumn skies: they open festive Christmas markets decorated with thousands of teeny tiny little lights, where you can find Gluehwein and gifts to warm your body and soul against the chill.

Situated primarily around the Rathaus plaza, Freiburg's renowned Weihnachtsmarkt commenced on Monday and runs until December 23. And believe it or not, the clouds parted this week, and the sun is shining upon Baden-Wuerttemberg once more.

I'm usually pretty cynical about capitalism-centered longer-than-advent gearings up for Christmas, but I'm finding the market a pretty and fun place to nosh and gawk. Most of the stalls match one another in size and color, their dark brown stained wood exteriors adorned with stapled-on forest green pine branches. The lights--mostly small white bulbs, but also large, pointed German-Moravian Herrnhuter stars--do a lot to generate cheer after the sun sets (well before 17:00 these days). The goods sold are predominantly (though by no means exclusively) handmade crafts, including functional and decorative pottery, fancy feather-quill pens, brightly colored felted wools and textiles, elaborate cookie press molds, natural soaps, and baubles, toys, and kitchen items made from gorgeous woods. Some items are made on site: hand-dipped beeswax candles, blown glass ornaments, elegant little lathe-turned wooden tops. The food is affordable, and in addition to the satisfaction provided by the mere act of eating, there's also delight to be had watching a vendor make you your very own warm-applesauce-and-cinnamon-sugar-filled crepe hot off the griddle.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the market is that it turns Germany's natural order topsy turvy. So powerful is the urge to celebrate, so strong are the forces of Christmas commerce, that the impossible becomes possible: the market is not only open daily until 20:30, it's also open on SUNDAYS.

Alongside the market, the downtown Christmas scene has been providing some mild local dramas. Controversies have included how late into 2010 the outdoor ice-skating rink in Karlsplatz will remain open, given the unseasonably warm weather (the compromise: mid-January); and how it could possibly be that merchants on Kaiser-Joseph-Strasse--the snazziest shopping street in all of Freiburg--are too cheap and disorganized to hang decorations on Kajo Street, denying shoppers a treasured seasonal joy for the first time in 55 years (tsk!), while smaller stores in li'l old Herdern have found funds to hang red Herrnhuter stars over a good stretch of Habsburgerstrasse. Public shaming in the media is extremely effective in Germany: the Kajo merchants are putting lights up this weekend.

Frohe Weihnachten!

A month ago, I thought it was just an anomaly. I thought the big Edeka on Habsburger Strasse was simply selling leftovers from last year, clearing out straggling inventory, perhaps from a dusty, misplaced box recently re-discovered in the storeroom.

But then they appeared in the back-to-school section of the Karstadt department store.

With the sudden and purposeful arrival two weeks ago of similar items at our small corner Edeka, the evidence became too strong to overlook, and could only mean one thing: Advent, the secular season that, in the U.S., begins the day after the Hallowe'en candy is cleared from the shelves, starts even earlier in Germany.

The consequence is that we have over three months--more than a quarter of the year!--to enjoy Lebkuchen. Traditional German christmas cookies, Lebkuchen are made with ground almonds, hazelnuts, or walnuts, candied orange and lemon peel, flour, eggs, honey, and spices of the cinnamon/cardemom/cloves variety. They're baked on thin wafers called Oblaten, and then brushed with a barely crispy sugar or chocolate glaze. Sometimes jam is involved, sometimes decorative blanched almonds and candied fruit. The shapes vary from traditional rounds to hearts, Christmas trees, and pretzels. The cheap ones, many of which can be purchased in stores now, substitute ground apricot pits for some or all of the nuts.

Joining Lebkuchen on the shelves are Spekulatius and Pfeffernuesse, also traditional Christmas cookies. Spekulatius are thin, spiced, stamped shortbreads, sometimes with slivered almonds pressed into them; in the U.S. they're known as Dutch windmill cookies (and in the Netherlands, as Speculaas). Pfeffernuesse are little glazed spiced nut cookies. They're the crunchy hard siblings to the tender chewy Lebkuchen.

Our corner store is not terribly large. That they're dedicating almost as much shelf space to Christmas cookies (about twice what's shown in the photo) as to noodles says a lot about the expected demand for the cookies in the coming months. Such treats have not yet arrived, however, at the Lienhart bakery, where the bakers continue to produce colorful fruit tarts, as though fall has barely begun.