My wife and I had long been meaning to visit Nuremberg around Christmas. The city's Christmas market -- called the Christkindlesmarkt, not Weihnachtsmarkt -- is widely regarded as the best of them all. Since my mother-in-law made the trip from Moscow to spend the holidays with us, we decided to buy three train tickets and go.

I'd been to Nuremberg before, about 25 years ago, and my memories were hazy but positive. I recalled the picturesque medieval castle on the hill, and the opaque Franconian dialect. I also remembered meeting an old-timer still proud to have shaken Hitler's hand. Nuremberg, of course, is known not only for its meistersingers of yore, Albrecht Dürer, toys, gingerbread, and grilled finger-length sausages. The Nazis adopted their anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws in the city, the site of huge Nazi rallies and the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals. But Adolf and Co. was the last thing on my mind.

Until we got there, that is. Nuremberg was decked out in all its Christmas finery. And over the street leading from the train station to the Christkindlesmarkt hung strings of lights in the shape of ...

... angels, if you looked closely. But at first they looked to me like Nazi eagles. The ones with wings pointing downward. Really. I thought it was just me. But my wife saw the resemblance too.

We walked on and soon came to a monument. It was a World War II monument of sorts, dedicated not to those whom the Germans attacked or exterminated, but to the Germans consequently expelled from the German-ravaged East.

Eventually we reached the Christkindlesmarkt, where we pushed happily through the throngs, soaked up the sights and smells, drank mulled wine and eggnog, and ate Nuremberg sausages. On the street they're sold three in a bun, or "drei im Weggla" (not "drei im Brötchen"), as they say in Nuremberg. Then we strolled up the hill to the castle.

By the time we descended we were hungry again, so we stopped at a cosy litle restaurant with smoke curling from the chimney. The menu consisted essentially of one item: Nuremberg sausages. Diners had a choice of how many -- six, eight, 10 or 12 -- and of a side dish of sauerkraut, potato salad or pretzels. The food was served on pewter plates. A grill stood in the center of the room, under the chimney, surrounded by long wooden tables and benches where Germans and foreigners of every stripe sat elbow to elbow, hip to hip.

I was working on my third beer -- but who was counting? -- when our waitress squeezed in two elderly German men at our table. They had a rather dignified air, and were still straight-backed and hale. The one next to me was talkative, and I asked him if he was from Nuremberg. No, he replied, but he'd been living in Nuremberg since shortly after the war. He went on to say that he'd been born in Karlsbad, which is the German name of the Czech town of Karlovy Vary, in the Sudetenland, then predominantly German. Toward the end of the war he was captured by Soviet forces in Hungary and sent to a POW camp in Kiev. After his release he settled in Nuremberg (Germans were expelled from Karlsbad in 1945).

A pall fell over the jollity. My mother-in-law was a child in the Soviet Union when German troops were wreaking havoc there.

"And where, if I may ask, are you all from?" my neighbor inquired.

I explained that my wife and her mother were Russians, and that I was an American.

"Ah, now that's a combination of extremes!"

"How so?"

"Oh, you know, the Russians and Americans were the Cold War's principal adversaries."

"They actually have a lot in common," I countered.

"Such as? That they both fought Hitler?" There seemed to be the barest hint of hostility in his voice now, but maybe it was just me. And then he added -- just a bit too self-consciously, it seemed:

"Well, it's a good thing they did."