What better tonic for the dark, cold European winter than the Christmas market? Mugs of steaming mulled wine, the smell of grilled meat and woodsmoke, fairground rides, colour, music, light, conviviality. This year it was all meant to be back, the bounty of the Continent’s hard-fought recovery from the pandemic and of its vaccination programmes. Yet now, across Europe, market after market is being cancelled. Those in Ghent, Leuven, Munich, Nuremberg, Vienna and Bratislava have been called off. Elsewhere, in Brussels, Prague and here in Berlin, they will go ahead, but only under joy-sapping new restrictions.
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