Well that was interesting.....

I didn't really know what to expect of or what to make out of my very sporadic decision to drive all the way up to Kitchener after work to visit their annual Christkindlsmarkt. I just caught it in the corner of my eye the other day on my calendar and thought....darn another year gone by without me really making any planned efforts to go there, even though I wanted to go for years. Growing up we used to always go to the biggest and most famous Christkindlsmarkt in Nuremberg, every year we went, mainly because we were always in that city at this time of the year to celebrate my grandfather's birthday, so it had really become a yearly tradition, one that always sticks as one of my favourite childhood memories in my mind. So I decided to not waste another year and just go, even if it was short notice, and all by myself. I surely would have loved to share that with someone special, since it is one of my favourite times of the year. But in the end it was probably good to go on my own since I had like an array of emotions while browsing through the marketplace inside the City Hall in Kitchener. Like the traditional Christmas Market in Germany, Christmas ornament and Christmas foods were the main attractions,outside was the food court and omg...the scents of roasting sausages on a bun and the Gluehwein sure brought back memories....Gluehwein is the best on a cold day to warm you up from the inside out and it sure was cold outside, I did resist the urge of getting one, since I know how I get after a glass of wine. The inside was set up like any Christmas Bazaar but with lots of German traditional things, like the Christmas Pyramid, wooden carved ornaments, German Christmas cakes and cookies, Nutcrackers and German Christmas CDs and DVDs. And of course the vendors you see at any ole Christmas Sale, selling jewelry, soaps, scarves and hats etc. I must say it was very expensive, but that's how hand made stuff is and I don’t think that stuff is any cheaper in the country of origin either. I bought a few little ornaments that I thought were really uniquely German and somewhat affordable, and yes P.I.C. I got you your Christmas pickle.....still a little bit confused about that as a german Christmas tradition, because I never heard of it, my mother knew nothing about it and everybody I ask about it has no clue, even the girl who was selling them there had no idea except that is Old German, to that I say must be very very Old German.... I saw a lot ofthings that reminded me of home and it made me a little sentimental at times, I found a little German book with Christmas short stories, I used to have the exact one when I was a little girl, wow haven’t seen it in ages…. it was there on display for the German Language School. All in all it was a nice outing( but really to get the full effect one should do this at night time), had fun conversing in German and it was definitely worth the trip to Kitchener…and I do hate driving in Kitchener.
This is exactly how I remember the CHRISTKINDLSMARKT