Today, like yesterday, is another cool, damp day with on-and-off-again rain showers. I am glad for the rain and the cooler weather. So many beautiful flowers have been plants that were starting to wilt in the beautiful, but dry, weather of the week before. It will be good to see everything perk back up. Plus, I get to enjoy soup at least one more time before it gets too hot to eat hot things.
Tomorrow is a national holiday in Germany. In fact, it is a national holiday in many countries. Tomorrow is May Day (Erste Mai or Maifeiertag here in Germany), or also known as the International Workers' Day. It is celebrated much like our Labor Day in September with a day off from work, but many labor organizations and political activists also use this day for speeches and demonstrations, particularly in election years.
It also often combines older spring festival celebrations, including the Maypole activities and the May Queen, which originated in Germanic cultures. Depending on the country and their traditions, Maypoles can be small enough to be left on a young girl's doorstep to indicate that someone admires her or as big as a giant pole which is mounted in the town center and adorned with flowers. Maypole dances, which are a more recent event, often involve ribbons that hang down from a shorter, plain pole which children weave into patterns on the pole by dancing around the pole. The crowning of the May Queen, a fair young lady from the local village, is a part of the celebrations, along with feasts, drinking of ale, and celebrations of spring.
Our town will be celebrating the day with events in the city center that begin at 10 AM. It is also the last weekend of our two week long Jazz festival, so it should be a good time by all if the weather improves. Once the morning and afternoon events are over, many people will go to their homes and have a barbecue on the grill with friends. In this way, it is very much like our Labor Day.
But there is one more aspect of this holiday that actually will take place tonight. Tonight is called Freinacht (free night) where, in one of these quirky southern German traditions, the youth of the villages will go from house to house hiding all items that have been left out in the yard. It is harmless fun, and nothing is destroyed, but everyone I know that has any kind of a yard, porch, balcony or patio that is accessible to others is hiding their own stuff so that it will not fall into the hands of the mischief makers.
And since tomorrow is a national holiday, I too will take this day as a holiday from the blog to be with my family. I hope you have a wonderful May Day, even if the only thing special about it for you is that it is a Friday. I also want to let you know that this blog for the purposes of sharing it with BHES as an educational tool will end on May 29th. After that time, I will still post to the blog from time to time with items I learn, places we see with pictures of us, and all things German, but the blog will be strictly geared towards family and friends at that time.
Words for the day are May 1st: Erste Mai (air steh mi where the "i" is long as in kite.) As a refresher, the date would be written as such: 1.5.09 or 1 Mai 09.
The question of the day is "Do they have commercials in Germany?"
Auf Wiedersehen,
Frau Spitzer
