AMK introduced me to the Kitchener [Christkindl Market](http://www.christkindl.ca/) a few years ago. It’s neat! It’s a German Christmas festival and sale. There’s some neat stuff there. I’ve got lots of Christmas presents for my mom in past years. There’s also a lot of good food. That’s probably the biggest draw for me.
I took Ellen last year to look around, but we got there a bit late on the Sunday when it closed and there wasn’t much time to look around (although I did get free [[wiki:Leberkäse]] from a guy closing up). This year we gave ourself lots more time to take things in.
Ellen got a whole bunch of stuff. I mostly just looked. I got some beer nuts, as is traditional. It seems to be largely the same vendors every year.
Ellen was especially taken with the organ grinder guy. He had a stuffed monkey puppet, which I thought was cool. Ellen was more into the mechanics of the thing. She gave the guy a five dollar bill. He said nobody had ever given him a bill before, so he offered to let her grind away. Of course, she jumped at the chance. She also got to learn how he got his organ. He answered a personal ad in a German-language newspaper.
Apparently the word for “avid collector” or something is similar to the word for “love” in German. So when the seller put out an ad for “avid collectors only,” the classifieds editor must have figured he was selling something else, and put it in the personals section. The then-future organ grinder guy couldn’t believe his luck, jumped at the chance and ended up fulfilling his destiny as organ grinder guy.
We ended up getting food at the Exhibit Cafe downtown, since there are more things there Ellen can eat. It’s was nice, though. I still have a bit of a hankering for the traditional German hunk of meat on a bun (or maybe just a potato pancake), but between supper and the bear nuts, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.