I’m Andrea Anastasakis. I write about Christmas markets for a living, and I have been visiting them since 1999. If you are working on a story about Christmas markets in Europe or North America, this page has everything you need to quote me, along with the details on how the information on this site is sourced.
About Ultimate Christmas Markets
Ultimate Christmas Markets covers 300 markets across Europe and North America, with dates, opening hours and honest assessments of which ones are worth the trip. The site is independently run and reaches 500,000 readers a month during the season, with a newsletter list of 10,000.
Most Christmas market coverage online is compiled from other Christmas market coverage. This site is not. Where I have been to a market, the assessment is firsthand and may not always be positive, because some well-known markets do not justify the trip. Where I have not been, the page sticks to verified practical information rather than inventing an opinion.
Biography
Three versions, use whichever fits.
One line: Andrea Anastasakis has spent more than twenty years visiting European Christmas markets and runs Ultimate Christmas Markets, an independent guide to 300 markets across Europe and North America.
Short: Andrea Anastasakis is the founder and writer of Ultimate Christmas Markets. She has been travelling to European Christmas markets for more than twenty years, has lived in France, the UK, Hungary, and Albania, and now covers 300 markets across Europe and North America. Her focus is on which markets are worth visiting rather than which ones are best known.
Long: Andrea Anastasakis is the founder and writer of Ultimate Christmas Markets, an independent guide covering 300 Christmas markets across Europe and North America. She has been visiting European markets for more than twenty years, from the large Advent programmes in Vienna, Prague and Zagreb through to small regional markets that rarely appear in English language coverage. She has lived in France, the UK, Hungary, and Albania and travels to Europe regularly to visit markets in person.
The site is built on firsthand assessment rather than aggregation. Every market page carries a verdict, including the markets that disappoint, and dates are sourced directly from organisers rather than copied from other travel sites. Andrea is based in Melbourne, Australia, so she is often available to comment outside European and North American office hours.
How dates and information are verified
Christmas market dates circulate widely online and most of what appears in search results has been copied from another site, sometimes several seasons out of date. This site works differently.
- Primary sources only: Dates and opening hours come from the official organiser or city tourism page for each market, never from another travel site.
- Automated monitoring: Organiser pages are checked weekly by an automated monitor that flags any change to the page, so revised or newly published dates are picked up within days.
- Manual verification: Every market is reviewed manually each week, and unconfirmed dates are labelled as unconfirmed or expected rather than carried over from the previous year.
- Published last checked date: Each market page shows the date its information was last verified, so readers and journalists can see how current it is.
If you need a date confirmed for a piece and it is not yet published on the site, email me and I will check the organiser source directly.
Topics I can comment on
- The major markets, including Strasbourg, Vienna, Munich, Nuremberg, Dresden, Brussels, Budapest, Prague, Ljubljana and Krakow.
- My firsthand experience is European and covers almost every country on the site. It does not extend to North America, and it is lighter in the Nordics.
- Which well-known markets justify the trip and which ones underdeliver.
- How to time a visit around crowds, weather and opening periods.
- Regional food and craft traditions, and how markets differ between countries.
- Costs, accommodation timing and what a market trip realistically involves.
- Smaller markets for travellers who have already done the well-known ones.
- How organisers set and announce dates, and why so much published date information is wrong.
As featured on
- Advent Zagreb, official media page, 2025 (archived)
Cited as a source
Publications that have linked to this site as a reference on Christmas markets.
- Marie Claire
- MSN
- Stratford Observer
Media assets
Headshot and logo are available to download below and may be used in any piece that features or quotes this site.
- Headshot, high resolution
- Header Logo, PNG with transparent background
- Icon Logo, PNG with transparent background
Photographs from market pages can be licensed for editorial use. Email me with the market and publication and I will send what I have.
Contact
Email [email protected] for interviews, quotes, fact checking or image requests.
I am based in Australia, so replies usually arrive overnight for European and North American deadlines. If your deadline is tight, put the time you need it by in the subject line, and I will work to that deadline.