If I understand correctly from reading through the past 10 days of stacked-up newspapers, Minneapolis has replaced the Holidazzle Parade with something called the Holiday Market, or Holidazzle Village, which, if I am on the right track, is an attempt to duplicate what in Europe are called Christmas Markets.

Well, by self-appointment, I am your Christmas Market correspondent, having just returned from Berlin, where the youngest kid I used to have now lives with her husband and child. We stayed in their apartment on the Essenerstrasse, whatever that means. By happenstance, our arrival coincided with the opening of the Berlin Christmas Markets, for I certainly would have had no intention of arriving to celebrate such a thing, but you get enough of the old Gluhwein mit Schuss in the gullet and a couple of roasted chestnuts down the pipe, and the spirit of the season starts to sink in and rather quickly.

In the first place, Minneapolis, they are called Christmas Markets. The Germans seem to have no problem calling things as they see them. They celebrate Christmas with suddenly sprung-up little villages of wooden huts that in some cases look almost like alpine cottages.

The foods are extraordinary. The items for sale range from mittens and scarves to decorative iron pieces, the iron pulled from the fire and banged out on an anvil. I bought three bottle openers for no other reason than to watch the blacksmith make them. Because truth is universal, the fellow’s wife materialized every time I paid. She took the note out of her husband’s hands and forked over the change as he looked on forlornly.

In any event, the villages spring up all over Berlin, which has no downtown to speak of, but sprawls for miles and miles in all directions. I would say that Minneapolis would not have a proper Christmas Market until they (a) call it a Christmas Market — as St. Paul did this year with its European Christmas Market — and (b) make sure to have a blacksmith in a soot-soiled Santa hat who makes things out of iron pulled glowing red from the fire.

The markets proved to be so popular that there were those among us who could not get enough of them. We made a day trip to Poland anticipating Christmas Markets, but were told in Poznan, Poland, that the Christmas Markets were not in the Polish tradition.

Oh. (Yes, the big square was empty.)

We ate lunch in what appeared to be somebody’s kitchen, one gal to take the order and another to cook. The vibe was a bit off, probably because they had a radio on and all I heard was AC/DC.

Back to the train. I wondered why the airport in Berlin, certainly a world capital, was so modest. It occurred to me that train travel must significantly impact air travel. We rode trains everywhere and — if not trains — then subways and buses and trams. We had no car and did not need one, which is just what our political worthies wish for us. I thought of our ridiculous billion-dollar toy and just shook my head. Our subway tickets were occasionally checked at least. And the trains still had conductors who punched your ticket to pay to ride.

Robbed of shopping by that day in Poland, we had to go to Dresden, where the markets are the major leagues.

Dresden was firebombed in February 1945. (I’ve read my Kurt Vonnegut.) Among the dead and utter destruction was the ruin of the main church, the Frauenkirche, a Dresden landmark since the 1700s. It was explained to me that the rubble sat in the square for 50 years or so.

When the wall in Berlin came down in 1989 and Germany was reunified, the Frauenkirche was rebuilt. The craftsmen selected stones scored from the bombing and incorporated them with new ones. The church went back together like a jigsaw puzzle, with the blackened stones quite possibly located where they were when the church was bombed, so seamlessly did it all fit.

If Minneapolis and St. Paul continue to pursue this ancient German tradition — I pray we can do it without a bombed church — they can skip those chestnuts roasting over an open fire and I wouldn’t hold it against anybody.

I placed great stock in getting a chestnut. I didn’t know that you peeled a chestnut and the nut itself is meaty and soft. They require more Guhwein mit Schuss.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5474. Soucheray is heard from 1 to 4 p.m. weekdays on 1500ESPN.