Christmas markets bring up the mood & take down the bank balance

The annual must-do event

The scent of mulled wine, cinnamon and overcooked sausage reminds us what Christmas outdoors is all about. The Christmas Market on Vörösmarty tér is a great way to avoid the lurid and tawdry offerings of the retail giants and the imprecations of moneylenders to load up on debt. Hungary’s shopping centres and hypermarkets have been distressing shoppers with nauseating renditions of “Jingle Bells” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and poor-quality Chinese Santa Claus puppets since late October. Luckily, there is an alternative.

Vörösmarty tér

The Vörösmarty tér Christmas market opened 29 November and runs until Christmas Eve. Budapest’s traditional Christmas market is up there with Vienna’s Kristkindlmarkt and Prague’s, and is considered by many to be the best in the region. And there are no sweat-shop Santas here: in order to get a licence to set up a stall, vendors have to receive approval from the Association of Hungarian Folk Artists.

Vörösmarty tér, thronging with visitors from all over the world, is clearly the main attraction, but smaller markets have sprung up on Moszkva tér and Móricz Zsigmond körtér in Buda, as well as on Erzsébet tér in the centre of Pest. There is the annual fayre on Fő tér, the cobbled old town square in Óbuda (near Árpád híd HÉV stop or Szentlélek tér on the No. 1 tram). Although limited to four stalls this year, it is not much of a market, the leaders of District III have laid on a small ice-skating rink. This is proving popular with the children of the concrete housing estates that surround and loom over one of the capital’s lesser known but prettiest squares.

The essential ingredients of a Budapest Christmas market are kürtős kalács (a sweet spiral pastry cooked over open flames), the seasonal staples of frying sausages and roasting chestnuts and, above all, mulled wine. Common to all Central European winter markets, forralt bor, as it is known locally is usually made from sweetened light red wine. On Vörösmarty tér they seem to have adopted the Viennese habit of forcing you to put a deposit down on a souvenir mug when you buy it, but elsewhere you can get your Christmas anti-freeze with less fuss and at a lower price.

Beyond the regulated confines of Vörösmarty tér, the stalls selling Hungarian handicrafts – fur hats, leather purses, pottery, woolly things – jostle for the attention of festive shoppers with those selling the inevitable Chinese offerings. More interestingly, there is a profusion of Latin American stalls – often manned by poncho-clad natives of the Andes (or thereabouts). Here you can pick up those alpaca socks you always dreamed of, or a cardigan emblazoned with llama motifs.

Numerous entertainment programmes have been lined up throughout December, providing a backdrop to the festive markets. On Vörösmarty tér, you can catch folk dancing and listen to traditional music from around Hungary, while over the next two weekends, Óbuda tér will play host to fire eaters and exhibitions of ice sculpture.