Christmas markets are popping up on every corner in Germany, including the medieval town of Regensburg and city of Munich, where they sell Christmas decorations and a few unexpected items like fake Fabergé eggs (somehow the Czar’s court got involved). The historic backdrop and mulled wine create a unique atmosphere that’s hard to beat.
Who lives in these towns and what do they do for a living, I wonder as I watch the landscape roll by. I’m on a train headed to Regensburg to visit my friend Michaela and the Christmas market. I was looking forward to two hours of reading time, but couldn’t keep myself from looking out the window at the never-ending beautiful scenery. Gently rolling hills and pine forests alternate with now-empty fields. Because of the glaciers that covered the land 10,000 years ago, the soil is so fertile in Bavaria that it’s black. Fairy-tale villages rise out of the forest, their church spires reaching up from the highest hill in their center.
The inhabitants of those villages can’t all be farmers, but they can’t all be remote workers, either. Life outside of metropolitan Munich is very foreign to me and the sights outside the train window never cease to capture my imagination. I can’t get over how this landscape consistently scores 100 points on the picturesque scale, which cannot be said about the landscape seen from…
