Köln Cathedral Christmas Market

Köln Cathedral is the most important landmark in the city of Köln. I can tell straightaway as the train was pulling into the Köln central train station how important the cathedral it. It was massive that is for sure. But I didn’t know that is was also the second tallest church in Germany and third in the world. It seems that the cathedral buildings here in Germany tend to be very tall since the list of tallest churches is dominated by German cathedrals. As you might expect, the cathedral was extremely busy. It was Christmas time after all. I would be planning on visiting the cathedral itself soon but first things first – lunch.

I arrived in Köln sometime after lunch but I couldn’t check into the hotel just yet so I just left my bag there and went out. I was told that there is a Christmas market next to the cathedral and I was given instructions on how to find it. It turns out that I didn’t need to search for it that hard. It was in the other side of the cathedral and it was very hard to miss once you are near the cathedral. As you might expect, the Christmas market was packed. I am no longer a stranger to Christmas markets and I think they are wonderful. The place is very festive with a lot of things to see, and eat.

This is my first time at a German Christmas market and I didn’t know what they usually have here. But I ended up going for one of the signature German snacks – currywurst. Currywurst is basically some kind of German sausage sliced up with a sauce of which one of the components is curry. This is the first time I had anything like this and I thought it was surprisingly nice. The currywurst comes with bread so you grab some sausage with the sauce and eat some of the bread. Another Christmas market staple in Germany is mulled wine. Mulled Wine or locally called glühwein is some kind of wine (red or white) mixed with spices such as cinnamon, cloves and others. The mixture is usually served piping hot and in this case with a Christmas mug.

I was surprised to know how expensive the cup cost me since I thought it was just a drink but it turns out you also pay for the mug. You can return the mug to the stall if you want your money back. In this first instance, I didn’t know about this system but I ended up keeping the mug. For subsequent drinks, I knew to return the mug to get my deposit back. I guess this is a good way to get customers to not steal the mugs. After all you can’t steal them if you paid for them. The glühwein is perfect for a very cold winter day such as this day and it helped warm me up. I would end up visiting various Christmas markets in the course of my trip and I can safely say that I won’t get tired of them.

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