Christkandlmarket
Today I journeyed to Chicago--as I am wont to do on weekends--to visit with Michele. We went downtown (which is very nicely decorated for the holidays) and partook, for the second year in a row, in Christkandlmarket Chicago--an annual festival of sorts in which people from various cities in Germany come and set up booths selling traditional German food and goods. Surrounded by booths selling bratwurst, schnitzel, and sauerkraut, I almost wished that I liked beer so that I could partake of that most popular of German delicacies; Michele, who is more adventurous than I, tried a spiced wine beverage of some sort whilst I contented myself with a hot chocolate.
At any rate, it was great fun, and I just wish I had a spare couple hundred dollars with which to buy one of the really cool handmade cuckoo clocks being sold at one booth. If you're in the Chicagoland area over the holidays, you owe it to yourself to check it out. Just wait for a day when it's snowing, and then go warm yourself in the beer tent with a steaming hot drink of some sort (and be sure to talk in a fake German accent while you're at it).