A Visit to Seiffen in the Erzgebirge Mountains in Saxony

With a 4-day Easter weekend, we decided to take a trip north to Seiffen (a small Christmassy town of 2,500 people), then Dresden, Leipzig and Weimar.

Seiffen is a most charming town up in the Erzgebirge mountains (a 6 hour drive from Frankfurt) where they do a lot of wood carving and woodworking. It’s a magical place with more than 50 shops selling handcrafted wooden treasures.  Seiffen feels like a Christmas town, but this week, everyone here is also celebrating Easter.

Thousands of visitors (busloads) come during the Christmas holidays, but today the town was quiet and empty and we felt like we had the place to ourselves.  We wandered from shop to shop, enjoying the beautiful creations.  The items in the shops are made right here in this mountain area.

Our first stop was the Seifen Bergkirche up on the hill.  This is the iconic (and only) church in Seiffen, made famous because it’s featured in so many of the Schwibbogen, or Light Arches and Christmas scenes. You can read a nice post about it here.  Sadly, the church wasn’t open when we were there.

Then we walked down into town to visit the shops.  There is a large woodcarving school here where the traditional skills are taught to the next generation.

It was really great to be here this Easter weekend.  It felt like we were getting a two-for-one experience!

One shop just sold replacement parts and pieces for these traditional pyramids.  Every Christmas Eve our family sat at a round table with our Weihnachts Pyramide in the middle of the table, eating by candlelight.  It’s one of my favorite and most memorable holiday traditions.

Schwibbogen is the name for the arched lighted Christmas or village scenes that are usually placed in a window or on a shelf.  There are hundreds of patterns with every kind of scene you might imagine.  They have multiple dimensions and are lit with real or electric candles.

There’s just something so German about these beautiful creations!  They are my favorite Christmas decorations.  I just love looking at each one.

Many of these displays are behind glass. Sorry for the glare.

This is one of the big workshops.  On a normal (not Easter holiday weekend), some of these workshops are open to the public so you can watch the craftsmen and women working.

This woman is from Czechia (we are 7 km from the Czech border here).  She was working on bunny faces.

This was a whole shop of nutcrackers and smokers–

It was a delightful day.  A happy day.  Check the next post for one of our favorite visits.