Christmas Markets

From late November until just before Christmas Eve, Berlin fills up with more than 60 Christmas markets, and no two of them feel the same. A German Weihnachtsmarkt is an outdoor village of wooden stalls set up on a square or in a park for about four weeks, selling food, drink, ornaments and handmade goods under strings of lights, with people standing around barrel tables in winter coats rather than sitting down to eat. Nothing about it is a ticketed attraction. You walk in, you wander, you eat standing up.

The two best known are very different in character. The market on Gendarmenmarkt, framed by two matching cathedrals and a concert hall, leans upscale, with serious craft work and a stage program. The WeihnachtsZauber at Schloss Charlottenburg (Charlottenburg Palace) puts its stalls in front of a baroque palace facade, which is about as postcard as a December evening in Berlin gets.

The drink to order is Glühwein, red wine heated with cinnamon, cloves and citrus and served steaming in a ceramic mug. You pay a small deposit, called Pfand, on the mug when you order, and you get it back when you return the empty cup. Many visitors keep the mug as a souvenir instead, which is entirely normal and simply costs you the deposit. Look out for Feuerzangenbowle too, the same mulled wine with a rum-soaked sugar cone set alight above the pot, plus gebrannte Mandeln, almonds roasted in caramelized sugar, whose smell carries across half the market.

If the classic version feels too tidy, the markets in Friedrichshain and Neukölln run younger and scrappier, with vegan food stalls, DJ sets and mulled wine in variations no tradition would recognize. Most markets are free to enter and a few charge a small admission on weekends. Come on a weekday in the early evening rather than a Saturday afternoon, dress far warmer than you think you need to, and bring some cash, since smaller stalls do not always take cards.