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Monday, December 17, 2012

Visiting Nuremberg, Germany's Christmas Market with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget




Visiting Nuremberg, Germany's Christmas Market with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget


Nuremberg’s Christkindlesmarkt first appears in historical records in 1628 when an oval box decorated with flowers mentions it. The box contained skeins of silk to be sold at the market. 

 

The box is now housed at the German National Museum in Nuremberg according to the website www.christkindlesmarkt.de , which details the world’s most famous Christmas market.


Today the Christmas market features 180 wood stalls that sell traditional wood crafts, food, and drinks. In the children’s area, there are small train rides and a merry-go-round.  

 

The Nuremberg Christkindlesmarkt hosts two million visitors every year where the good-natured crowd treads cobble stone streets and is just as much part of the scene as the wood carved decorations on the booths and Christmas trim.


While walking around the main square where the market is held, my husband Laurent and I discovered the Korn and Berg Bookstore.  Korn and Berg was founded in 1531 and is Germany’s oldest bookstore.  The scent of new paper greeted us when we entered the ship.  I purchased a blank book with a flower-patterned cover that shimmers in the light for my alchemical musings brought on by our visit to this German town full of medieval buildings.


On our next trip to Nuremberg, we plan to visit the German National Museum which houses paintings by Albrecht Dürer (1471 – 1528), Hans Holbein (1497 – 1543), and Lucas Cranach (1472 – 1553) among other art objects.  


Art was often my entryway to understanding French culture when I was younger.   I hope to use art again to understand German culture in addition to studying the German language.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books



Laurent Paget Photography

Laurent Paget Photography

Laurent Paget Photography

Ruth Paget Selfie





Monday, December 3, 2012

Visiting Lyon, France with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Lyon (France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget


Lyon, France’s geographical position has made it a commercial hub between Italy and northern Europe for centuries.


Charles VII (1403 – 1461) used this geographical position to his advantage by instituting the first of several international fairs that made Lyon a sales capital in 1419.  Later in 1450, Charles VII gave Lyon the monopoly on the sale and manufacture of silk in France.


Men in Lyon still wear beautiful silk ties in diamond patterns with red, blue, and yellow backgrounds.  You can find these ties in luxury stores and exclusive hotel shops.  The silk industry also gave Lyon its famous guignol marionette.


An unemployed silk worker named Laurent Mourguet created the guignol character around 1808.  Guignol is a citizen of Lyon, who works very hard, but never seems to have good luck.  There is a museum devoted to guignol and marionettes from around the world at the Château Gadagne in Lyon.


Lyon is world famous for this museum as well as its food, which I happily sampled at the Brasserie Georges.  The Brasserie Georges makes fun of itself for being an Alsatian brasserie and choucroute landmark, but it has been an institution in Lyon since 1836 when it was founded by Jean-Georges Hoffherr.  (Traditional dining establishments in Lyon are called bouchons.)


Brasserie Georges is located by the Perrarche SNCF train station.  Its location allows businessmen to arrive on morning trains, carry out business over a leisurely lunch, and return home without having to stay in a hotel.  


One of the first things I noticed about Lyon was that diners concentrate on their food and do not spend as much time inspecting other diners’ clothing and jewelry as they do in other cities.  Lyon is considered to be the capital of French food and maybe this attitude towards eating is responsible for it.


The first lunch I ate at Brasserie Georges reminded me of what someone from Paris would eat as they headed south in France: roast saddle of lamb with a endives au gratin.  The endives au gratin were not bitter at all and tasted sweet a crust of browned cheese. The gratin stayed deliciously warm in its own heat dish.  For dessert, I ate crème brulée which had a sugary, warm crust on it – perfection.


The next day was a Saturday and the clientèle changed from the weekday businessmen’s lunches.  More multigenerational families were there.   My husband Laurent and I had to wait a short while for a table and watched as waiters carried baked Alaska desserts around the dining room hall with sparklers on top of them for birthdays to the tunes of a hole-punched, card-fed music box.


I ordered a traditional Lyon-style menu this time starting with a terrine made of chicken livers.  Following this course was a course of sausages meant for cooking that Lyon specializes in.  They had been flavored with pistachios, but can also be found with pepper corns and truffles in their more elaborate forms.  Mashed potatoes accompanied the sausage.


We drank a Beaujolais from Brouilly with our meal. We laughed at the old Lyon joke:


-What are the three rivers that run through Lyon?


- The Rhône, the Saône, and the …


- And, the Beaujolais!!!


To finish the meal I had a “cervelle de Canut” cheese, which literally means a silk worker’s brains cheese. This is a specialty of Lyon made from soft, white cheese with chopped herbs (chives in the Brasserie Georges version), shallots, salt, pepper, olive oil, and vinegar.


This meal marked the end to our visit to Lyon.  After three trips to this beautiful city, I still feel as if I have just scratched the surface of what Lyon has to offer.


By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books



Laurent Paget Photography

Laurent Paget Photography

Laurent Paget Photography


Ruth Paget Selfie