Halloween

Despite the fact that Halloween is not part of my cultural heritage, I thought I'd get into the spirit this year and carve a pumpkin lantern thingy. A couple of hours of scooping, scraping and cutting yielded fairly pleasing results.

 

Once illuminated with an old LED bike light it looks spookily festive. (I really need to work on my night photography skills.)

 

Fingers crossed that I get some small people in costumes trick-or-treating this evening, as I have an unseemly amount of chocolate to distribute.

On a side note - roasted pumpkin seeds are unexpectedly delicious!

Fest-o-rama

The season of the Fest is upon us.

Last weekend was the local 'Brezelfest'. After missing out last year due to torrential rain I was determined to experience all that the Fest had to offer.

Up until now I was convinced that the population of Bretzenheim was around 50 - seriously this place is quiet. True to form the Fest brought the Bretzenheimers out of the woodwork and by the time we arrived on Saturday evening the main street was chock-a-block with people enjoying all manner of food, wine, beer and music. They take their Festing very seriously here and the organisers had even managed to slap together a side show alley (of sorts). There was even a lovely bride-to-be and her dearest friends whooping it up in matching t-shirts and red, black and gold lei.

The heart of Bretzenheim was clogged with beer wagons, bratwurst stands, and a host of other stands from local community groups (I'm pretty sure I spotted the German equivalent of the CWA) raising money in the time honoured tradition of selling booze and sausages.

At each end of the street stages were set up and we were able to enjoy the Marching band from Klein-Winternheim at one end and the enthusiastic young boys cranking out hits from the 70s, 80s and 90s at the other.

By the time we left, the locals were dancing in the streets.