Wien Christmas

What is readily apparent about a Viennese Christmas is that one does not have to pretend that it is winter.  There are no weirdly inappropriate Christmas trees basking in the Sri Lankan tropical sunshine or decorations drooping under a mild Seattle drizzle.  Wien in December is cold, grey and foggy, yet the streets are brightly lit and thronged with people.

Vienna is a tourist destination.   One cannot throw a cigar butt here without it bouncing off of a palace, museum, monument or cathedral.  Local touts dressed in goofy opera capes and cheap shoes hawk opera tickets to tourists who would never go to the opera back home.  There are Mozart concerts every day of the week,  double-decker "hop on hop off" buses, and polyglot walking tours.  The long tourist season runs from spring until fall, with the peak times being summer and the crush of August travel in Europe.  

Wien has another tourist season and that season is in full swing as I write this post.  Christmas in Vienna is a Big Deal.  Not only are the festivities a Big Deal to the locals, folks come from all over the world to experience the joyeux noel.   There are christmas markets everywhere, from shopping streets to palace squares.  Anywhere that a few huts can be fitted in there will be a christmas market. The market, big or small, will have booths selling gifts, some festive lights strung up above and, most importantly, a big bustling booth selling hot mugs of Weihnachtspunsch.  No Hot Punch, no christmas market.  It seems to me that the raison d'etre for these villages of HoHoHo is to give the locals a place to congregate, drink hot alcoholic concoctions, and freeze their tuckus' off.  Of course the freezing comes with while drinking, smoking and giggling.  And there really are chestnuts roasting.

Okay, I admit it, the damn markets are fun.  I have been won over to a new Christmas spirit, my inner Ebenezer shaken.  Hell, I will probably cook a christmas goose.  I am getting with the Wien Holiday program.  What's not to like?  Bundle up in warm clothes, go to the market, eyeball the cute hand-crafted knick-knacks, then settle in for a long night of drinking from hot mugs, eating thick, cheesy spatzele and giant pretzels while bunched up around open air tables where everyone else is doing the same thing.  Granted, I'm getting loaded on sugar and caffeine whilst the majority of folks are swilling the punsch, but it is still fun.  And whoa! I am here to tell you that if you mix two shots of espresso with one of the giant macaroons from the third booth on the left, a brother is going to get a buzz on.  

And guess what?  No shopping malls!!!  Unless one travels out to the edges of Wien, get ready for real shopping on really cold streets, then sweating in the store, then back out on the cold streets again.  Glorious!!

Okay, okay, so I hate shopping malls.  Not a big surprise, right?  

The entrance to the fairyland of the Schonbrunn Palace Christmas market.  Ponder this as you look at the huge edifice:  Someone used to live here.

The Christmas markets are scattered across the city.  There are the tourist magnets of the Rathausplatz and Karlsplatz markets in the Alt Stadt and the highly regarded Spittelberg Market, which is prized by the locals.   The choices are varied and flung across the cityscape.  For our Saturday-Evening-before-Christmas we chose the cultural market at the Schonbrunn Palace, former home of the Hapsburg Emperors and Empresses.

This was the one of the little shacks of Marie Teresa whose iconic image adorns refrigerator magnets and tea sets in every tourist shop in Vienna.

The market was arranged in a huge square on the even larger entrance courtyard of the palace.  The backs of the booths formed a nice defensive palisade, just in case the Ottomans decided to invade again.  The Christmas booths sell everything from Kitsch to Kraft, edible and non.  Heirloom ornaments are popular, but so are wurst and chocolate, honey and quill pens.  We swam upstream against the crowd, which seemed to have a counter-clockwise swirl as they circled the booths.  

Of course there is a tree and a damn big one.  There are bands and choirs, twinkling lights and Kriss Kinder Kind walking around on stilts.  Languages from all over the world bounce around amongst the crowd, but this is still an Austrian affair and the locals are out in force here.

The heart of the matter:  A punsch stand.  For about four euro, you get a ceramic mug of hot, mildly alcoholic punch.  The concoctions vary from booth to booth, but the theme is the same.  The mug deposit is 2.5 euro, keep the mug or not, as you can return the mug to any stand and get back your deposit.  One needs lots of calories to stand out in the cold all night, smoking and joking.  Pairing the steaming punch with heavy bowls of spatzele or kartofelen wedges keeps the revelers on their feet longer.

The christmas booths nestle right up to the main entrance to the palace, which adds a dramatic and over the top backdrop to the whole affair.

Yes, I admit it, I am getting with the holiday spirit here in Wien.  In this case, the mug is just a prop.  I was swilling espresso.  Drink, eat, smoke, laugh, stomp your feet against the chill, repeat as needed.  What else does a holiday party require?

I am sending out this post hoping that you, my Friends and Neighbors around the globe, are getting down with some good holiday cheer.  I have spent the last six Christmas seasons in places like india (scary, scary Santas!!) or Cambodia (It's a Holiday in Cambodia!!)  Truthfully, the holidays have mostly slid by quietly and without context.  This year, well, its more of a James Brown "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" kind of Christmas.  I am sure there will be more holiday stuff to follow, but from Wien, it's Ciao for Now.