Once upon a time, I was watching the Price is Right and they gave away a trip to the Munich Christmas markets in a showcase. What’s this? I’d never heard of Christmas markets before. It made sense — Germany is the root of many American Christmas traditions.
And just like that, we decided to spend a Christmas in Munich.
There is a lot more to the story of how we came to be in Munich for Christmas in 2014, but that is exactly how it started.
There are many Christmas markets in Munich, but the “official” one is on Marienplatz in the center of town.
The markets are Christmas overload and I love it. Christmas is my favorite holiday. At this stand, we couldn’t see the shopkeepers through the ornaments.
All the stands are decorated.
They sell all manner of Christmas items. This stand sold baking supplies and tons of cookie cutters.
Another stand selling wooden ornaments. We bought ornaments for our families here — they pack and ship very well!
Our trips are always about food and drink (I had to restrain myself from posting every drink on Instagram). In Germany, it was all about the glühwein.
Glühwein is a hot mulled wine and it was sold everywhere. We sampled a lot. The cold weather will do that to you.
Sausage! Sausage stands are almost as numerous as glühwein stands. I think we ate a sausage for lunch every day in Germany and then sometimes again for dinner.
There was a sausage stand at the bottom of this massive Christmas pyramid.
There is a separate market just for nativity items.
Seriously. Every manner of Joseph, Mary, shepherds, kings, manger animals, and more were sold.
Sheep! Just in case the sheep in your manger have gone missing.
Mistletoe for sale and lots of it.
We were on the hunt for reiberdatschi (potato pancakes) and were thrilled when we found them!
They came sweet or savory. I had two with a piece of melted cheese in between.
I was pretty ecstatic when I found feuerzangenbowle the first night we were there. It’s basically glühwein with a rum soaked sugar cube. The sugar cube is lit on fire. It burns until it’s caramelized to your liking then you mix it in the drink. ‘Nuff said.
We wanted a white Christmas again this year (forgive me, I’m from California. Snow is a novelty). We had to wait until the morning of the 26th. This is what we saw when we woke up and looked out window into the courtyard. Magical.
We packed up our bags on the 26th and headed through the Alps to Austria. We transited back through Munich in order to go home a couple of days later.
Out on Marienplatz, the Christmas markets were gone, but the tree was still lit up. With just the wide open square and lots of snow, it was perfect.
More from this Trip:
Trip Report: Christmastime in London
Christmas in Europe: What we Learned
Mr. P and I just returned from a 17-day Christmas trip to Europe. I’m sharing each stop in a blog post. Doing my best not to include photos already Instagrammed. Stay tuned for Austria next. See all of my travel related posts here.
Almost Never Clever 
I sort of missed the Christmas markets by just two days. I’m already planning to go back to Germany for this Christmas just for the markets! It looks like something out of a Christmas movie.
I totally recommend it, you’ll love it! And yes, it totally feels like a movie but the different markets each have a slightly different feel which is awesome. I’ll have a bunch of posts on it later in the year.
I’m looking forward to it 🙂