Costume Party, New Car, and another round in Heidelberg

Halloween was interesting here.  Talking to several friends and locals, we learned that not even a generation ago children did not go Trick or Treating in Germany.  It's interesting learning that America is responsible for an imported holiday!  We also had a surprising number of trick or treaters on Halloween night.  J and I did not expect the locals to celebrate, so we did not buy candy to hand out.  Man, they were persistent!  I was alone at home as J was working late, so I turned all of the lights off.  They rang the door anyway.  When J got home, they were still at it so we posted a sign in both English and German stating that we didn't have any candy.  They STILL rang the doorbell, sometimes twice!  That is way more persistant than any American Trick-or-Treaters I had experienced.  I give them credit for really working it.

J and I got invited to a Halloween Party.  We had a hard time coming up with a couples costume that was inexpensive and was not based upon an American culture icon or euphemism.  We settled on a leprechaun and a pot of gold.  We already had everything for the leprechaun and we only needed some simple paper products for the pot of gold costume.  Everyone liked it so much that we actually won first prize.  I personally think it was because we stood out like sore thumbs.  Everyone dressed in black as a witch, vampire, skeleton, or pirate..and then you had us ignorant Americans in bright green and shimmering gold.  Even further, the whole leprechaun-pot of gold idea is also an American culture reference.  Only one german who lived in America for six years understood what we were.  In retrospect, I had heard that the Irish have said that America celebrates St. Patrick's Day more crazily than the Irish do.  In short, two wrongs made a right.  How funny is that?

As for pictures, J has several on her facebook page.  Sadly, I don't have any with me at the moment.

After looking at cars for a while, and assessing the market for used cars where we live, we decided that shopping for a car in K-town was just like shopping for a rescue dog back at home.  The turnover for decently marketed cars could literally be hours, so we started checking daily, made inquiries daily, and got a car that fit the bill after test driving it and looking it over.  It's definitely a german spec car: stick shift and tiny. While it doesn't have the pickup of our american spec car, it certainly maneuvers the hills a lot better and fits in the narrow stretches more easily.  It's not the best on gas, but it works for our purposes.

Still no pictures of the car.  I'll get those this week if I can.

J had two ODT's to look over this past weekend.  Funnily enough, one of them was just here a few months ago.  I'll do some explaining.  ODT stands for Overseas Deployment Training.  The US Army Reserves requires a short amount of deployment time each year for each reserve soldier.  It is unusual for a reserve soldier to get an ODT to the exact same location twice within a few months.  It happened because November is the new fiscal year, and Kaiserslautern's Kasernen are currently going through a rapid-fire cycles of ODT's.  They used them this time because the vast majority of J's office was out for a CLE (Continuing Law Education) course out of town and they were temporarily short-staffed.  J had responsibility for them this time, so we took them out to a farewell dinner.  During the dinner, it was decided that we would take them to Heidelberg for an outing.  ODT's typically don't have their own transportation, so they were pretty much locked to base unless they walked around town.

We all drove on over to Heidelberg, J had lots of great conversation, and we both learned a lot about the US Army Reserves program.  While in town, we just had a very casual and relaxed afternoon and evening around town.  We walked through the main walking street; we shared a few meat and cheese trays; we chatted at a cafe; we ate truffles, roasted chestnuts, and dates; we had fantastic regional and Swabian food at the Roten Ochsen (Red Ox); and then we got a nice view on the old bridge and finally got to experience the bronze monkey!

One of the places we visited in Heidelberg was the Kaethe Wolfahrt Christmas Store.  They had TONS of decorations.  I took particular interest in the miniature wooden trees they were selling.  Here are the ones I took pictures of...