It's Halloween!

As I write this, little costumed German children are trick-or-treating in my neighborhood! It's not even dark yet outside! Germany cracks me up!

Once again, I managed to forget that trick-or-treating has caught on here in recent years, and was pleasantly startled to walk outside and stumble across little lions and witches and such.

In general, I have mixed thoughts about Halloween getting so big in Germany (Halloween is GREAT, but it's also yet another American export to the world, and threatens to eclipse Germany's own lovely children's holidays, like St. Martin's Day in November).

But right now, I'm an American who misses fall colors, and front porches decked out in Halloween decorations, and the excitement of getting dressed up and going out into the neighborhood at night with your friends.

Let the trick-or-treating commence!

(Unfortunately, the fact that I always forget about Halloween here means I don't have any candy or anything, so I'm currently hiding out in the living room with the front hall light off, hoping nobody rings the bell! I can hear excited shrieking and yelling in the stairwell though. Does anybody else think it would be sad to trick-or-treat in a city, with its big, anonymous apartment buildings, where you can't even tell who's home and who's not?)