The Food
Brussels provides more variety and has a greater international influence whereas Nuremberg is still strictly traditional.
In Brussels we had pelmeni (the Russian equivalent of tortellini), seafood soup, escargot, a witlof bacon-ey stew thing and tartiflette. All of which you couldn't fault.
A bit more time in Nuremberg meant a bit more food.
Savoury foods we had were raw pork mince with onion and paprika on rye, pork steak in a bun, some chestnuts, Nürnberger sausages in a bun (unlike the well known big fat bratwurst found elsewhere in Germany these are little finger sized ones) and kartoffelpuffer which are potato pancakes that come with a massive dollop of apple sauce. Nice.
And sweets we had were traditional German lebkuchen (which sort of resembles gingerbread), a piece of stollen and the fruitiest fruit bread you've ever seen. Would you like some bread with that fruit?
The Drinks
Brussels only really offered up mulled wine and no mulled beer interpretation, much to our disappointment.
However Nuremberg has Brussels covered here. We had your standard mulled wine, heidelbeer (blueberry mulled wine) and feuerzangenbowle, where rum soaked sugar is set on fire and then drips into mulled wine. It is fekking delicious.
The Germans also do an egg punch, which is similar to eggnog, and it turns out that after a few feuerzangenbowle, some beers and some of the egg punch Nicola goes off the deep and and quite mental. This is her mid craze.
The Other Stuff
Brussels' Grand Place is beautiful at the worst of times. Lit up with Christmas lights and the most tasteful, gigantic Christmas tree you've ever seen and it's truly a sight to behold.
Nix also fell in love with this merry go round, if only she was 15 years younger...
Other stuff in Nuremberg? Not too much. We couldn't actually determine which was their Christmas tree and the markets were fairly textbook.
The Verdict
It's always hard to diss an original and you can see that the Brussels markets have spawned from German influences but Brussels wins this one fairly comfortably I believe. It's more interesting and it's more unique. Nuremberg certainly has its place and we're very happy that we checked it out but we'd return to the Brussels markets again and again before we'd go back to the Nuremberg markets.
The Barrie-ometer of "Feel" - "it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas"
