And dang was it big! After we left Amsterdam, we took a train towards the city of Dortmund, Germany. It’s not a real long ride, but once we got there we took a little bit to relax before heading into the big Christmas Market. I knew ahead of time that there was the big tree. What I didn’t know was just how big the Christmas Market is! There’s the main town square with the main market surrounding the big tree. This market is beautiful, every shop and stall is heavily decorated and themed, and these markets in Dortmund had a lot more food stands. They had rolled up pizzas, churros, all kinds of candies, sausage, beer and wine stands, spice and seasoning stands, an Asian Wok stand, cooked nuts, and all kinds of pastry and cookie stands and plenty more.

As we left the main market we found another market almost as large in the plaza just next to it. We walked around for a bit and found a stage with a group of large group performers from the Glee Club of the United Kingdom singing Christmas carols to a bunch of market goers and we listened for a bit with mom drinking that famous Glühwein. Afterwards we walked and found ourselves in yet another connected market and saw more food and goods stands and found yet another market connected to that one! It was just one long string of markets that seemed to keep going! This one at the base of the large St. Reinoldi Church. We walked around the city center a bit more and headed back to the ginormous tree before heading back to the hotel for the night. Fun!

Stats on the tree (repeated in image gallery)

The Biggest Christmas Tree In the World
Height: 45 meters / 147.6 feet
Ground Area: 14×14 meters / 45.9 feet
Weight: 30 tonnen / 33 US tons
Lighting:
-40,000 lights
-20 giant candles
-Made of 1,700 spruce trees. (It’s not one giant tree, it’s made of up of tons and tons of smaller trees.)
Core:
-9,000 meters / 2,952 feet of scaffold tubes
-7,000 scaffold couplings
Safety:
Sprinkler system with an output of appx 3,200 liters / 845 gallons of water per minute

Dortmund Images!