Zibelemärit

Today was the onion market in Bern. It is huge. I lost track of how many streets were filled with all types of stalls. And it was crowded! The SBB had added several extra trains from Zurich and other cities to handle the traffic. That worked out well for us - our train was pretty empty and T and L had the entire play area to themselves on the way there.



There were lots of onions, but not as many as I expected. After the carrot market I expected there to be piles of onions everywhere and every type of onion food imaginable. It was more of a mixed market, though. The smell of onions was in the air and there were lots of onions, but most of them were in decorative forms like wreaths and every size braid from earrings to as long as a door. The vendors made onions as pretty as possible, that's for sure. Since the market had opened at 5 a.m. some of the stands were already sold out and packing to leave.  We arrived at noon and I think we saw everything there was to see.

My favorites were the novelty onions. There were all sorts of things. Clocks were popular and so were animals (I thought I had a picture of the squirrels, but I guess not. Bummer.) There were our favorites, though.

Other than the onions, the stands were lots of the usual suspects: scarves, vegetable peeling and carving tools, honey, toys, gingerbread, etc. There was also beer, hot wine, and sausages. Here is a picture of T. He loved the look of the big gingerbreads and wanted this one pretty vehemently. Then I told him it would taste like the one Schmutzli gave him and he quickly changed his mind.

I just liked the way these looked.

One thing that stands out at the onion market is the confetti. Everywhere they were selling big bags of it and kids were throwing it at everyone. Some kids had confetti guns. Other kids were bonking people with plastic hammers. There was confetti everywhere. It was in the street, of course, but I saw it in a department store bathroom, at a park down the street, on the train tracks. Everywhere I went. And R found some in my hair when I got home. Here is an interesting fact about the confetti. It is only sold in individual colors. No mixes! That is so everyone can rest assured that they are being blasted with fresh clean confetti and nothing recycled from last year.

Clean confetti in sealed bags. No worries!

 It was windy and chilly. Luckily we had the new rain cover for the stroller from Uncle J and Aunt K. It worked perfectly at the Samichlaus parade for the rain and today it cut the wind and kept the kids warm. Thank you again! But eventually the littles had had enough. And I noticed that instead of little kids with little bags of confetti the crowd was tending toward older kids and drunks with big bags. So we walked over to the park to check out the view and then caught the train home. The train station was decorated for Christmas.

T was allowed to choose onions for himself, R and S. (L would just eat hers if she got one.) The onions he got for S and R are at the top of the post. And here is his!