Christmas Market

As I mentioned before, Prague has awesome Christmas Markets.  When I was looking up places that I should go over Christmas it looked like Vienna was the number one Christmas place to go and Prague was a close second.  Since I had already been to Vienna I decided that Prague was the best choice.

The Christmas Markets run from early December through the middle of January.  It is set up with loads of tiny little huts, mostly selling very expensive little tourist things.  Plus food.  Lots and lots of food.

There were little rolling carts selling roasted chestnuts which were good but not nearly as good as I would have thought from years of singing "chestnuts roasting on a open fire . . ."  They had carts selling warm wine (and handing out free samples) which smelled a-mazing but tasted kind of like warm wine--so kind of a disappointment.

They had stands that sold fried cheese sandwiches--which was deep-fried cheese on a hamburger bun--that's a winner, for the record.  They also sold brats.  Really, really good brats.  They had two kinds of brats:  bavorské klobása (Bavarian brats) and Václava klobása (Wenceslas Brats).  I tried a Bavarian brat the first night I was in Prague because I remember the brats from Munich (which is in Bavaria, Germany) with great fondness and had been severely disappointed by the Dutch attempt at the brat.  Well, the Czechs have it figured out.  That brat was just about as good as I remember those German brats being.  The bun wasn't quite as good as the German bun--the German brat buns are hard and crunchy on the outside and and soft and chewy on the inside and the Czech buns were just kind of soft all the way through, but altogether, it was not too shabby at all.  I am a fan.  Later, I tried the Wenceslas brat (which, I assume, means "Czech brats").  It was not too bad (though not quite as good as the Bavarian brat).  It was kind of a pale white color and the flavor reminded me a little bit of the blood sausages I had one time by accident.

A Trdlo stand, behind a horse and carriage for hire.

By far the best thing at the Christmas market, though, food-wise, was the the Trdelník or the Trdlo (these names seem to be used interchangeably).  Trdlos are traditional Czech donuts.  They are pretty awesome.  They are kind of a sugar dough (not really like a yeast donut or like a sour cream dough) which is twisted around a long skewer, rolled in sugar and cinnamon, roasted over a bed of coals, and then rolled in more sugar, cinnamon, and crushed pecans.  As mentioned, awesome.  If you look here you can see another person's blog post about trdlo.  It even includes a little video of how they make the Trdlos.  And, if you go here you can find a Trdelník recipe . . .

There were a lot of folks at the Christmas markets.  One thing that was interesting was the number of kids.  And dogs.  I looked it up and apparently the Czech Republic is in the middle of a gigantic and unprecedented baby boom.  It was pretty interesting, as well, that most of the parent looked like they were older--you would see kids that were 5 or 10 and then their parents looked like they were in the 40s.  One really interesting thing, though, was that folks swatted their kids when they needed it.  And not just sneaky little, embarrassed, half-hearted smacks, either.  A couple of different times I saw kids being obnoxious and their parent turned around and gave them enthusiastic and meaningful paddlings.  It is not something that you would expect to see in the US and it probably suggests good things about the future of those kids.  The dogs were well behaved as well.  There were tons of them and most of them were off-leash.  It was kind of an interesting experience to see people just walking around followed by everything from giant, wolf-hound-mix looking dogs to little chihuahuas, with no leashes and, apparently, nobody bothered by it.

There were also big touring groups.  Sometimes the guides would carry big yellow umbrellas or giant flowers, so that people in their group could keep track of whom they were supposed to be following.  My favorite thing, though, was that one tour company, at least after dark, would carry giant, sparkly, lighted snowflake wands.  I thought that was pretty nifty.

There was a giant Christmas tree in the square as well.  It was lit up so that, during the concert I went to, the lights blinked and cascaded in rhythm with the music.  And it almost wasn't ruined by the giant, Christmas-light advertisement at the base.  According to an article I saw, the tree uses LED lights and was good for the environment, so it was alright.