Sankt Wendel Christmas Market

Brian loves Christmas markets.  I like them, but they are all very similar which tends to make me less excited on my second, third, fourth, etc one of the year.  That said, this one was very unique.  It had an elf village, a live nativity, a medieval section, and Saint Nicholas.  It was pretty big compared to many I have been to before.  It was a bummer that it was so cold since it has been so mild here since we arrived in the country a month ago.  The girls were not expecting it and wore their Converse shoes which are thin and froze their toes.  We tried a little bit of a variety of different foods that we had been missing in the states, some of which are flamkuchen, crepes, and bratwurst on brotchen.  We had gluwein and the kids had kinderpuncsh.  I had a baked apple gluwein with cream and cinnamon.  It was so very delicious!

(Note:  The pictures are all out of order.)

Bobby did much better in the Ergo.  He stayed in it the whole time, about 4 hours.

The medieval section had archery for two shots for 1 Euro.  Genna and Isaac were the only ones who wanted to try.  Poor Isaac didn't get his arrow all the way to the target.  Genna hit the target the second try.

Waiting for the arrow shooting

My Robin Hood in training

My Merrida in training

They had a live Nativity with real camels and other animals.  The three wise men actually process through the Christmas market on their camels.  Pretty cool, right?

Brian and I wearing Judah and Bobby respectively which is why their faces aren't making it into many pictures.

I like how Santa looks like Saint Nicholas with his awesome hat instead of the American version of Santa.

These guys were weird, but entertaining.  I guess you could call them German Medieval Clowns.  They were dressed crazy and had a lot of make up.  They juggled and did a little slapstick type routine where they call up a girl from the audience and juggle various objects with her in between the two of them, in the line of fire.  This started out with clubs, then knives, then she became literally in the line of fire when they juggled torches.  They had hit her with the clubs and the handle of the knife (I assume it was on purpose) so she was looking pretty nervous when they brought out the torches.   All this was on the steps in front of this church (pictured below) which seemed like Jesus might show up at any  moment and start turning over tables.