Did I ever
tell you I love Christmas time? There is only one reason for that – speculaas
or Spekulatius as we call them.
It’s a
typical type of spiced shortcrust biscuit in some European countries. They are
thin, very crunchy, caramelized, slightly browned cookies. Typically they have
some image stamped on before baking. The spices in speculaas are cinnamon,
nutmeg, cloves, ginger, cardamom and white pepper.
Nowadays
the supermarkets start selling them on September 1st. That gives me four
months of speculaas every year. I missed them a lot when we were in the USA and
Canada. My mistress got them in a Canadian supermarket once and was very happy.
She bought five packages at once. Good thing she did, next time she went there
they were all gone.
When we are
in Germany we typically go to the Christmas Market in Frankfurt. This year the
Christmas market was canceled because of that virus everybody is talking about.
But this
little town of Fachbach organized a drive-thru Christmas market.
It was open
from Friday to Sunday evenings. Luckily my humans decided to go there shortly
after they opened on Friday. Moritz, our host’s son accompanied us. Mogli and I
were in the car too and watched everything curiously.
There were
small houses where you could get Glühwein, crafts, sweets, food and even beer
from a local brewery. Driving very slowly you could look and stop to have a
closer look. It was fun!
My humans
wanted to return the next day to get some beer from that brewery, but it was so
crowded that you had to wait four hours to approach the first hut. The radio
stations told people not to come anymore because they couldn’t handle the
traffic and the market was full. If you wanted to leave town there was no way
to go, everywhere was a traffic jam.
There aren’t
many towns that do something like that but the owner of the camping area wanted
to do something special and organized all this. You couldn’t walk there or
leave the car.
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