Good fun before xmas (Leeds German Christmas Market)

Member Name: mizzy

Product:	Leeds German Christmas Market
Date:	06/04/09 (145 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: free entry to beer hall, cheap food, good atmosphere

Disadvantages: expensive beer!

The German market comes to Leeds for about a month before xmas. Its free to look around, and there are plenty of things to buy for xmas.

A lot of the stalls are run by Germans, although there are lots of people from Leeds who have been employed by a German company to run the stalls.

There are stalls selling old fashioned wooden toys, glow in the dark things, homemade candels, strange hats, bits and bobs, arts and crafts, clocks, jewellery and anything else that is a bit useless but your granny or child would like.

The best part of the market is the food and the beer hall. There are stalls selling burgers, german sausages, chocolate decorations, waffles, garlic bread, garlic mushrooms, fried potatoes, and mulled wine. I tried the combination of garlic mushrooms and fried potatoes. They were very tasty, well cooked and I didnt have to queue up to eat, everyone was at the hotdog stand. However being vegetarian obviously was an advantage.

In the beer hall its decorated like a traditional German grotto/beer hall. In a real one I imagine you can go up on the balcony, but there were some strange scary elf models instead.

They have shows on the weekends in the evenings, I saw once a German band who played a lot of upbeat English songs as well as their own folk songs. They really knew how to get the crowd going, by jumping up on tables and dancing with everyone.

The only critisism of the beer hall is that theres a bar right in the middle, so the people at the back of the hall cant see the band at all, it would be better to have the bar further back so more people can see the show.

I saw a lot of people drinking massive jugs of beer, these can be bought for £9 which includes the beer, you can give the jug back and get £3 back.
They also serve mulled wine, they put it in a mug and try to charge you £6 but you can ask to have it in a cup and this is only £3.

In the hall they also serve full traditional meals like ghoulash and more sausage. The meals looked really tasty, but cost around £6 so better to buy the food outside and bring it in.

The hall had a great party atmosphere but under 18s arent allowed in after 6 on the weekends because everyone is very drunk from the huge tankards of beer, and the show gets a bit ruder. They have bouncers on the door enforcing this.

You have to get there early to get a seat, people seem to have been in there all day!

If your coming to Leeds this year, definately coincide it with the market being there, as it is a really nice way to start feeling christmassy.

Summary: it was fun