It's beginning to taste a bit like Christmas!

“If we don’t go today,” warned Dearly Beloved last night. “We probably won’t go at all.”

I stared at him, a little worried.

 

“The weather” he went on. “It’ll be clear and cold tonight, and then it’ll rain like billy-o for the rest of the week. If you want to go to the Christmas market with me, tonight is the night.”

 

“I’ll get my coat.”

 

Dearly Beloved subscribes to a daily weather forecast from the airport. Once the airport failed to predict that no planes would be able to use the runway because a family of wild boar had sought grazing rights on the wrong side of the wire fences. This event was reported it as "snow". But generally, the forecasts are generally accurate. And no wild boar would stampede the Christmas Market in town, strewn across the Place D’Armes and onto the Place de la Liberte overlooking the Petrusse Valley.

 

Hats, gloves and scarves on, we joined crowds of different nationalities swarming round the gluhwein stands. I drank mine out of a china boot.  DB decided against it. We queued for the ever popular Gromperer Kiechelcher (and try ordering three of those after few gluhweins). Potato cakes in any other language, they are similar to Swiss rosti, mixed with herbs and some spring onions, and then deep fried.Sprinkled liberally with salt, they are the perfect accompaniment to a cold winter’s evening. A couple stopped us to ask what they were – so evidently not Luxembourgers – and were happy to try some of ours. We didn’t see if they bought any. Fighting our way past the Santa stand where we could have bought any Santa themed product from Santa Ear Muffs to a Santa Negligee with fur trimmed Thong, we found friends and joined them for a while- they represented the Merl Park Rangers football club and were out for a team building stroll, the warm drinks being purely medicinal.

 

Over the road to where the neon lights of the Ferris wheel lit up the smaller less commercial stalls. Local crafts were on sale and more attractive than the mass produced items we had seen earlier. Pottery, fabric iPad covers and jewellery were all beautifully made and sadly, not what we were looking for. It was getting colder and luckily, my favourite hot chocolate shop was there with its own stall. I chose the perfect hot chocolate combination: a chunk of dark chocolate on a wooden spoon, flavoured with Hot Chilli and orange, left to melt in the hot milk. Dearly B, wandered over to the Flammkuche stall, and waited while the paper thin dough was coated with Munster cheese and bacon chunks and griddled until slightly charred. We shared it but I wished the melted cheese had not dripped into my Hot Chilli and Orange. So difficult to manage this street stuff. It wasn’t as messy, though, as my previous visit to the Market, when I had a waffle powdered with icing sugar – on that windy day, it was a remarkably poor choice, particularly as I was on my way to the hairdresser and trying to look, for once, at least a little bit sophisticated. There was, as usual, the champagne and cremant tent, with smart lights and elegant high top tables, and by contrast the pancake tent, its primary colours and blankets looking heartily tempting. But we headed for back to the car, stopping only for my Dearly Beloved to fulfil a local tradition. He bought me a heart shaped LebKuchen.

 

Scheier Feierstag!