The Alpine Village Trip

We went to the 3rd Annual Christkindlmarkt in Helen, GA today. I didn't take many pictures, but the few I snapped, I wanted to share here.  The original plan was to leave by 6, drive the hour hours or so there, spend the day in the Markt, shopping and eating what I was hoping was fantastically awesome German food, and then drive home. Good plan!

We left about 630am, but the wife came, which was a pleasant surprise! I don't recall the last time she saw 6:00am, so I really wasn't expecting her to make it. There was supposed to be a rather large group going, but people kept jumping ship on me--I think the wee hours is what have killed most of them.

The drive isn't bad at all. My Garmin doesn't maneuver the streets of Atlanta very well, but we managed to bypass the toll road, and just drive 30 or so minutes longer than we expected--is that a win?

Anyway, a few pictures!

These first three pictures are just from the Main Street area. The town (I kept calling it a village!) refaced everything a while back, and it's so picturesque. The little white tents you see are the market itself--I was very disappointed in what they had there, but it was rainy, so maybe that kept it from really being full? The cute shops down the alleys were either cute, and fun to look through, or very touristy-oh-geez-did-I-drive-to-Panama-City-Beach-by-mistake? I opted not to get a tattoo, and I turned down the bodily function t-shirt and underwear combo. Sad day.

But the real reason I desperately wanted to go was for the food, and to be honest, it didn't disappoint.

This was a small section in their deli, solely meat! My favorite, and what I ate at this restaurant, was the LeberKaese meat. It's amazing, and it doesn't do it justice to call it a beef/pork bologna type product. You cut slabs (I do, anyway) of it, fry it up, and eat it on a broetchen. They served it a little differently here (see a few pics down) but it tasted great. You can find it pre-cut in this picture on the top shelf, fourth from the right.

The above-photo is from the bakery case. My favorite cake in the world, my go-to, the creme de la creme (did I Frenchy that up correctly?) is the Black Forest Cake. It's the middle-shelf cake, closest to the bottom right. I won't even begin to try to tell you how good it is. Be fore-warned, there are lots of imitations in America, and most of the ones I've had suck.

This is the plate with the Leberkaese on it. The rolls were great, too. I didn't like that the potato salad came cold, though. I wished it were warm, but it was good, and made in the hot-potato salad style, with a vinegar, bullion bacon kind of base.

OH--I also went to the Old Bavarian Inn for a coffee/pretzel kind of break. I wouldn't recommend eating there. The gluhwein was not full of gluh at all, and the food was basically pedestrian. The pretzel, however, was dynomite. So grab a coffee, and a pretzel, shell out some buckage, and have a great time not eating the food there.

I'll certainly be going back to the Alpine Village (I kept calling it New Germany) next year, and probably staying in one of the charming rooms, to make it a two day event.