Halloween

I wasn't sure how much Halloween there would be in Germany. In the supermarket, they sold some pumpkins. There was a Halloween display with some decorations, but sort of in the back.

I asked on my "German Way" ex-pat mailing list what the chances of Trick-or-Treaters were and they said:

"Depends on how many kids you have in your neighbourhood and whether they know that you "do" Halloween. When my boys were in elementary school, a few kids, mostly Turkish and Russian, would come to our house trick or treating, but in the past few years we've had no one show up despite the jack o' lantern outside the door.

"As others have said, not very likely. Although Halloween is more common in Germany these days, trick-or-treating is not."

So we got some pumpkins (they have many varieties, see above) from our local OBI (think Home Depot German Style) and carved them so we could show we "do" Halloween. I bought a couple of bags of candy "just in case". They don't have giant bags of candy for sale like in the U.S., but we could find some "fun" size candy bars.

As soon as it was dark and I lit the pumpkins and put them outside we had our first trick or treaters! In Germany they don't say "Trick or Treat", they say "Süßes sonst gibt's Saures" , that is, Sweets or we give Sours. I even saw some little boys prompting other little boys to say "danke"!

After a bit I had to drop the little one to go trick or treating with her friends...she said they would go up to small apartment buildings and push all the intercom buttons and when someone answered they would go up and who ever opened the doors would give them candy. Not everyone was really doing trick or treating so they got this one older lady who was sorry that she didn't have anything for them, but you know how all old ladies are required to have a dish of hard candies? She gave them "schwarz krauter" flavored hard candies...that means Black Herb and tasted like menthol to me.

When I got back we quickly had given away the last of the candy, so I went on a candy run. There was not much left at the store! Of course when I got back we only had one more group of kids come to the door...but hey! leftover candy!

I had also tried to see if there were any other Halloween activities...like pumpkin picking or Haunted Houses. The only thing I could find was a haunted house as the real Castle Frankenstein but you needed tickets for that and it was sold out. We did end up going to the Theme Park "Europa Park" over fall break and they had Haunted Houses and themed rides, but that is for another post.