The Wind out of My Christmas Sails

[steepholm]

This year, Bristol has been visited for the Christmas season by a German market, with Wurst and Strudel in lavish supply. As I visited the city centre today I came across this giant candle-spinny-thing, something I think of as quintessentially German but don't know the name for, though I own one. The weather was pretty foul, but the Sally Army was playing nearby, and people were going about their festive business quite happily. Then, from behind me, I heard one woman say to another: "You see, this is just the sort of thing I'm afraid might happen in Cardiff." What could she possibly have meant?

Comments

[booksandtea.livejournal.com]

I would call it a Holzpyramide (wood pyramid) or Weihnachtspyramide (christmas pyramid).

[hafren.livejournal.com]

I was in Cardiff Bay today wishing we had a proper Christmas market! Though I think they put the Bristol one in the Broadmead, which is a pity; you need a nice backdrop for it, like in Bath.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I was hoping you might come to my rescue.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

True: I can't make the Broadmead backdrop look good. But then, I don't think Cardiff's in much danger of having a 1960s shopping precinct plonked in its centre, so if that's what she meant she can rest assured.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

We've just had a very large and half-empty covered shopping precinct plonked in it. But there is also a German sausage stall, yippee. I love bratwurst.

[booksandtea.livejournal.com]

No, she's obviously afraid that we shall take over yet.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

We saw this on Thursday and it was indeed bizarre....

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

What an odd structure.

And what are those things in the sky? I've forgotten them, it's been soooo long.

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

Lots of things come through the rift... Cardiff should be used to it by now!

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised Bristol hasn't had a German market sooner: I thought they were compulsory in all city centres now! I don't remember seeing the giant spinning pyramid, but then I haven't been into St Ann's Square this year so maybe it's the latest addition.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Welsh chauvinist? No Germans in Wales?

[hafren.livejournal.com]

Doubtful. Not that many Germans in Cardiff but loads of Italians and Poles, not to mention the Somali and Chinese communities; it's a very multinational city although you would never know that from Torchwood.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

The last couple of years it's been a skating rink, iirc. I don't normally venture much into this part of town, especially in December, but today I had a mysterious package to pick up from Argos.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Our Weihnachtspyramide does look rather like something from which a dalek might emerge in a DW Christmas special.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I haven't seen much of those in the parts of Cardiff I've nobbled around in, though that wasn't that much of the city and it's been something like ten years since I've been there.

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

Have you checked it carefully, just in case?

[sovay]

As I visited the city centre today I came across this giant candle-spinny-thing, something I think of as quintessentially German but don't know the name for, though I own one.

Dude. I wish Lexington got things like that.

Holzpyramide

[l-lee-lowe.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

I managed to set ours alight a few years ago, by using the wrong-sized candles!

[papersky.livejournal.com]

See, of all the reasons I already had to loathe Doctor Who, I now have a new one -- people all over the world have heard of Cardiff, and they know one untrue thing about it.

[(Anonymous)]

Must have been the foul weather - we never get that in Cardiff!x
Ann A