Christmas Markets on the Rhine and the Danube

Same wooden stalls. Same cinnamon in the air. Two different rivers.

Viking’s holiday sailings are the regular Rhine and Danube itineraries with the lights turned on. You still dock in town. You still walk off the gangway. The difference is what the square is doing when you get there.

I have been in Vienna in market season — including the night a Krampus parade tore through a few streets over. We heard the bells. We did not need to see the horns. Thank the Lord.

Where Viking actually takes you

Ports shift a little by departure and direction. These are the cities that show up again and again.

Rhine (often Amsterdam ↔ Basel, or Rhine & Main toward Nuremberg)
Amsterdam · Cologne · Koblenz · the Middle Rhine gorge · Rüdesheim · Mannheim / Speyer · Heidelberg (often as a tour) · Strasbourg · Breisach · Basel · and on the longer Main stretch, Frankfurt, Würzburg, and Nuremberg.

Danube (Budapest ↔ Regensburg / Passau)
Budapest · Bratislava (on some itineraries) · Vienna · Krems / Wachau / Göttweig Abbey · Linz · Passau · Regensburg.

If you only remember two market names, make them Nuremberg’s Christkindlesmarkt and Strasbourg. One is the German original people mean when they say “Christmas market.” The other is France’s “Capital of Christmas,” which has been doing this since the 1500s.

How they are the same

• Wooden huts, lights, choir or brass somewhere in the square

• Christmas Markets in Europe are Christ centered with manger scenes dominating the landscape, beautiful

• Handcrafts you will not find at a mall: ornaments, linens, wood, beeswax, cheap tin you will regret and beautiful things you will not

• Food that is the point: sausage, gingerbread, roasted nuts, potato cakes

• A ceramic mug of hot wine you pay a deposit on and then “forget” to return, every coffee mug in the house is this now

• The longship parked close enough that you can take a bag back to the cabin and go out again

That last part is why a river ship beats a hotel hop. Unpack once. Hit a different market every day.

How they differ

Rhine is Germany’s Christmas belt, with a French night in Strasbourg and a Swiss night in Basel. Your market itch scratched each day. Cologne is big and loud under the cathedral, incredible scene. Rüdesheim is small and drinkable. Strasbourg is prettier than it has any right to be. Nuremberg, if your sailing reaches it, is the one that feels like the origin story.

Danube is imperial and a little more dressed up. Vienna is not one market. It is a dozen — Rathaus, Schönbrunn, Belvedere, Am Hof, Stephansplatz — and you will not finish them, we tried, lord knows we did. Budapest is lights on the river and a basilica square. Passau and Regensburg are Bavarian and walkable. The Wachau in December is vineyards and baroque abbey, not a carnival. Göttweig Abbey with a snow flurry made our trip incredible.

Same Glühwein. Different skyline behind it.

A typical day: holiday sailing vs. regular river

Regular Rhine or Danube day
Breakfast. Included walking tour or a castle. Free time for a museum or a coffee. Back for lunch or stay in town. Sail at dinner, or a scenic stretch if the gorge or the Wachau is on the card. Evening on the sundeck if it is mild, or in the lounge. Town is open, but it is a normal European evening.

Christmas market day
Breakfast. The included tour still happens — cathedral, palace, old town — but the guide is steering you toward a square that is already lit. You break off. You walk the stalls. You buy the first ornament before you have a plan. You go back to the ship for a coat or a bag. You go out again after dark, because that is when the markets actually work. Dinner might be on board, but more likely, as it was for us, It might be a sausage in a paper tray with a mug in the other hand. Sailing is often later so you can have the evening in town. Overnight docks in Vienna, Budapest, or Regensburg are the prize. You get two shots at the lights.

You will walk more. You will spend more. You will be colder. Dress for that, not for a July sundeck.

Festivals worth aiming a departure at

Markets are the main event from about November 25 to December 23. Book inside that window, or it won’t be as good as it should.

December 5-6 St Nicholas/Krampus - Alpine tradition, all the horns, bells, parades in Vienna and Bavaria, we got a few streets from a parade but that was close enough for my wife.

First two weeks of December - really the peak of the markets as far as full squares and longest evenings, unless you’re going to be there on Christmas Eve.

Week of December 8 - Maria-Himmelfahrt / Immaculate Conception holiday in parts of Austria & Bavaria, extra vibes

If you want Krampus on purpose, say so when we pick a date. If you want to avoid it, we aim off Dec 5–6 and stay on the main squares.

Glühwein (mulled wine)

You will smell it before you see the stall. Red wine, orange, clove, cinnamon, a little sugar, sometimes a shot (or two if you’re my brother in law) of rum if the vendor likes you. Served scalding in a mug you are supposed to return. You’ll burn your tongue, and it’ll blunt the taste of your food for two days. Keep the mugs, we wrap them up in our clothes to pack.

Say it:GLUE-vine (Glühwein). In Austria you will also hear Glühwein and punch. Same idea.

A pot you can make at home

For about 6 mugs:

• 1 bottle dry red wine (nothing fancy)

• 1 orange, sliced

• 2 cinnamon sticks

• 6 whole cloves

• 2 star anise (optional, because the grocery hides it)

• 2–3 tablespoons sugar or honey, to taste

• 1 strip lemon peel

• Splash of orange juice

• Optional: ¼ cup dark rum or brandy at the end

Put everything except the rum in a pot. Warm it slowly. Do not boil. If it boils you cook the alcohol off and the spices go bitter. Twenty minutes on low. Strain. Add the rum in the mug if you want it. Serve in something you can wrap both hands around.

It will not taste like the stall in Cologne. It will taste close enough on a Friday night in Bon Secour Alabama.

Travel hack: pack an empty bag

Bring a second carry-on — soft, cheap, empty. At check-in, ask the airline to check it. Most will take it as a checked bag for free or for the usual fee, and you fly over with it collapsed. Matter of fact, I’ve never flown overseas where the airline didn’t ask for people to check their carry on.

Christmas markets will fill that bag. Ornaments, linens, nutcrackers, mugs you were supposed to return, a carving you did not budget for. A week of Rhine or Danube markets is more loot than a regular river week. Plan the space on the way over, not at the airport on the way home.

I have watched people sit on suitcases in Frankfurt because they did not do this.

Which river I would book first

First Christmas market cruise: Rhine, if you want density — a market almost every day, Strasbourg, Cologne, maybe Nuremberg.
Danube, if you want Vienna and Budapest at night and you do not mind a slightly dressier week, or to see that Krampus thing that scares my wife.

Both work. Neither is a substitute for the other.

If you want a departure that actually hits the markets — and not a pretty winter sailing with the lights already unplugged — tell me the week you can travel. That’s what I’m here for.

— J Christopher Williams, Founder & Travel Advisor, The Wandering X

Christmas markets are often times in a square in the shadow of a beautiful church, the crisp cold, bundled up shopping, sipping mulled wine, ruining your onboard dinner with sausages and cheese, chimney cake, it’s all part of the plan