Green cabbage soup and last minute presents: the Christmas market

You can find everything you desperately need in December here: a gift for Heinz, deliciously hot soup, tasty punch, Father Christmas, friends from Lech and a quick connection to cheerful Kampen. The Christmas market of the tourist office in and at Kaamp-Hüs has charm, tradition and class.

The whole village is excited as the weekend approaches. Generally around a fortnight before Christmas, on a weekend, it is finally time: the tourist office invites you to the traditional Christmas market and to Kaamp-Hüs. Now at last Kampeners shake off all Christmas stress and their usual hectic pace because the beginning of the market also means the beginning of the last time you’re really in a pre-Christmas mood.
All weekend Bärbel Holst and her colleagues have been working towards this moment. In the hall of the Kaamp-Hüs is a series of stands decorated with loving care. Really original last minute gifts, traditional like lambskin or fretsaw work by women from our Austrian partner municipality Lech, Christmas cakes (with which you can shine and assert yourself at home. This year they were baked over a weekend), candles, jewellery, knitted stockings, puppets, teddy bears, toys – an Eldorado for anyone on the lookout for something original. On the terrace, on the small wooden booths, there is delicious grilled sausage, green cabbage soup and the same Futjes [a baked dessert] (with raisins, rolled in icing sugar) and of course punch. Everybody in Kampen meets here to chat. Even people from other villages stop by because word has gone around that this is the most atmospheric and coolest Christmas market on at least the whole island. Children dart around under the bar tables and are happy to escape parental supervision. In the foyer busy adults get the little dears involved in handicraft work. And sometimes the Christmas market lasts until late in the afternoon on Saturday, unofficially because it is simply great that you don’t have to go home.