Halloween 2008

Mwouah-hah-hah... Halloween!
October 31st is a holiday where we live in Germany, but not so that people can have extra-rocking Halloween parties. In fact, people don't really celebrate Halloween at all, but are sort of familiar with it from American television and movies. (It's becoming a bit more popular now, but entirely as an adult thing, rather than for kids going door-to-door.)

We really like Halloween though, and decided it would be a great excuse for a party. My birthday's on the 22nd as well, so it was sort of my birthday party as well. We decided not to have the party on the 31st though, as I had to leave early the next morning en route to Tokyo (more on that in the next post), but rather on the Thursday night, the 30th, as no one had to work the next day. Thanks to the delivery of a bunch of fake cobwebs, plastic bats and spiders, and various other decorations from my brother, as well as a variety of other home-made decorations (and costumes), we were able to have the place well kitted out. We also prepared a variety of creepy, Halloween-themed treats (similar to those from our party in Victoria a couple years ago), but didn't get many pictures of these.

Luckily everyone was pretty excited about the idea of the party, and pretty well everyone followed our mandatory costume rules. (Germans are pretty good about following rules, you know...)

Here's Brent (who's from Lethbridge) as a hockey player...
...and Calin and Susanne in their fantastic, homemade disco outfits, inspired by Calin's irrational love of Mama Mia:Here we have a cowgirl, a gangster, and a witch...

...a doctor and a patient (some of Jeremi's rugby teammates)...
...a couple cans of beer, on either side of James Bond (who's usually a redhead) and a cat.
Here they were joined by Indiana Jones, in the middle. (Incidentally, he wore the same costume to work, and several people thought he was dressed as his boss, who usually wears a similar hat and a leather jacket. He had to repeatedly point out that his boss didn't usually carry a whip.)And here am I, with a watermelon that I carved to look like a brain.

Why am I dressed all in green with a silly cardboard hat, you ask? Does this make it any clearer?I'm the Ampelmännchen! Okay, so that still might not be clear to you, but it's pretty recognizable here in eastern Germany. While the little traffic symbols in west Germany are nothing special, the pedestrian traffic symbols that were used here while Germany was separated are incredibly cute. Here they are:After reunification, a lot of the traffic lights were switched to be consistent with the west (along with many other things that were changed), but there was a bit of popular backlash against the reforms. Because really, they're a lot cooler than their west German counterparts. The Ampelmännchen (which just means little traffic light men) became a symbol of "Ostalgie", which is like nostalgia for the way things were in the east, in a play on words that doesn't translate as nicely into English. Nowadays there are shops across east Germany (especially in Berlin) that sell Ampelmann souvenirs and various other products reminiscent of East Germany.

And here's Jeremi's costume, though not the best picture of it imaginable. If you guessed a monk, you're right, but it's more specific than that. Most people thought he was the monk from the Franziskaner bottle (a brand of beer), which looked about right, and must be where I get my archetype of a monk from. If it helps, he was also carrying around a numbered list with 95 things in Latin written on it. Still not getting it? Maybe it would help if you knew that October 31st is a holiday where we live because it's Reformationstag, the anniversary of when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door, setting off the Protestant Reformation. Yup, he was Martin Luther, who spent a lot of time in Thüringen during his life.

And what's that he's carrying?
Ah yes, it's a roasted pig's head, or rather, two half pigs' heads. Because although there's three times as much pork here than any other meat, it was impossible to get a whole pig's head. I actually think it made it all the grosser, from a Halloween perspective, and to be honest, most people were too squeamish to eat any. (When we made the same dish for our party in Canada, people were much more receptive, but I credit that more to the Brazilians in attendance than major differences between Germans and Canadians - I just thought that Germans might be more into it because they eat so damn much pork!)
Some more guests in costume...
...including Jeremi's new boss, who was wearing the same outfit that he did for a job interview back in the 80's.
A vampire and a mime...
...and a couple of homemade pencil crayon outfits.
At the right it Raul, dressed as the internet (it's a bit complicated - you'd have to see the whole thing), and a couple of people from the Spanish Stammtisch gang, dressed as dominoes. This was Valentina's idea, and I think it's a brilliant minimal-effort costume idea - everyone wears black, and you just have to attach some white paper dots and a thin white stripe to their outfits. It works even better when a few people do it together! Something to keep in the back of your mind for when you need a costume sometime and don't have much time to spend on it...
And so, nearly six months later, Happy Halloween!!!