time to get our christmas markets on!

When I left you last Kate and I were speeding our way to Berlin on the fast train which cracked well over 200km/h, getting us to our destination in (relatively) no time at all.

Our hotel was super conveniently just 10 minutes walk from the main train station and was a warm greeting for us. Super friendly staff and a mini-bar full of water and soft drinks that was free and restocked each day for us. Now that I hadn’t had before! I think we had made another great choice of hotel for our stay.

We dumped our bags and were about to settle in to relax a little when we thought otherwise. Why not head to a Christmas market?!

Even more conveniently another smaller metro station was only 1 minute away from our hotel, so on we jumped and headed to the first of what would be a few Christmas markets, Gendarmenmarkt.

oh! the food that awaits!

This was considered one of the most popular markets and indeed it was well packed when we arrived. I had only been to some Christmas markets in Austria many years ago, so only had a rough idea of what I was expecting. In some respects I thought it may have been bigger with many more stalls. Rather this was fairly modest, with much more food and drink. But I was happy with that 🙂

first bratwurst of the season

As soon as we arrived it was priorities… bratwurst! Mmmm. We both loaded up with a delicious sausage and started wandering about.

mmm… gluhwein

Even though it wasn’t huge, we still spent quite a bit of time wandering about. Kate was keen to check out the different stalls, especially the decorations. Me, I was all about eating and drinking. I grabbed a gluhwein (warm wine) to accompany me as we wandered. Yum! I saw many more of these in my future.

um, what?!

A big stage was set up with a revolving cast of acts, and at one point we were transfixed by a very strange clown type act happening. We couldn’t really make any sense of it, but absurdist comedy seems to transcend language.

With a big pretzel in hand we wandered the rest of the markets. Kate got a sense of what would be about to buy at a later date, and we decided to head back to the hotel to rest up for our first day proper in Berlin (and THE big event of the holiday).