The Heinzelmännchen Christmas Market with an ice skating rink and French nougat

Hi Hive Friends,

today I would like to tell you something about the "Heinzels Wintermärchen" Christmas market in Cologne, after I presented you in my last post my experiences with the Christmas market at the Cologne Cathedral. I visited it with a friend who has moved to Cologne and really wanted to show it to me:)
The gate to the Christmas market looks super nice - it shines in a bright yellow, which contrasts very nicely with the dark green and above three Heinzelmännchen are set up to match the Christmas market.

The Christmas market is even open until 09 January - so you still have the opportunity to go there after the beginning of January!:)
It is the largest Christmas market in Cologne and it extends over the Alter Markt and the Heumarkt. The name comes from the Cologne Heinzelmännchen, as my friend told me.
So the Heinzelmännchen were house spirits who took the work from the Köllner in the night. The citizens were grateful for this, and so the Heinzelmännchen did the people's unfinished work every night, without the people getting to see the great beings. But one day a woman was too curious and put peas on the stairs in her house, so that at nightfall the Brownies slipped on the stairs and remained lying there. She laughed at the Brownies, who sadly disappeared back into the night. From then on, the work of the citizens remained at night and the people had to do it themselves again. I must say that when my friend told me this story, I found it sad, but then I thought that it would be good to learn from it.

I especially liked a stand with tea lights that were painted with different motifs on them: Sometimes it was the Cologne Cathedral with the starry sky in the background, sometimes it was giraffes in the sunset and sometimes it was the skyline of Cologne with a shooting star above it. The colors looked just great!I bought a tea light with the Cologne Cathedral on it, so I had a small "souvenir" from this beautiful city with me.

What I also found great, which made the atmosphere really Christmassy again: The individual vendors at the booths all had different outfits on to match the Christmas market- some were dressed as brownies, others had a chef's outfit on, and still others had a casual plaid shirt with a cowboy hat on.

Besides all the goodies and craft booths, my friend told me that there was also a skating rink there.I didn't need to be told twice - I love skating (even though I'm not that good at it) and especially with such a backdrop !:) We had a lot of fun skating and it wasn't too crowded either, so it was easy to skate without fear of getting in someone's way. With time, however, our feet became very cold, so we decided to stroll a bit over the Christmas market before we went home:)

And then I discovered again the houses of lights, which should not be missing on any Christmas market in Germany!:) For me, they always have a kind of magical attraction, maybe later I'll buy several and set up a little winter village:)

And then we came along the stand "Bar Owl" - the name did the stand all honor - there towered as a column of the stand a huge owl carved out of wood, so I had not seen before at a Christmas market.

Hunting lodge, sausage forge

We came along a French nougat stand, which offered nougat in any form with very different "garnishes" - sometimes it was almonds, other times it was dried fruit. We were even allowed to try a little bit of the nougat on the right in the picture with the almonds and it also tasted really good, so we took a little bag with us:)

Here on the picture you can see the most different chocolate cubes: whether strawberry-vanilla, apple-cinnamon or mango-yogurt: This stand has a lot of high quality chocolate to offer!:)

Last but not least, we enjoyed a potato fritter: I love Reibekuchen, especially the Reibekuchen from my mom at home tastes great, but this Reibekuchen was also very tasty! It is also called potato pancakes or potato pancakes, typical ingredients are potatoes, onions, flour, salt and egg. My favorite topping is applesauce, but you can also use cinnamon, sugar, lettuce or sauerkraut:)

Here we walked from the Christmas market towards the Rhine, then we walked along the Rhine promenade and from there towards the main train station, walking along the Cologne Cathedral. There I just had to shoot another photo; it was the last evening for me in Cologne, about which I was a little sad. But I will definitely visit it again in the near future!:)