Outside was snowing quite heavily so I wondered whether this market would still be on or not.
At Boxhagener Platz the market was going on. The 'square' is a medium sized park which looked lovely blanketed in snow. The stalls formed a square around the central playground and there were quite a few people milling around.
The stuff for sale was usual flea market 'junk'. Apparently this place is quite hit and miss, which makes sense. Mostly the stuff was quite junkey today. I think this was evidenced by the stall holders regard for their own products with much of it left outside to get covered in snow.
Even though we didn't buy anything it was a very pleasant walk out in the snow. The streets of Friedrichshain were quite subdued today (Sunday) with only a handful of cafe's open and people just taking their time in the neighbourhood.
Barney seem to take it all in his stride and wasn't bothered by the snow.
Later in the evening we went on the S-Bahn to the Alexanderplatz Christmas Markets. By now the lovely snowfall had ceased and the blanket of snow had turned to sludge. Snow is not so pretty in this state.
Alexanderplatz was very busy with Berliners taking in some of the last Christmas atmosphere while they could. Immediately outside of the Alexanderplatz train station was a traditional Christmas Market like we are used to, standard stalls, with the addition of an outdoor ice rink. However, the combination of unpleasant walking surface and being very busy didn't really endear us to this market.
Breaking up the market is some large shopping areas, including the big Alexa shopping centre.
We went into the Alexa looking for some more appropriate sludge trudging shoes for myself but I didn't find anything that didn't look like I was mounting an expedition to Nepal. I will have to revisit the shoe situation later. It was interesting to see sleighs for sale at the sports store.
On the other side of Alex is a continuation of the markets, but this is more of a sideshow alley type thing. Also really busy. Lots of rides, big ferris wheel, games, makeshift bars and places to eat.
We had our dinner here tonight, standard healthy market fare of large chips (3 Euro) and a half metre bratwurst (3 Euros).
No comments:
Post a Comment