German fairytale

I AM an Irish student currently studying German in the city of Kassel in central Germany.

At the moment, just as all over Germany, Kassel is offering a Christmas market with the theme of fairytales. Despite the bleak winter cold here, the Christmas market creates a warm atmosphere.

People stand sipping mulled wine at the wooden huts, eating the traditional half-metre sausages and shopping for handmade wooden toys underneath white lights, with figures of various fairytale characters all around, appropriate for the former home of the Brothers Grimm.