backlog no. 1

Weihnachtsmarkt misadventure:
Sooo, if you don’t know by now, the Christmas markets, Weihnachtsmärkte, are one of my favorite things about Germany. I try every year to go to as many of them as I can, collect glasses, eat and drink a ton, and generally enjoy myself, while soaking up some German culture. I have some favorites, (Goslar chief among them) and I also explore new ones. This year, I was taking some of my foodie friends to the Goslar Weihnachtsmarkt, and we had it all planned out. (that statement right there should sound warning bells in your head if you know me at all…) We ended up meeting at the train station in Göttingen, and had to run to catch the train. Turns out, when you’re running to catch a train, sometimes you don’t pay attention to what the train actually says on it. This was one of those sometimes. We pack onto the train, all of us collapsing in between train cars, the doors close, and the train starts moving. In the wrong direction. Lovely. I just started laughing, what else can you do? We found out that we were on the train to Chemnitz, which is approximately near the German-Indian border. The next stop for the train was Heiligenstadt, which means “holy city.” We got off at Heiligenstadt, hoping to find SOMETHING holy, or at least mildly entertaining, and found it dead. The only thing that was open was a grocery store. So what do a group of foodies do? We raid the grocery store for the hour we have to wait for the next train that will take us back to Göttingen. The 5 of us spent approximately 45 minutes perusing the candy and booze aisles. We left, successful, with lots of ritter sport (to bring home for Christmas) and a really nice bottle of champagne for really cheap (for the train ride home!) As we wandered back to the train station, I decided we needed to pregame our ride of shame back to Gö, and so we passed around a bottle of champagne in the freezing cold, sleeting terminal. We ended up going back to the Weihnachtsmarkt in Gö, getting ourselves some dinner, and then going to Goslar a couple days later. It turns out, nothing is a misadventure, as long as you have people you can laugh with (and at,) and share some wonderful champagne with. From the bottle. :D I love how appropriate my blog title really is.