As kitsch as it certainly is a German Christmas market cannot fail to stir the festive soul even the hardest of Pah-Humbuggers like me. Row after row of cutesy wooden huts offering absurdly large sausages, spiced wine, wooden toys and cow bells. Its hardly a celebration of modern German culture but it is what the season demands and there seems no shortage of cities that are happy to beam-in a Christmas Uber-fair to boost the atmosphere in our high streets now depleted of optimism and atmosphere.
After about twenty minutes of being here in foot crunching pain and rib bruising crowds I can only think that this market is too large and in the wrong place. After you have literally pushed and shoved through the crowds trying to stay together and not get swept away in the wash of (or unwashed) people you browse the the first five familiar stalls that you came looking for. Then you have really seen it all. Its not unique artisan crafts but more and more of the same as you keep looking for something special and something better. The massive crowd funnelled and squashed between the shop fronts and the B&Q sheds makes you feel like human toothpaste as you are reluctantly squeezed along with the will of the crowd. No time to browse or to wander along snow lined cobble streets we are just a moving meat filling in the jostling bad tempered bratwurst of humanity. It is Saturday and peak time, but the reason for the crowds does not lighten this disappointing experience.
I keep trying to smell cinnamon and wine but only get cigarette smoke from iPod and bling laden teenagers foul mouthing each other in Ali-G speak. I really want to eat Black Forest Gateau made from a secret family recipe handed down through the generations but had to settle with defrosted carrot cake from Brakes Bros catering in Northampton. My motorway cafe cake was served up (chucked onto a plastic plate) by the same grumpy eastern European teenager employed by a local labour agency emblazoned on his T shirt. Behind him three of his friends argued, texted and generally looked forward to closing time while the rubbish piled up and the makeshift trestle tables and became awash with spilled drinks from plastic cups. No Ho,Ho,Ho, not Santa hats and not even a paper plate with holly on it – just F.O. attitude and fifteen quids worth of frozen cake served from a hand with a blue plastic glove on it. – That's not traditional that's just normal crappy UK.
Last year we went to London and the parkland setting was better. Perhaps the darker skies, colder weather, but definitely the bigger space made a difference. You could smell the sausages cooking, the spiced wine steaming and there was a lot of atmosphere. I know that trying to stage a traditional German market in Birmingham staffed with grumpy underpaid Lithuanians must be a challenge but its time that someone realised that “biggest” and cheapest may not be the most important components. – Someone needs to care !
Someone needs to try and find some real Germans with a smile, some accordion music music played by musicians and (that is not rapper based) and try to create some atmosphere. Perhaps I am asking too much and should go to Germany to find a traditional German market ? – Seems a bit obvious now as I nurse my swollen feet and try to feel charitable about Christmas.
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