German Christmas markets? They're not magical - just naff From around this time of year through until Christmas, I tend to have a pretty full house. As if by magic, all those friends from back home who've been promising to come and visit stop thinking "Eurgh, Germany..." and start thinking "Ah! Germany! Indeed, it is a special kind of magic that seems to do the trick: the magic of Christmas - or rather, the magic of Christmas markets. Christmas markets are now all the rage in the UK, and the last 10 years have seen them pop up all over the the country. Yet as is almost always the case with national trends that eventually make it big abroad, they're already considered pretty naff on home turf: just ask Americans about Abercrombie & Fitch, or speak to the Spanish about Pedro Almodóvar. Most Germans I know are now sick to the back teeth of al fresco glühwein and lebkuchen, and I think the biggest problem is quite simply overkill. Just like the piles of novelty Santa hats in British supermarkets, the Weihnachtsmärkte seem to come earlier every year: the first one I noticed was open by November 10. Yes, the forces of commercialisation are predictably strong in Europe's powerhouse economy, meaning that - much like taxes and rents - the glühwein prices go up extortionately every year without any noticeable improvement in the quality of what you get. In fact, if anything, the quality gets worse every year. There's nothing as dispiriting as catching the poor blue-lipped Eastern European migrant workers hurriedly hoisting a multi-gallon box full of tramp-grade, pre-mulled "wine" into industrial-looking chrome vats out the corner of your eye - while handing over the thick end of five euros for an, at best, homeopathic dose of it. The same is often true of the stands full of "hand-crafted" items. A little investigation - and a depressingly short conversation with another underpaid Polish student suffering from a mild case of hypothermia - is usually enough to disabuse all but the most starry-eyed punter of the notion that these woolly-hats with ear-flaps ever saw anything like a human hand - well, a hand belonging to a human aged over 10 and located outside of Bangladesh, that is. Anyone still clinging to the illusion that they've acquired something unique they couldn't have bought for the half the price on the high street can be brought back to reality by walking two streets to the next Christmas market, where they'll find an identically laid-out stand with exactly the same merchandise (and, if she's nifty enough, the same Polish student, who will have at least been able to return circulation to the lower portions of her fingers by means of a swift jog). The core of the problem is that, with the exception of the "real" Christkindlmarkt in Nuremberg and a few other traditional ones like it, the Christmas markets elsewhere in Germany are no more an authentic local feature than the ones in the UK: they're just money-making machines. Most Germans are wise to the trick now, but the Weihnachtsmärkte in Hamburg or Berlin are still packed to the gunnels by mid-December at the latest, and the only explanation I can find for it is that, if you talk to office workers out here, the Friday-afternoon visit to the Christmas market on company petty cash is the rough equivalent of that wonderful British institution, the office Christmas party. With German city centres not generally having much in the way of pubs, and with the understandable German aversion to ruining their pristine glass-and-steel office spaces, the Weihnachtsmarkt next to the tube station is the perfect location for pretending to like people for an extra few hours while guzzling down cheap booze to numb the pain. All of which explains why most Germans I know think Christmas markets are pretty naff - but still usually end up at one at least once a year. Find the rest of our expat guest columns here