Visiting Aachen's Christmas Market

Last weekend, Christiaan and I went to the Christmas Market in Aachen. The first time I went to a Christmas Market was in 2019, in Zurich, during a work trip. Until then, I did not even know that Christmas Markets were a thing. Since moving to The Netherlands, I’ve been wanting to visit one of these magical markets, but, unfortunately, Covid-19 made that impossible. Fortunately, last weekend we made that wish come true.

Traveling to Aachen from Eindhoven was quite straightforward, except for the fact that the railways between Heerlen and Aachen were in maintenance for that weekend only. How lucky! Nevertheless, there were replacement buses from Arriva that brought us to Aachen quickly.

In Aachen, I tried quite a few food items that I’ve never seen before. Namely, reibekuchen 🥔, interestingly shaped, yet amazingly delicious, pancakes 🥞, as well as some flammkuchen 🧅. All of these foods were very nice, especially enjoyed the pancakes and the flammkuchen.

Of course, among all these food, we also had some glühwein, both red and white. I have never seen white glühwein before, but it was quite nice. I also tried eierpunsch, which is quite delicious. I would just turn the notch down on the alcohol amount on that one 😅 And, finally, we also had some nice hot chocolates.

There were all kinds of things in the market, even though I expected it to be mostly food. That was a pleasant surprise. I bought a few gifts for my parents. I’m sure my mom would especially love going to a Christmas Market like this. I’m now in the process of convincing them to come next year around this time. The problem with it is the weather and how cold it is. But, as I told them, as long as it’s not raining a lot, the cold can be well mitigated with good clothes.

Looking forward for future Christmas Markets 🎄!

Update: yes, the mugs say 2023 and not 2022. Why? I don’t know. If you do know, please let me know!