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As I wrote in my last post I had gone to the Christmas Village in Baltimore only once in 2022. Before I left home I managed to put a couple of Disney Nuimos in my purse so I could take a few fun photos. I ended up taking Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps from the Disney movie Zootopia because they are my newest Nuimos and I thought it would be cool to take some photos with them. I made a video slideshow from those photos, which I’ve uploaded on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Enjoy!
This past year (I can’t believe that it’s 2023 already!) I went back to the Christmas Village in Baltimore for what turned out to be my one and only visit. I wanted to return one more time on my birthday (December 15) but, as I wrote previously, the weather was absolutely horrible. (In fact, I later learned that the weather was so bad that the Christmas Village ended up closing early.)
The weather was relatively mild so I enjoyed myself as I ate outside, checked out some of the outside vendors, then entered inside of the main heated tent. At one point I shot video footage of a very talented fiddler who played a variety of Christmas songs, which I uploaded on TikTok, Clapper, Instagram, and YouTube.
I shot a bunch of photos that I later compiled into a video slideshow and uploaded on TikTok, Clapper, Instagram, and YouTube. Enjoy!
I brought the Disney Nuimos along in a cloth bag while I was visiting the Christmas Village in Baltimore and making a video about the place for my ongoing series The Baltimore-Washington, DC That Tourists Rarely Visit. I took a few pictures of the plushies and I created a video slideshow that I uploaded on to TikTok and YouTube.
I decided to make the latest episode in my ongoing online video series The Baltimore and Washington, DC That Tourists Rarely Visit. It’s based on my recent two visits to the Christmas Village in Baltimore (which I wrote about at length yesterday and even posted still pictures). I uploaded it on to TikTok, Clapper and YouTube. Enjoy!
I made my first trip to the Christmas Village in Baltimore since 2017. Tight finances prevented me from attending the last few years and the Christmas Village was canceled last year due to the Coronavirus pandemic. With the vaccines being available the Christmas Village decided to hold its German-style market while some of the German cities decided to cancel their own Christmas markets due to the pandemic.
I decided to go on the first weekend it opened. There were some changes since my last visit, starting with this ferris wheel that wasn’t there the last time I went.
A big sign of the times is seeing this walking gingerbread man, who’s the Christmas Village mascot, walking around the area wearing his own face mask.
Another change I’ve noticed since my last visit is the addition of this structure, which is known as the Gluhwine Pyramid.
As you can guess by the name, the Gluhwine Pyramid sells gluhwine as well as other drinks, both alcoholic and nonalcoholic, and a variety of sweets.
Another difference is that hand sanitizing stations were set up throughout the village, mainly because of the fact that we are still in a major pandemic.
Otherwise the Christmas Village itself remained mostly the same as my last visit.
The main tent was still there but, unlike my last visit in 2017, there were no appearances of the Christkind from Nurenberg. With the pandemic still going on and the arrival of the more deadly Omicron variant, it would’ve been more difficult getting international visitors to the Christmas Village this year. But there were still a variety of food and handcrafted items available for sale.
They had people dressed as elves with very long stilts walk around the village. I managed to take a picture of one of them exiting the main tent just when I was entering.
The handcrafted booths weren’t too crowded (as you can see in the next picture) but the food and drink booths were another matter. There were huge lines at each food/drink booth. I guess people really missed having to eat and drink at the village since the event was cancelled last year due to the pandemic.
The lines were so long that I decided to leave the Christmas Village and return on a weekday. I returned a few days later on December 2 and there were smaller crowds than on the weekend. I also returned at sunset so I was able to see the entire village lit up in very pretty lights.
I was able to take a more leisurely walk without having to maneuver my way around huge throngs of people and I saw a few things I missed on my first trip, such as this Christmas carousel where people could choose to ride either horses or red-nosed reindeer. How cool is that?
I also saw a couple of elves on stilts walking around the grounds of the village.
As for dinner, I ate bratwurst with a side order of sauerkraut and a Diet Coke. The meal was delicious. There were other food that I wanted to try but I was too full from dinner. I had thought about making a return visit so I could try other food but then the Omicron variant arrived and it’s really vicious. Yesterday I learned that Maryland Governor Larry Hogan tested positive for the Coronavirus. What’s more, on Capitol Hill Rep. Jason Crow and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Corey Booker had all tested positive for the Coronavirus as well. All had been vaccinated and received booster shots yet they still caught COVID-19.
I, too, have received vaccine and booster shots and I’m trying to avoid getting this virus. I’ve read some of the accounts on Twitter from vaccinated people who caught the virus and even the mild version is enough to make you extremely sick for at least two weeks. I don’t want to have any first-hand experiences with that virus and if that means I have to forgo making any more visits to the Christmas Village in Baltimore then so be it. At least I was there in person twice and I enjoyed it both times. I just want to remain healthy.
So I ended up spending the Saturday after Thanksgiving in Baltimore. I originally intended to spend the entire time at the annual Christkindlesmarkt that was held at Zion Lutheran Church. But then I got stuck in a horrible northbound traffic jam. I reached the North Linthicum light rail stop and I had to wait a bit for the next light rail train. I transferred to a Metro subway train and I had a long wait. So I managed to make it to the Shot Tower Metro station and walked through the area. By the time I made it to the church I only had 45 minutes left to enjoy the sights and sounds of Christkindlesmarkt.
As I left the church I took a photo of this magnificent cloud formation that was over by Baltimore City Hall (which is literally located just a few steps away from Zion Lutheran Church).
As I was walking away from the church, I couldn’t help but take a picture of this sign for an apartment building that should be of interest for anyone who knows anything about Edgar Allan Poe.
As a consolation for not spending as much time at the Christkindlesmarkt event as I would have liked, I decided to hop on the next Charm City Circulator down to the Inner Harbor, where I went to an annual event that’s similar to the one at Zion Lutheran Church except that it’s bigger—Christmas Village in Baltimore.
It was the opening weekend for this event and it’s currently running on a daily basis until Christmas Eve. (This year is the fifth year that it’s operating.) I took a lot of pictures while I was there.
The next photo shows the Advent wreath. The electric candles were dark when I was there because Advent wouldn’t begin for another week.
The woman with the long golden curly hair and the gold clothes was the Christkind who came from Nurenberg, Germany to help with the opening ceremony of the Christmas Village in Baltimore.
There was live entertainment inside of the tent.
There was a variety of stuff available for sale.
I was there on the first day that the Christmas Village in Baltimore opened for the first time. Even though most of the lights were up, the Christmas tree was dark because the tree lighting ceremony was scheduled for the following night, which I wasn’t able to go to.
As I walked away from the Christmas Village in Baltimore towards Harborplace, I saw these signs pointing in the direction of the place I had just left.
I ate a bratwurst platter with sauerkraut for dinner while I was there. The only other purchase I made was a pack of lavender scented incense that I bought from the Käthe Wohlfahrt area of the tent, which sold a variety German handcrafted items ranging from tree ornaments to nutcrackers. (I don’t have any pictures from that area because it had a “No Photography” sign posted on the outside.)
So after I left the Christmas Village in Baltimore I headed over to Harborplace, which I’ll write about in my next post.
On December 7, Pearl Harbor Day, I finally got around to going to some place that I’ve always wanted to visit but I never got around to do it. I finally decided to check out the former home of Edgar Allan Poe in Baltimore.
I’ve seen Poe’s grave a few times but I never went to his house. That’s because I usually took the light rail to get to the grave and, despite the fact that his home is located close by, most travel reviews tend to advise against walking or taking public transportation to the Poe house. So I decided to drive my car into the city. I found that it wasn’t too bad and there were plenty of parking spots. As these next photos show, I can understand why most people advise getting there by car because Edgar Allan Poe’s home is literally located in the projects.
The next few shots are of the outside of the house itself. The house was originally part of a duplex. The half where Poe’s family never lived was later torn down in order to make way for the construction of the housing projects that now surrounds Poe’s house.
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston. His father abandoned the family while he was still a toddler and his mother died soon afterwards. For whatever reason none of his relatives were able to take the boy in so the young orphan was sent to Richmond to live with a couple named John and Frances Allan. While they never legally adopted the boy, they raised him as if he were their own son. As Edgar grew older, he began to clash with his foster father over his gambling debts and the costs of his secondary education. After the death of his foster mother, Edgar and his foster father decided to part ways. Edgar subsequently moved in with his biological relatives in Baltimore.
Edgar was 23 at the time and he lived there with his widowed aunt, Maria Clemm, his grandmother and Maria’s mother, Elizabeth Cairns Poe, and Maria’s two children (Edgar’s cousins)—10-year-old Virginia and 14-year-old Henry. The family mainly survived on Elizabeth’s government pension, which she received for her late husband’s service in the American Revolutionary War.
When I entered the home, I found frequent reminders of its famous former occupant.
The next two photos show a list of stories and poems that Edgar Allan Poe wrote while he lived in that home.
I’ve visited the homes of other famous people before. Most of the homes tend to be large and roomy, especially the ones that were occupied by the rich, famous, and powerful. Not this one. This home has got to be the smallest, most narrow historical home that I have ever visited. At times I had to remind myself that five people once lived together in that house. That family must have been very tolerant and cooperative of each other because I could only imagine the stress of being crammed together with very little or no privacy. Even the staircase was incredibly narrow, as you can see in the next photo.
All I can say about those steps is that they are definitely not meant for anyone who is obese because it would be so easy for someone of a certain width to get stuck trying to go up and down.
The second floor only had one small room and it had a few artifacts, such as this telescope that once belonged to Poe.
Getting up to the third floor leading to the attic room where Edgar Allan Poe worked and slept was the biggest challenge. These steps were even more narrow than the ones leading from the first to the second floors. In fact they were so narrow that there was a sign saying that only one person can use them at a time. In addition, you can’t go all the way into the bedroom due to this barrier that was placed at the top of the steps.
At least I could reach the camera over the barrier and take the photos of the room where Edgar Allan Poe started his professional writing career.
Edgar Allan Poe only lived in that home for a few years until his grandmother died. Unfortunately for the family, the government payments stopped with Elizabeth Cairns Poe’s death. Maria Clemm was unable to cover the rent so the family had to move. Soon afterwards Edgar married his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia, (which made Maria Clemm both his aunt and his mother-in-law) and the couple stayed married until Virginia’s early death from tuberculosis just 11 years later. Edgar Allan Poe himself died an early death at age 40 under circumstances that remain mysterious to this day.
The house itself is a pretty short tour due mainly to the fact that it is so small and narrow. (I was there for about an hour.) There is a very small gift shop located near the entrance, which consists mainly of books and a few small Poe-themed mugs, buttons, and other knick knacks. The admission was $5, which is the right price for a house this small. I’ve heard that this house gets plenty of visitors, especially around Halloween. When I went it wasn’t very crowded but, then again, I went in early December.
Since the house was such a short trip, I decided to visit another place in Baltimore since I was in that city anyway. I headed over to the Inner Harbor where I saw something at McKeldin Square. I can remember three years ago when McKeldin Square was the site of Occupy Baltimore. The protesters have long been since evicted and now there is a temporary ice skating rink that people can use as a way of getting into the holiday spirit.
I decided to check out the Christmas Village in Baltimore, which has recently returned. (I was there a couple of times last year before Christmas and on Christmas Eve.) I knew I was getting close to the place when I saw these charming looking signs.
Christmas Village in Baltimore was set up the same as last year. There were outdoor wooden kiosks that sold all kinds of goodies—both edible and non-edible.
There were holiday lights and, of course, there was a giant Christmas tree.
There were also a giant Advent wreath and a large Advent calendar as well. (It was the second week of Advent when I was there so only two of the electric candles on the wreath were lit.)
Then there was the main building, which had more stalls featuring all kinds of food, drinks, and crafts. It was such a visual feast for the eyes.
Like last year, one end of this temporary structure was dominated by Käthe Wohlfahrt, which specializes in Christmas decorations imported from Germany. Photography was forbidden inside the store itself so I had to make do with just photographing the outside entrance. The official U.S. website has a lot of photos of their merchandise so it should give you an idea of what visiting that store was like.
On my way back to the parking garage where I left my car I saw this person making various items out of balloons.
I also ran into a guy dressed as the Grinch outside the entrance to the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Odditorium at Harborplace.
Christmas Eve has become loaded for me in terms of memories. It was on a Christmas Eve when my fiancee put an engagement ring on my finger for the first time while we were visiting his mother for the holidays. Â (This was back when she lived in a small condo in Yonkers during the years between her first and second marriages.) Shortly after he popped the question to me a few months earlier, he took me to visit his mother, who then promptly drove us to visit this family-owned jewelry store that my fiancee’s family had long frequented. We chose the engagement and wedding rings then waited a few months for the orders to finally arrive in time for that special Christmas Eve.
It was also on a Christmas Eve when the fiancee I married pulled something really nasty on me. By December, 2012 I had adjusted to being separated from my husband. I knew that Maryland state laws specifically says that one can’t file for divorce until after the one-year anniversary of the separation. In our case, the one-year anniversary was on December 28. I thought that my husband wouldn’t consider filing for divorce until after the New Year and I also thought that it was possible that we would remain separated for many more months or even years. (I know plenty of people who remain technically married to their separated spouses mainly because neither partner has ever gotten around to filing for divorce.)
I didn’t check e-mail last Christmas Eve and Christmas Day because I had Internet problems so I did other things that didn’t involve the computer (such as visiting my own family). It wasn’t until December 26 when I got an e-mail from my separated husband dated December 24 that included an attachment. That attachment was a divorce petition in a .pdf format. In that e-mail my husband wrote something like “I’m sorry for the timing but it has to be done in order to get the ball rolling.” Never mind the fact that my husband really couldn’t really file for divorce until after the actual anniversary (December 28).
Adding insult to injury, I consulted a lawyer on my own after the New Year who told me that the divorce petition wasn’t real because there was no case number assigned to it. In the meantime my husband was pressuring me to sign the papers and send them to his lawyer because he claimed that I could avoid divorce court if I did it that way. However, that same lawyer I consulted said that getting divorced doesn’t work that way. A judge has to be involved in a divorce proceeding in order to prove that a marriage has been legally dissolved and it usually involves at least one court appearance.
Personally I think my husband sent that divorce petition on Christmas Eve in a total “Fuck You, Bitch!” gesture because he knew that I tended to get sentimental around the holiday season and he wanted to screw me over mentally so I would hate him enough to give him the divorce he said he desperately wanted. Well he succeeded on that front because I now consider him to be a totally toxic person to be avoided at all costs. In my mind he has gone from being a loving husband to being one of my worst enemies.
So on the one-year anniversary of that Christmas Eve missile sent by my so-called “loving” husband, I decided to do something fun. Several years ago I learned that Christmas Eve is an excellent time to go downtown to check out stores, museums, and other tourist attractions because most people are stuck in the overcrowded suburban shopping malls. There’s a huge difference between going to a Barnes & Noble in downtown DC on Christmas Eve and going to a Barnes & Noble in a suburban shopping mall on that same day because the crowds are way smaller in the downtown stores.
I read in The Washington Post about an interesting new exhibit at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore involving robots and I decided to check it out. It was a longer commute than usual mainly because there was this horrendous accident on the northbound lane of I-95 where a couple of cars looked totaled. The website said that the museum would be opened until 6 p.m. like usual and there were no announcements of early closings on Christmas Eve. Except once I got there around 4:15 p.m., the clerk at the front entrance told me that the museum decided to close at 5 p.m. at the last minute yet the admission was still $15.95. I was loathed to pay that much for only being in the museum for 45 minutes so I walked along the Inner Harbor for a bit while I took some nice early sunset photos.
I walked over to the Christmas Village in Baltimore, the same place where I went to just a few days ago. This time the weather was way colder (the temperature never went above 45 degrees and it became colder the more the sun began to set). There were far fewer shoppers than just a few days earlier. The outdoor vendors were in the process of packing everything up sine it was the official last day for this Christmas Village.
I went inside the heated tent. Half of the vendors were still there but there were also plenty of empty stalls.
I managed to treat myself to a snack from one of the food booths. I ordered a belgian waffle topped with chocolate syrup and whipped cream. It was delicious.
I managed to buy one more thing at the Christmas Village in Baltimore. It’s a Swedish-made owl candle holder that uses tea candles and it looks really nice. In fact, I plan to use it for other occasions besides Christmas.
I continued walking along the Inner Harbor where I took photos of the U.S.S. Constellation at sunset.
I visited Harborplace but both pavilions were nearly empty even though the stores were still opened.  I managed to visit It’s Sugar and took this shot featuring the teddy bear from the Ted movie and a stuffed effigy of Phil Robertson from the popular reality show Duck Dynasty (and who has been in the news a lot lately for his controversial comments regarding homosexuality and his observations of African Americans during the Jim Crow era).
The front window wasn’t the only time I saw the teddy bear from the Ted movie. There was a version of Ted dressed like a Jamaican Rastafarian pot smoker.
I took a panoramic shot of the store with my Droid Ultra smartphone to give you an idea of how uncrowded that store was despite the fact that it had every single kind of candy available for sale.
I didn’t linger around Harborplace too long because many of the stores were in the process of closing early for Christmas. There weren’t a lot of people around with one exception. I saw a line form outside Santa’s Workshop as kids were making their last-minute wishes to Santa Claus.
I took one final photo of one of the Harbor place pavilions as it was lit up at night. It looked really peaceful with the lack of people around.
When I was still married, my husband and I used to visit his sister who lives in the Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania. Some years the there of us would visit the Christkindlmarkt that was held in the town of Bethlehem. That one was awesome. It had a giant tent and it included crafts by artisans both local and imported from Germany, Russia, and other Central European nations. The one thing I miss during the holiday time was not being able to go to it due to the separation and divorce. I know I could travel there on my own but right now my finances are a bit too tight for me to make the three-and-a-half hour trip, rent a hotel there for the night, then make the return trip home.
There was a Christkindlmarkt that was held at the Heurich House Museum in Washington, DC but that one turned out to be a total bust for me, which I wrote about earlier. But then I unexpectedly hit pay dirt the night I went to that Christmas party at the German-American Heritage Museum when, during my time there, I picked up a brochure about something in Baltimore and the museum was one of the sponsors. It’s called Christmas Village in Baltimore and it’s a German-style Christmas market.
So I visited it and I can say that I finally found something that comes closest to the Christkindlmarkt in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Like that other event, Christmas Village in Baltimore has a giant heated tent and it includes arts and crafts from both local artisans as well as artisans in other countries. The day I went there the temperature was unseasonably warm (it was in the low 70’s, which is usually more appropriate for places like Florida and Arizona than for the Baltimore-Washington, DC area). It was so warm that I had a chance to unearth this Christmas t-shirt that I bought for $5 at a local Five Below store years ago.
It’s a cute Betty Boop t-shirt. I haven’t worn it in years mainly because the t-shirt is a bit on the thin side and it can be too cold to wear if the temperature drops to a certain level. So I basically wore that shirt with no jacket to Baltimore.
The Christmas Village itself is big. There is a line of outdoor vendors along with a giant tent where even more vendors are located. I took a panoramic shot with my Droid Ultra to give you an idea of how big it is.
There was a variety of live entertainment (both indoors and outdoors) plus a variety of crafts that one can buy. The best part of all is that Baltimore is a closer drive to my home than Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Needless to say, I took a bunch of pictures with my smartphone.
I bought a few things for myself. One is a handblown glass Christmas ornament that was made in Switzerland. It depicts the witch Befana, who delivers gifts to Children in Italy instead of Santa Claus. It’s really cool to have a flying witch hanging on my small Christmas tree.
The  next one is a cute teddy bear wearing a traditional German dress. Despite that bear’s look, I was amazed when I came home and found a tag that said “Made in China.”
The next picture is an ornament that was also made in China. It’s a glass snowman perched on a bell that rings when you shake it. I once had two small bells that had belonged to my husband’s Hungarian grandparents and they were supposedly made in Europe. I remember one of the bells was shaped like Santa Claus. The other bell had “Merry Christmas” written on it. (My husband said that the bells were made in Hungary yet one of the bells had “Merry Christmas” written in English. Hmmmm.) I loved those bells and, of course, my husband took them in the course of dividing up the Christmas decorations. So I now have a pretty new bell in my Christmas tree.
The last one was a wooden flute with a tiny Kokopelli god painted on it that was sold in one of the outdoor stands by a man who was selling South American-imported crafts. This flute was made by one of the native tribes in Peru. I think it would look pretty cool displayed on the coffee table in the living room.
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