Christmas Markets - Ravensburg

One of the German Christmas traditions that we have been looking forward to is the Christmas Markets.  Last year we went with German friends of ours to the Christmas Market in Chicago and have been excited to see the real German ones ever since!

Most Germans towns have a Christmas Market sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Smaller towns may only have them for one weekend (like Langenargen which is the next town over from us) and larger towns usually have them from the last weekend in November up until Christmas Eve.  Others will have it some time within this range.  Some are open during the week and others are only open on the weekends.

So far we have been to 2 Christmas Markets and hope to go to another one this afternoon and a few more in the next few weeks.  There are some things that are usually pretty similar about them.  They all have booths that sell different things.  Some of these could be scarves/hats/gloves, candy, chocolate covered fruit, gluhwein, waffeln, wooden nativity sets, homemade wooden toys, candles, pizzas, and other homemade goodies.  It is interesting to see the different things that are at each market.  They also seem to usually have a life-size Nativity, sometimes with real animals. 

Last week Saturday, we went to the Christmas Market in Ravensburg.  We had been to Ravensburg the first full day we were here with Brian's boss, but haven't gone back.  We knew they had a nice Christmas market and it's not too far of a drive, so we went for the day.

Here's the life-size Nativity in Ravensburg, but the live animals were in a different place.

Some of the booths in Ravensburg were just white tents and others were the normal wooden structures.

There was also a pretty sweet building that had all of its windows numbered like an Advent calendar.  We were actually there at the end of November, so none of the windows were open to see what was behind them, but we thought it looked pretty cool anyway.

Two of the traditional foods for Christmas markets are Gluhwein and Waffeln.  Gluhwein is a type of mulled wine that is served hot.  Brian had some, but since neither of us are big fans of wine, it wasn't our favorite.  Waffeln are basically waffles served with cinnamon and powdered sugar.  This was definitely my favorite!  Kind of like a German elephant ear!

The city was absolutely beautiful once it started to get dark!  Lots of Christmas lights came on all over!