christmas market

On the weekend great guy and I took in the town's Christmas market.  In the darkness everything looked so festive.  The cobblestoned pedestrian area was lit with hundreds of Christmas lights and lanterns were set up around the wooden huts where food and drink and Christmas trinkets were being sold.  There was glüwein (mulled wine), spanferkel (piglet on a stick - yup, you heard me...I asked twice just to make sure I understood correctly), kartoffel puffer (potato cakes with appelsauce - so good!), and a few different kinds of bratwurst on a bun.  Christmas music was being piped out of the sky; speaking of which, there is a place along the Rhein, kind of like a boardwalk, where there is music seemingly being piped out of the trees.  It was just a little bit romantic when great guy walked me past there and pointed it out to me.  I, as all my friends know, am a bit unobservant, and I think that in that moment had just figured that the soundtrack to my life had begun to play.  Don't you sometimes think you're in a movie?

Back to the Christmas market.  So, this one is quite small compared to some, but it was lovely to be amongst great guy's great friends who met us there.  Best friend was there, and rock 'n roller, and a couple who I have come to really like in such a short time.  Max and Bärbl - I could give them different names, but I like their names so much that I can't think of anything better.  In such a small city (maybe it's a big town), events like these are the perfect time for everyone to see each other, catch up, and have some drinks together.  We stood around the tall tables drinking the pungent, potent, sweet yet bitter, glüwein, while taking in the merry surroundings.  Great guy kept catching my eye, standing where he was on the other side of the table, with his quirky, yet so cute, half smile = me happy.  And, later the two of us walked back, arm in arm, across the bridge, with the cathedral standing tall on our left, the burg (castle) lit up on the hill, and the Rhein on our right.  Not a bad place to spend some time.

P.S.  Great guy read this blog for the first time the other day (I hadn't given him the address before) and now he refers to himself as great guy.  Uh-oh.