Feuerzangenbowle

How do Germans achieve Gemütlichkeit? With fire! :) On Friday we started in the easter break with a decent Feuerzangenbowle - there really is no translation for this. My favourite online dictionary gave me "mulled wine with a rum-soaked sugarloaf lit above it". Although this is correct it is of course not a proper translation and by far not a proper description of what Feuerzangenbowle is.

First, the ingredients - the bowle: Mulled wine: Yeah ok ... Mulled wine is what is sold at the Christmas market and the main ingredient of Feuerzangenbowle is very similar: Red wine and orange juice with spices. More wine, of course.

All is heated up and then second, the "Feuerzangen"part! A sugarloaf is placed on top of a special device (the people here already declared this as my standard description of everything - I think it really is very appropriate in almost every setting) on top of the pot with the "mulled wine", soaked with rum (I do not know if the rum we used is even legal in Sweden) and lit on fire. The melting sugar then drops into the mulled wine. Of course it is also ok to pour some rum immediately into the mulled wine so that the whole pot is on fire.
Third, the show and the Gemütlichkeit (another of these typical German things and one of the best ever!)! From time to time rum is poured onto the burning sugarloaf. You can imagine what happens. All this together is a very sacred German tradition that is characterised by - as the English wikipedia very accurately describes - a notion of Gemütlichkeit!

However, fourth and last, the most important ingredient are of course the people around and they were awesome so it was an awesome evening!

"Feuerzangenbowle is like a nuclear reactor - you cannot stop it."

A notion of Gemütlichkeit.