I am finally on my way to pick up my dad and my step mom from the airport, it's about 8 in the morning and I don't think that I have ever had a weekend where I had to get up as early as i've had to every single day. It's been pretty nice, I have to admit I mean I feel productive and I'm definitely ready to go to bed by the time I get home at night, but it's just not what I'm used to. I still cannot get over how I am actually watching the sun rise right now and it's 8 in the morning. Daylight savings time never ceases to blow my mind.
Since this bus ride is a little over an hour, I thought "what a better time than to write a blog about my day yesterday". Getting up at around 6:30 in the morning was a bit of a killer, but I was not the only person having problems waking up. My friend in my traveling writing class, Sarah, actually slept through her alarm! So thank god I kept calling her or else I would've been taking a cab by myself to the Gloucester Green station and she would've missed out on an awesome German Christmas Market.
It was just Sarah, me, and our professor going to this festival, which was actually really nice because I have always liked traveling in smaller groups rather than larger ones. It makes it easier to keep track of everyone and we don't look like a bunch of lost americans wandering around a city that we've never been to before. Instead, we were three americans circling around the streets of Birmingham trying to find any sign of Christmas decorations or german festival signs pointing us in the right direction.
When we finally made it to the right markets, it was just what I expected. Stalls lining the streets with all different types of delicious food, drinks, and souvenirs. Right at the beginning of the market was a little street performer that was a man underneath some sort of box covering his torso while his voice projected out of a drunken puppet that sounded like he had been smoking his entire life. It was quite a show with his little chants at people and random christmas melodies coming out of his flute. People would take pictures of him and he would strike a pose as if the puppet had a mind of its own. I have never seen anything like this up close before, just in the movies such as the "muppets", but it was definitely some of the most creative talent I have ever seen.
Walking up the streets we're passing stalls with chocolate covered marshmallows, hot chocolate with your choice of baileys or amaretto, nut crackers, hand-woven scarves, trinkets made out of wood, pretzel sandwiches (which actually would've been much better tasting if they were warm) and so much more. It absolutely amazed me to see how many people were actually drinking not only spiked hot chocolate, but huge steins of beer that I saw when I went to Oktoberfest in Munich. I take that back, it did not surprise me at all (because I know that we are in Europe and that's what they do here) but it just showed one more huge difference between the culture here and in the states.
I was scoping out christmas gifts for some of my family and friends back at home because this market did not only consist of christmas decorations and souvenirs, but instead home made and hand crafted objects that I would most likely not be able to find anywhere else. I decided to buy one of my many cousins a gift because she has been generous enough these past few years to help me out while I've been away from my immediate family in North Carolina by hosting me at least once or twice a year and always on Thanksgiving. She has always collected elephants so I bought her one that made the sound of an elephant when you blew into a little hole in its back. I thought it was a good idea because it would be something that she could add to her collection and that her 4 year old son could be entertained by. I also bought gifts for my step mom and my little brother, but I'll leave those out of here because who knows if they are reading this blog right after I post it!
The german hot chocolate spiked with Baileys that I tried was absolutely wonderful. Not only was I losing feeling in my fingers from being so cold, but my sweet tooth was definitely satisfied as well. They gave us little green coins with our mugs that had a little logo on them for the German Christmas markets and if we wanted to get our three pounds back, then we would give them the mug and the coin. I wanted to keep the mug as my own personal souvenir, but of course, me being me, I lost it after sitting down at a place that we thought we were going to be getting tea at...
Once it started to down pour and become more and more miserable, we went to this really cool museum that is actually in partnership with the British Museum. We stayed in there for a while and browsed. Soon after we decided to get some tea and coffee at this adorable little restaurant on a boat. I'm not sure how many people can say that they have had british tea and coffee on a boat, but it's crossed off my bucket list now! It was the most adorable place decorated just for christmas time and perfectly heated so that we were warm and cozy waiting for the endless rain to pass. Unfortunately, it didn't pass and we were forced to go back through the christmas markets in the pouring rain to find our way back to the coach station.
One thing we had to do before we left though was try one of the german sausages. Forgive me because my memory is awful and I cannot remember the name of the sausages for the life of me, but they ended up being really good! It was a nice little taste of my heritage while I was sitting in England. Overall I thought the trip was a definite success. Never mind the rain and the thousands of relentless people that were determined to be at those markets no matter what (yet another difference between the states and here because this place would've been completely empty and shut down if it was raining this hard all day). I love christmas markets and I am so happy that I got to experience my first one out of the 4 that I wanted to get to before the 23rd!
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