May 1st

May 1st, also known as May Day or International Worker's Day, is a national holiday in Germany. In the name of cultural research, I decided to accompany my classmates and friends during the Tag der Arbeit. This holiday corresponds to Labor Day in the United States.

May 1st is celebrated in different ways around Germany. In bigger cities, May 1st is marked by demonstrations and parades organized by worker's unions. Where I live, people ride their bikes on a Maitour to a meadow or park and celebrate there.


I first met up with two friends from my town to bike over to a friend's house in Gütersloh, where we met other friends for breakfast and started celebrating the "Day of Work".


After a hearty breakfast and a few glasses of Weizen, we set off to meet some other friends in the middle of Gütersloh.


The troop is getting bigger...


After meeting up with yet another group, we left the city in a band of about 40 people. As you can imagine, this requires frequent stops to reorganize the group. In this picture you can see the wagon with some of the supplies for the tour.


Messing around at the Wappelbad, a park next to a river. Here we lounged, chilled and hung out with many other kids we know.

All in all, the "1. Mai" was a lot of fun. I still can't find a connection between the history and the tradition in this area, but there are some things you don't have to question.

Halloween and Allerheiligen

Happy belated Halloween! I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween and a great weekend. Halloween is certainly an interesting holiday here, and is the center of a small culture clash between generations. Halloween has just come about as a holiday here (exported from the good ol' US of A) in the last decade or so. Of course the little kids have a great time dressing up and going trick-or-treating (Süßes oder Saures!), and the German youth love another reason to have a party, but many find the idea of getting candy from strangers very strange.

The day after is Allerheiligen, or All Saints' Day, which is very interesting here. Where I live, families usually take a walk to the graveyard in which their relatives are buried and place a candle on each grave of a dead relative. Everyone is out and about, and you run into a lot of people you know. It's an interesting community experience and a great way to remember the dead.

In the next several days I'll post a more detailed update of my weekend with pictures. Until then...