Claire Smith: The city's Christmas market is a tradition for Edinburgh residents, and the stallholders who return each year IT'S St Nicholas Day at the German market - Peggy Jane Pauli, the Christmas bauble lady - is wearing special ­reindeer earrings and a santa bobble in her hair, and her shop assistant is dressed as an elf. It may be grey, drizzly, cold and windy, but the stall holders, wrapped up against the cold are overwhelmingly cheerful, ­shouting greetings to each other and wearing huge smiles. The German Market has become a tradition in Edinburgh since the millenium, and some stallholders, many of them ­German, have been coming back year after year. "We love it," says Jyotis and Dayini Feraud who are working on a stall which sells traditional Christmas decorations. This year, the German market has 33 stalls, in a little village of wooden huts at the foot of the Mound. Serving traditional gluhwein, marzipan, chocolate and german sausages, the market has become part of the Edinburgh winter landscape - visited by ­locals and tourists alike. For many of the stallholders, working on the market has ­become a regular part of their year - and for many it is a ­family affair. Jyotis and Dayini Feraud will be here for three-and-a-half weeks and will spend Christmas here before flying back to India. Jyotis Feraud has been coming since the market began. When I arrive, the sisters are trying to hold their carved wooden Christmas pyramids topped with rotating blades, which are threatening to take off in the city's typically strong winds. "Our pyramids are blowing away," says Jyotis, laughing. The sisters are French, but lived in Germany for many years. Today they both live in India - Jyotis is a jewellery designer based in Pondicherry, while Dayini runs a French bakery in Goa. In India they are miles apart, but in Edinburgh it's a chance to catch up. Dayini says: "We never get to have winter in India so it's good to spend a month here."And although the market involves working ten hours a day, seven days a week, Jyotis says: "We wouldn't be anywhere else for Christmas." For Barbara Meyerhof, who has been at the market since its ­second year, the work was originally part of a plan to spend time with her teenage daughter. Meyerhof, an art historian in a gallery in Bremen had no experience of catering - but decided to run a German food stall. It was a crazy fun idea. I wanted to do an adventure with my daughter - so I said let's go to Scotland and make a Christmas market," she recounts. Meyerhof now has seven stalls. She wasn't surprised at all when Scottish visitors and tourists developed a taste for strudel, pretzels, sausage, fried potatoes and fried cheese. And it is good stuff. Meyerhof shows me the Alpine cheese rolled in wild flowers produced by a small co-operative of dairy farmers and the Danish honey made by her daughter's grandfather-in-law. Her mother, Veronika Laschke, now reigns over the waffle stall, serving hot chocolate and fluffy waffles, topped with chocolate, cherries, vanilla or cream and baked to a secret recipe. Meyerhof says: "It's the same waffles she used to make every Sunday when I was a child and now I can have them every day." Her mother's involvement began when she came to visit in the first year, and said: "Give me an apron, you need help." This year her daughter is at home with a baby - but normally, three generations work together in Edinburgh. This is a special thing for me and my mother and my daughter. It's a chance to spend time together without husbands - it's very good for us. Close by, on the stall selling customised Christmas decorations, Peggy Jane Pauli tells me she has Scottish customers who come back every year to buy what she calls "bubbles." "I call them bubbles, or ­baubles," she laughs. I used to call them balls but sometimes that means something else. I have regular customers who come every year to get a bubble. Some were babies when they first came and now they have grown up and come by ­themselves to choose a bubble. She learned to decorate and engrave glass baubles when she worked at an all-year-round Christmas shop in Frankfurt. And she says she never gets sick of the sound of carols and the wafting clouds of chocolate ­vapour and mulled wine steam. "I am a wee Christmas ­person," she says with a beaming smile. Sandra Drilczek - the markt meister, or market master - who is from Nuremburg in Bavaria, travels with her husband running a ferris wheel for the rest of the year. In Edinburgh, she dashes around between the stalls to make sure things are running with German efficiency. She says: "The customers are really so nice. If you have a big queue they are so nice and friendly and they wait patiently to be served. Among her regular customers are serving soldiers who developed a taste for German food. There are a lot of soldiers here and they know their sausages and are so excited when they see we have curry wurst. But when she first came, she never imagined she would still be here thirteen years later. "We'd been tourists in Edinburgh and loved the city so when they asked us to do it we thought: "We'll try it. I do feel - a little bit - yes, proud," she says.