Weihnachtsmarkt

Advent started a bit over a week ago, so the local Weihnachtsmarkt is in full swing. The Weihnachtsmarkt in Rostock runs through Kröpeliner Straße, from the old Kröpeliner Tor on one side to Neuer Markt and Steintor at the other end. As with many of the festivals in Rostock, the center of gravity downtown is in the square in front of the beautiful old Rostock University.

My favorite part is the Historischer Weihnachtsmarkt, which features stalls owned by folks with an interest in handmade arts and crafts. There's something wonderful about strolling around this part of the market, nestled up against the medieval Rostock city walls, especially at night with a hot, steaming mug of Glühwein warming your hands.

Walking through the market today I started thinking about about all the myriad, complicated arrangements that go into making the Rostock Weihnachtsmarkt happen. Within one to two days, some eighty or ninety different stalls, really small sheds or booths, are delivered and decorated, before being loaded with all sorts of goods, some made locally and many made on the other side of the world. Each item of decoration, each item for sale has passed through many hands from its original design, creation or manufacture before finally being individually set out for display here, in a small town in North Germany, on the Baltic Coast.

In the scheme of things, the Rostock Weihnachtsmarkt is a very small event. Yet, given all the sour political and economic news at present, it is reassuring to watch thousands of people come together to produce such a complex production, involving so many different and unconnected groups, and to have it go off relatively smoothly. To have it appear, and in a few more weeks, disappear overnight, like clockwork.

It is also reassuring to think about all the hundreds of thousands of transactions that must have gone into producing the market, from hotels rooms booked and meals and drinks ordered, to the purchasing of the wine to make the Glühwein in my hands. Almost all of these transactions would have been done in good faith, and while conducted profitably, would have been of mutual benefit and just part of normal day-to-day life, utterly unremarkable.

Of course, in this sense the whole German economy and society is like the Rostock Weihnachtsmarkt, just immensely larger and more complex and taking place every day of the year. While I love reading newspapers and the sour news of the day, these countless, unremarkable and invariably good-faith interactions don't make news, even though they are far more real and immediate than anything that I've read in a newspaper in a long time.