We never got to celebrate Halloween because it’s a day where demons, witchcraft and evil are celebrated. It wasn’t the christian thing to do. We would, instead, stay home and pray – and hope that the evil wouldn’t invade our house on a day where all evil creatures were on the loose.
Now, Halloween isn’t exactly a “European” holiday. But we celebrate it never the less – because really, Germans don’t miss out a single good excuse to dress up and party. We do love dressing up.
I’m excited. There isn’t much of the pumpkin stuff going on – as in, we don’t eat special pumpkin flavoured everything. Some do carve pumpkins, but not many. Some kids will go for candy – but not many. Many people don’t have candy at home to give out – hence the kids that do go collecting candy usually return with huge bags of old candy nobody wanted to eat all year. Yeah, it’s not really that much of a great holiday.
But, as I said, Germans don’t want to miss out on the partying, so you’ll find a flood of Halloween parties. And those are the events I’m looking forward to!
Me and my friends, we want to match our costumes. We’re thinking about going as evil madhouse – some bloody doctors, some bloody patients. We’re going to be at least 7 people so I think that might work out nicely. I’m excited!!!
My friends proposed to go candyhunting with me because I never got to do that as a kid and they want me to experience that “part of American childhood”, but really, how fun can it be when people roll their eyes because you’re disturbing them on a normal night?
Really, it’s funny how much my friends sometimes try to make things “American” for me so I can experience “American” things now. Quotations because sometimes what they say is American, I have doubts it is.
Like on 4th of July, they painted their faces in the American flag and we had a little party. My best friend asked me if I wanted to go to a cheerleading class with her. They took me to an American football game (terrible! Germans are bad at it, sorry). On Christmas, they asked me if I wanted to follow American tradition (gifts in the morning of dec 25th) or German tradition (gifts in the evening of dec 24th).
But many times, things that I want to do just aren’t possible. For example, I do not read books in German. I can’t explain why, I just can’t. It’s strange. I feel like I don’t really “get” it, you know? German has a vastly different structure and more cases than English – sentences can go on for half a page. English tends to work with shorter sentences, it feels more “precise” to me, if that makes sense.
And when it comes to movies and such, I’m really strange. I prefer watching shows in English. Movies are 50/50, some I prefer in English, others in German (dub). News I prefer in the language of the country they’re from.
If we’re watching a movie in a different language with subtitles, I always want them to put on English subtitles because I feel like I need more concentration to keep up with the German subtitles.
I’ve been trying to read some books in German because I really think it would help me polish my style and sound a bit more “German”. I tend to apply this very short and precise English structure to German. AH, it’s weird.
And I just remembered that I did not report on my Oktoberfest experience! That will come some time this weekend!
Categories: America, Europe | Permalink.
Source:
http://brokendaughters.wordpress.com/2012/10/05/halloween-and-more-german-american/
The News from http://funyhalloween.blogspot.com