Halloween 2019

Halloween started to become a thing in Germany over the past 28 years.  Fasching is Germany's carnival season that starts at 11:11 am on 11 November and lasts until midnight on Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras) which is the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday.  In 1991, Fasching was cancelled because of the First Gulf War and somehow Halloween stepped in to fill the gap and over the years its popularity has grown.  

In the USA Halloween costumes can be pretty much any genre imaginable, from princesses and cowboys to vampires and zombies.  In Germany Halloween costumes should only be spooky or scary like a ghost or a witch because the non-scary costumes like a clown or whatever is reserved for Fasching.

One of the benefits of having an American godfather is that Tünde gets some Halloween support.  For school today she dressed up as a witch.  After school we carved a pumpkin together.  We lit candles outside and decorated the door so that kids knew to stop by and she handed out candy in her ghost costume.  

Instead of "Trick or treat", the children say "Süßes, sonst gibt's Saures" (Give me sweets or there will be sour things).

We had maybe five or six groups of children that came by.  This may not sound like a lot but for a quiet street in Friedrichshagen this was a respectable number.

While Halloween is growing in popularity here not everyone is happy about it.  For a couple of reasons.  First, Fasching starts two weeks later on St. Martin's Day (11 November) and children go around the neighbourhood with lanterns, while singing songs or reciting poems in exchange for treats.  

Note: St. Martin's Day in Czechland is about drinking young wine and eating goose.  

The second, and probably biggest problem with Halloween is that 31 October is Reformationstag (Reformation Day) which celebrates Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation that split the Catholic Church.  It's an important day for Lutherans and it is an official religious holiday in the German states of Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia.  All the states that used to make up East Germany.

Tünde's Ghost Costume

I'm in Friedrichshagen for the week.  A cute, little area in East Berlin.  Which is cool because I get to put in some godfather time.  

Apparently Halloween is starting to catch on a bit in Germany.  Tünde wants to be a ghost for Halloween so one of the items on the to-do list is to sort out her costume.  

Let's see how many trick-or-treaters we get on Thursday.

Halloween Cookies

Times have changed since I first moved to Brno almost ten years ago.  Halloween wasn't a thing over here and it was incredibly difficult to find a Halloween costume.

Aside from the IBM costume contest, including that year we went as the Smurfs, I still don't think that Halloween has really become a thing over here.  However, I did come across some Halloween cookies and brownies for sale at the grocery store yesterday.  Maybe it is getting to be more common?

Halloween 2009

Let me tell you how tough it is to find a Halloween costume in a country where they don't celebrate Halloween. Fortunately, one of my Czech colleagues helped me find a costume store in Brno where I was able to rent a costume.

The shop owner didn't speak English but luckily for me she spoke enough German that we could understand each other. I didn't have a lot of options to choose from but my convict costume only cost me 150 Kč (~ $8.60) for a week's rental.

The U.S. Marines in Bratislava threw a Halloween party last weekend. Their house is up on the hill in Koliba which is the posh part of town. We knew that the party would be fun but the thing we were all really looking forward to was having to get across town in costumes, with everyone looking as us like we're crazy. Of course, they tend to look at us like that anyway.
Naturally the party was fun and after we headed towards the Presidentka pub which has kind of turned in to one of our haunts. Click on any of these pics to better see them and there are lots more already posted on Flickr.