Vienna - Christmas Markets

The Christmas Markets were a bit of a draw for the visit to Vienna, along with the opera. It's about six years I think since we went to Stockholm for the Christmas markets there and we had really enjoyed that so we thought it would be good to have a look at some elsewhere. 

There are lots of them in central Vienna, and wherever we went basically we could see one; they are strategically placed by almost every tourist site in the city so the first one we visited was the one by the Kunsthistorisches Museum. By the time we'd 'done' the bits of the museum we wanted to see the day was getting on an the market was filling up. Given the propensity of the Viennese to elbow people out of the way as we went round we found ourselves further and further away from the actual stalls which was a bit sad as it meant we had to do a bit of pushing ourselves to get into a position where we could see anything. 

It was fine. We didn't want any gluhwein, although plenty of people wee getting tipsy on it, and we didn't want to buy cheese or bread or cold meats so that meant we didn't need to look at a lot of the stalls. I did manage to by, in my best pidgin German a stick with chocolate covered pineapple pieces on it which was nice; both the thing itself and the fact that the woman on the stall understood what I was asking for. I was very very taken with a modern style wooden nativity scene, but closer inspection revealed that just the Mary Joseph and baby in the manger cost 93 euros. I did a quick conversion in my head and decided that, however taken I was with it, that was actually daylight robbery - and anyway when would I ever have a chance (not to mention the funds!) to buy the associated shepherds and wise men? So we passed on that and settled for a tealight holder with trees ad a reindeer. It's very nice. Picture later maybe? 

What I had hoped to buy to bring back was some stollen and some lebkuchen both of which were conspicuous by their absence which was a shame. 

A couple of days later when visiting The Belvedere Palace to look at Secession Art we had a quick gallop arond the Christmas market there and were disappointed to discover that many of the stalls were exactly the same. I suspect that many of them are actually outlets for shops in the city and we didn't buy anything at that one, alhugh as it was earlier in the day we were able to get closer to the stalls than on the previous occasion. 

Here's a picture 

Quite Christmassy. Overall though we preferred the Swedish ones; partly because the stalls were more varied and had people selling things that they had actually made themselves, and partly because there was more gong on; carol singing, traditional dancing etc. I think we are probably over the excitement of Christmas markets now.