When I was eight, Christmas was ballistically exciting and worth dragging my parents out of bed at 4am for. Over my 32 years since, a combination of atheism, credit card bills and John Lewis-branded Venus flytrap monsters has made me more cynical than excitable about the holiday.
But I feel my humbug attitude slowly dissolve as I walk between the Christmas markets of Dresden, passing a man in an enormous polar bear costume by the grand baroque Frauenkirche building. Finnish Lapland may officially be Santa’s home, but Dresden, in the state of Saxony, southeast Germany, is for many Europe’s capital of Christmas, thanks to its huge network of outdoor Christmas markets.
Soundtracked by the ambient sizzle of fine Thuringian sausages, the markets eschew plastic tat in favour of handcrafted wooden toys. To demand Coca-Cola here instead of a steaming hot local brew would be blasphemous. Rather than mine pies, slices of Dresdner Christstollen, dotted with raisins and almonds, are washed down with mulled wine.
I’ve come to Dresden (population 585,000) in an attempt to restore my depleted Christmas spirit – just one of millions visiting its Christmas markets each year. Then, during the Christmas comedown that will inevitably follow, I plan to explore Dresden’s more underground creative side.
I take the 9.01am Eurostar from St Pancras to Brussels Midi, then trains across Germany to Dresden via Frankfurt: 12 hours in total. A new route to Dresden launching soon will make this trip less of a slog. The European Sleeper, which started running between Brussels and Berlin last May, extends to Prague and Dresden from 25 March 2024, travelling between Brussels Midi and Dresden Hauptbahnhof three times a week each way. You’ll be able to take a mid-afternoon Eurostar from London to Brussels, connect with the European Sleeper at 7.22pm, then wake up in central Dresden at 8.29am.
Aware that I’ll graze on tooth-troubling treats later, and hungry from spending the previous day on trains, I have an early lunch at Brennnessel, a vegetarian restaurant near Hotel Indigo Dresden, where I’m staying. My white carrot soup is mildly spiced and delicious, and I can see why the cosy restaurant is half-full already, just after 11am opening.
From Brennnessel, it’s a 15-minute walk to Striezelmarkt: the jewel of Dresden’s Christmas markets. It’s on Altmarkt (Old Market Square), which was rebuilt after the 1945 bombing by US and British forces that destroyed much of Dresden, and dates from 1434. Back then it was a one-day event for Dresden residents to buy meat for their Christmas feasting, but local tastes seem to have sweetened in the six centuries since. Today, many of the stalls are selling chocolate lollies and icing-dusted Dresdner Christstollen.
Passing a fairytale cottage-style baking demo house, in which a small boy is having a go at flattening cookie dough, I find a stall run by Hoflößnitz winery. The winery is just outside Dresden and claims to date back about as far as the Christmas market. It serves hot plonk in mugs, but I plump for kinderpunsch (thick, non-alcoholic Christmas punch), which goes down like liquid apple crumble and instantly replaces Quality Street orange creams as my peak Christmas taste.
Pepperpot-size wooden trolls match hot drinks for ubiquity here. These heavily bearded knick-knacks crowd every other stall, the bulbous-faced characters often bearing pickaxes or headlamps. Dresden miners had to change career when local silver mines were exhausted in the late 19th century. They turned to woodwork: a move reflected in these handcrafted models, which can cost hundreds of euros.
I do feel some Christmassy warmth at Striezelmarkt, largely thanks to the kinderpunsch. But with some of the Dresdner Christstollens costing about €50, I also feel like the elves are trying to mug me.
Following a tip from a local, I walk a short way to Mittelalter Weihnacht (Medieval Christmas) in Stallhof, once the site of the Royal Palace stables. The Renaissance-style buildings here were also rebuilt after wartime bombing. Today, stubbly men in peasant smocks sell horns of beer, as blacksmiths smash hot metal for Instagramming onlookers.
I prolong the historical theme by going to a show at the nearby Semperoper. The first version of this grand opera house was built in 1841 by Hamburg-born architect Gottfried Semper for the Saxony royal family, who lived in the palace next door. It has been rebuilt many times, with the current incarnation opening in 1985, but the velvet-cushioned interior is still pure 19th-century decadence.
I worry that wearing a bow tie with my Primark suit renders me mildly overdressed, but am reassured in the theatre bar when I meet three women wearing grand period gowns for their girls’ night out. The performance of The Magic Flute, featuring neon sets and extras wearing acid trip animal masks, seems more Mighty Boosh than royalty-approved baroque, but it’s great to see such modern visuals in the historic setting.
The next day I meet Jens Besser, a street artist whose murals can be seen on walls across Dresden. Music and art history combine in the city’s opera houses and museums such as the Old Masters Gallery, featuring paintings from the 15th to 18th centuries, but Besser offers to show me a more contemporary side of Dresden creativity.
Neustadt (New Town) lies north of the Elbe river from Dresden’s Old Town, and in style sits somewhere between subversive artistry and hipster gentrification. As we approach the area, I spot DJ club night adverts spray-painted directly on to walls, and Besser points out a statue of a besuited businessman sitting on a two-storey roof, made by artist David Adam. Garish, punkish neon cartoon character stickers adorn brick walls in underpasses, stuck there by an artist known as Milchmann.
“There’s more money in western Germany than eastern Germany,” says Besser. “The audience for normal [contemporary] art gallery spaces in Dresden is pretty small. So there’s a lot going on in the streets.”
We admire a massive mural featuring skeletal mermaids and werewolves with guns for hands. A man on a bike whizzes past us, yelling, “I painted some of that!”
We escape the drizzle in Bäckerei Konditorei Graf, Besser’s favourite bakery, where we nibble Stollenkonfect: bite-size raisiny stollen drenched in icing sugar, at a few euros for a small bag. Besser has a theory about why baked goods from this no frills place is as good as anything at the Christmas markets.
“The king of Saxony was always based in Dresden, and the royal family had to have good food around it. That’s why even the small bakeries around here have a long tradition of high standards,” he says.
A few doors down in Geldschneider & Co, I meet Olga, an orange-haired jewellery designer whose necklace bears the anarchy symbol. She has worked in Neustadt for a decade and makes steampunk necklaces out of deconstructed wristwatches. “My grandfather was a watchmaker,” she says, tweezering a timepiece. “As a child I was always playing with watch parts and making things with them.”
Olga’s pieces tempt me more than the wooden trolls, but I have another train to catch. I leave Dresden with my festive tolerance levels raised a bit. But surely my biggest achievement there was finding a city where you can make small talk with friendly anarchic steampunks hours after being dressed like a Primark popinjay at the opera.
Train travel from London to Brussels was provided by Eurostar (from £38 each way). Travel from Brussels to Dresden was provided by Omio, whose app allows travellers to compare different transport methods simultaneously. Accommodation in Dresden was provided by Hotel Indigo Dresden (doubles from €88 room-only). Dresden City Card travel pass provided by Visit Dresden. The European Sleeper train runs between Brussels Midi and Dresden Hauptbahnhof from 25 March 2024 (one-way couchette from €69)
