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ter. When I wasn’t Christmas market- place this way: “Here at the Fried-
ing, I inspected jeweled treasures at richsbad, you lose track of time with-
the Faberge Museum, wandered among in 10 minutes and track of the world
modern and contemporary masterpiec- within 20....”
es at the Richard Meier-designed Fried-
er Burda Museum, even lucked out and Baden-Baden would be a hard act to
landed a seat at a Cassandra Wilson con- follow, but the next morning I was
cert at Festspielhaus, Germany’s largest off to the train station. Destination:
concert hall, opened in 1998 in the for- Nuremberg.
mer Baden-Baden railway station.
The first written record of the Nurem-
Of course, I saved time for another berg’s Christkindlesmarkt dates to
dip into Baden-Baden’s thermal wa- 1628. Since then it has become one
ters. This time I chose an afternoon at of the most popular holiday markets
historic Friedrichsbad, a Roman-style in Europe, drawing about 2 million
bath where swimsuits are verboten. For visitors each December to this city of
nearly 140 years, it has been a bathing 500,000.
temple. Mark Twain swore he lost his
rheumatism here, and described the There are actually three Christmas
Wine Dine & Travel 2016 33
