Last weekend Cliff, Kelly and I headed to the christkindlmarket in Chicago. It used to be a tradition to visit the market on Christmas Eve but this year we decided to head to the market a little early. The good news is nothing was sold out. When we went on Christmas Eve they were usually out of the little souvenir “boot” mugs or the little booths were starting to close down. This year everything was open and available. The bad news is it was very busy! We could barely get around and look at the booths.
Kelly was looking to buy a glass ornament to give as a gift so we stopped at a few ornament booths but otherwise we were pretty much there just for the food. We headed for the bratwurst and potato pancake lines. Cliff got a bratwurst and Kelly and I each got an order of potato pancakes. We also got an apple cider. I always forget until we get to the market how much I love potato pancakes. We decided we would need to make our own homemade potato pancakes soon. Cliff also really liked his bratwurst. There were 2 bratwurst on a bun with mustard and lots of sauerkraut. Not my thing, but he liked it!
We walked around a bit and then decided we were ready to hit up the soft pretzel booth. That’s when things went downhill for me. First of all, when we went to Italy last month we had a layover in Munich. I’d never been to Germany so I was hoping maybe we could find something German to eat at the airport. What is more German than a soft pretzel, right? I am sure that soft pretzels are about as German as fries are French. But I decided to buy one anyway. By this time all of my Euros were long gone. So, I asked the guy at the counter if they take credit. He said yes. I asked for 1 pretzel. But he said I needed to spend 15 Euros to use my card. So I never did get authentic German food while I was in the Munich airport. So anyway, I figured the second best place to get a soft pretzel would have to be the christkindlmarket. All along I had planned to get a plain pretzel. But as we got closer I saw that they had cheesecake pretzels, grilled cheese pretzel, spinach pretzels and cinnamon pretzels. Kelly was getting plain so I made a game time decision to get a cinnamon pretzel. That was absolutely one of the worst decisions of my entire life. As we walked away with our pretzels, I said to Kelly mine looks like whole wheat. But she was like nooo, it didn’t say that. Sure enough it was whole wheat. And it didn’t even really taste like cinnamon anyway. To be honest, it was pretty awful. Kelly gave me a bite of her plain one and I was really kicking myself.
Lesson learned. From now on I will only buy plain soft pretzels at the christkindlmarket.
