Saturday in the City

On all the Saturdays in Advent the Tram is free, so last Sat we took advantage and hopped on to go to the Innere Stadt, the city center, for some Christmas shopping and sightseeing. For our niecies in Germany, who are 8 and 10, we really hadn't a clue to what to get, not knowing what's hot and what's not for the elementary school set, not knowing what they already have, and not wanting to pander to trends anyway. So, I got to thinking about books as a gift, even though they are a very literary family already, and the books I loved around that age. It was actually really fun to dredge up from memory & from Amazon the titles of books I haven't thought about in years (and then check amazon.de to see if there's a German translation). From a long list we chose: Island of the Blue Dolphins (Scott O'Dell), since it takes place off the coast of CA and the main character is buried at the SB mission; Charlotte's Web (EB White); The BFG (Roald Dahl), which is called Sophiechen und die Riese, and is only available right now in audio book (a reprint is soon to be out); Sid Fleischman's The 13th Floor, A Ghost Story; and The Greatest Christmas Pageant Ever (Robinson), whose German title translates to, Help, the Herdmans are Coming. Sid Fleischman's Mr. Mysterious & Co. is out of print, which is really really sad - that's one of my favorite favorite books.

So we took the Tram to Jakominiplatz, and wandered through the market as it was wrapping up. This is a huge farmers market that happens everyday, but is biggest on Saturday. The usual veggies and breads, but also lots of meat - home cured, dried, as well as sausages, aspics, etc.  There are lots of small-scale, family farms in the area (including wineries - this is a big grape-growing region).  Also at the market lots of holiday stuff - ready made advent wreaths and mini Christmas trees, pine boughs and something like mistletoe to make your own decorations, and then a few places to get a snack, including a fish stand that looked really good (nothing like fresh fried fish on a frosty day, eh?).

But we wandered to the main (shopping) street, Herrengasse, and went in to the bookstore to look for our American classics. We found them all, except for having to order The 13th Floor. T hadn't heard of the Best Christmas Pageant ever, and started reading it in line to pay. He was already laughing on the second page.

The next priority was some lunch, and somewhere in the city a Doener was calling our name. Ducking down a narrow alley we came upon a tiny doener shop, luckily with a couple of tables and a couple of seats at a bar inside to get out of the cold (along with the usual standing tables outside, of course). YUM! A Doener is like a gyro but way way better. And this place even made their own pita, and their yogurt garlic sauce was minty and super yummy. Mmmm, so good! It looked like a family enterprise - a father with his 2 daughters running the shop.

Then some more wandering, through the Christkindlmarkts, through the giant department store with the humongous toy department - there was a carousel, a cookie baking/decorating station, and all kinds of toy demo stations - play with the race car track, trains, legos, etc. And that was in a room adjacent to the main floor, which featured a puppet theater. What fun.

In not too long T reached his shopping tolerance, so back out to the Herrengasse to find a nice cafe in which to rejuvenate and read the books we bought! Happily the next one we came upon was the Palais Hotel Erzherzog Johann Cafe, a very large, beautiful, Viennese style cafe - perfect. We managed to get a table in the front, which had a little more character than in the back, and were tucked into our own corner at the window.

I sampled the house specialty cake along with a chai latte, and T happened to have a bar of drinking chocolate in his coat from the day before, and so stirred that into into a glass of steamed milk. Yum! T proceeded to finish the story of the Herdmans, laughing every 5 pages or so, and careful not to crease the binding. I played ipod apps.

As evening fell it actually got more and more crowded in the Altstadt, as people came out for Gluehwein (mulled wine; that's my Gluehwein mug in the photo at the top, you can either return the mug for 2 euro or keep it as a memento) and Maroni (roasted chestnuts).
We managed a little more shopping in the Christkindlmarkts, and then stayed around for the Glockenspiel 'performance' at 6 pm, in Glockenspielplatz. Two figures, a woman and a man, come twirling out of doors to a folk tune, twirl around for a minute or so, then twirl back inside. Here's a short video; I'll spare you the longer one:

Notice all the pealing bells in the background after the Glockenspeiel stops. It was very cold, and snow was just beginning to start to flurry. We headed for the Tram for home, the bells ringing all around.