Esslingen and Stuttgart: A Day Full of Weihnachtsmarkts

So, instead of sitting around Tuebingen bored all weekend, we took the proactive route and planned a trip to Esslingen for the day. Esslingen, like every other city (practically) in Germany, has a Christmas market this time of year, and we thought that this one would be especially cool, because it was a Medieval Christmas market! Sounds a lot cooler than it turned out to be, but it was fun none the less.

So I woke up really early this morning, and caught a bus to the Hauptbahnhof. On the way to the train station, I met Hannah on the bus, and we saw a pony on the Neckarbruecke... Don't really know why there was a pony eating out of a bucket on the bridge, but alas, it was there and we were perplexed. After we met up with everyone at the station, and quickly discussed the pony, we bought our tickets and then hopped on our train to Esslingen. When we got off the train, we headed into town. We didn't really know where the market was, but we figured that we would run into it eventually! And after walking through another market, we soon found the Christmas market.

Here was the first market that we walked through.

Esslingen playing tricks on our minds with the man on the pole!

Main church in Esslingen.

Photo op in front of the church and water!

We found the entrance!

The church up close.

 Okay, so for those of you that don't know me: I hate gnomes. I hate them, I have found out, thanks to Goosebumps. Goosebumps, which I used to watch when I was younger, had an episode where these gnomes came alive at night and terrorized the kids in the neighborhood and even turned the neighbor into a gnome himself. I told Hannah about this episode of Goosebumps, and to prove it to her we even watched it again. We were hoping that I could confront this dislike of gnomes by watching it again. Well it did not work, and after watching it a day ago, I had nightmares in continuation of that episode. Terrifying. Just to give you an idea of what little Emily had in her mind when she first saw this as a child, and why I am scared, here you go, for your watching enjoyment:

You see? Scary stuff. So imagine my delight when we walked into the Christmas market in Esslingen and were greeted with this sight:

Zwergenbackstueble. Emily's nightmare.

Here you go. Just days after re-confronting the Goosebumps episode.

Sign for the Christmas Market.

They had a giant warm air spinny thing. If I were a better blogger, I'd actually look up what they are called. But I will just call them Warmluftdrehers (Warm air turners).

The church through the market place.

 Now, most of the shops weren't open yet, but we came to a fork in the path. One lead here:

Again with the gnomes.

 And the other lead here:

Middle Ages Market.

 Needless to say, I strongly recommended the latter.

The Rathaus in town.

More shops.

We actually went in search of a bank at some point, and found this pretty sight.

There was also a mini-zoo which told you not to feed the animals because they could bite you and because the animals would get tummy aches if they were given too many treats.

Saw the little lamb in the background, so I had to take another picture.

After we saw the animals, the others wanted to go sit down for a while and eat, but I did not want to stop walking around just yet, so I split apart from the others and continued through the market while the others went to the Ratskeller to eat. They took a lot longer than I thought they would, but it was nice walking around on my own for a while. I must have walked the market two or three times, and stopped here and there picking up a few things. I bought a waffle, and the sign said it was cinnamon sugar, so I thought it would be like a beaver-tail (for those of you who have had those in Disney before they shut them down), or at least like an Auntie Anne's pretzel, but it turned out to be a waffle with, essentially, just sugar. It was kind of gross. I walked around some more before meeting up with the others, and in my wanderings, I took some more pictures of the market!

The details on this Dreher were amazing, and it actually spun too, which might have just been because it was so windy, and not because of the warm air.

The church again!

 The bells were sounding off like Christmas bells! Every time a bell rings, and angel gets its wings!

The people in the market were kind of crazy, that this guy for example. This man, dressed like a pirate, berated, yelled at, and manipulated people to try and get them to buy his bottles of who knows what.

One of the quotes of the day belonged to Zach when he said, "I think this medieval Weinachtsmarkt is just an excuse for a freak-show". Well said.

After we met back up and walked through the market a little more, we decided that since we had the ticket already, that we would head to Stuttgart to check out their Christmas market. We hopped a train to Stuttgart, and then found ourselves in the very overcrowded streets of Stuttgart's main shopping section. We stopped in an H&M before making our way to the market. It was SUPER cold and windy, and combined with all the people, Emily was not a happy camper at this point in the day. At this point, I just wanted to head back to Tuebingen, but we stayed for a little bit.

Here are some of the decorations for the market.

They had a massive tree to match the massive amounts of people that were there.

Zach and Jake bought some Gluehwein to warm up a bit!

Hannah got a nice warm crepe.

They had a mini-podlike-merry-go-round for kiddies.

The decorations were really cool here.

I believe this was a drink stall, which was quite busy.

We finally decided to head back, but found that we had to take the S-Bahn to Herrenberg and then transfer trains back to Tuebingen. It took a while, and at this point I was so tired, that I was relieved to find myself back in Tuebingen. On the train ride back Hannah and I got invited to go to Heidelberg for the Christmas market there with a friend that we met at our DAAD conference. So after a long day of Christmas markets, we are heading out to another one tomorrow! But I am way more excited for this one tomorrow, because Heidelberg is so pretty!! I'll take lots of pictures, I promise! 

Also I have lost all hope to ever receive a package, as it has not come today, so that means that at the earliest now it will come on Monday, and this will make it 5 weeks since it left the US. GRR Postal Service!

So for now I think I will be getting some sleep, because I have another busy day tomorrow! I'm sure I will blog tomorrow or soon after about Heidelberg! So until then!