Happy Halloween and All Saints Day!

The holiday Halloween is also known as All Hallow's Eve, which is the day before the holiday All Hallow's Day, also known as All Saints Day. The holiday we now celebrate as Halloween originated as a pagan festival when spirits contact the living and magic is especially potent. All Saints Day celebrates the dead as well, but insteads honors the Virgin Mary and Christian martyrs.

In the US Halloween is, of course, a widely-celebrated holiday. Germany has gradually felt the influence of the US and Great Britain celebrations of Halloween so that it is now a tentatively celebrated day...not an official holiday but you'll see people throwing Halloween parties and a handful of carved pumpkins here and there.

Karl and I have never really done much to celebrate Halloween. Usually we'd stay at home with a movie and a bowl full of candy. And since we never got any trick-or-treaters in the apartment buildings we lived in, we'd eat all the candy ourselves. This year for Halloween we are in a country that really doesn't do much for the holiday so we had a yummy dinner at our local Biergarten, learned how to play our new board game, Carcassonne, and watched episodes of Lost we had downloaded off of the internet. And then imagine our surprise when we got trick-or-treaters at the door! Actually, they were just the kids who live downstairs who had been having a little Halloween party with some friends. They were dressed in warm clothing, scarves, and some homemade, non-descript masks...and we didn't have any candy! (We ended up giving them some oranges!)

But, although, Halloween is not an official German holiday, November 1st, All Saints Day, is a holiday! So today, Karl had the day off! We decided to do a little more exploring in the Black Forest.

We first visited a ruined castle I discovered last week overlooking a town about 20 minutes south of us: Schauenburg. This ancient fortress was founded in the 11th century and overlooks the German town of Oberkirch. The lord of the fortress oversaw trade passing from Strasbourg (now in France) into the Black Forest. We could just see the tall church spire of the huge Strasbourg cathedral in the distance. But as we explored the grounds surrounding the old castle, we discovered a plaque at the foot of a path with a very Halloween appropriate legend about the castle and the White Lady of Schauenburg...



There was once a Knight of Schauenburg who wanted a son for his heir. His wife, however, bore him a daughter. He was very upset, and soon after his wife died of neglect. He gave the infant daughter to a maidservant and left. The knight returned 20 years later and invited his daughter to return with him to Schauenburg where she would be married to a wealthy cousin. The daughter, who had no idea of her true identity, accepted her father's offer, and left her husband, a poor miller. After a few years, she saw her first husband, whom she had treated so badly, at a festival and she instantly feel down dead.

Since then, she appears every 50 years as a women all in white in an effort to redeem herself. Those who see her must do whatever she asks of them, or else they will die after three days! Once she appeared to a young herdsman and asked him to fetch her some water with her shoe...he ran in fright and died three days later. Another time she appeared to a man, asking him to show her the way to Schauenburg. He obeyed and she rewarded him with an old coin that later disappeared from his pocket.



The Schauenburg was very neat! Click here to see more of the ruins.

After leaving Schauenburg (seeing no sign of the White Lady!) we drove deep into the Black Forest (a beautiful drive!) until we came to the ruins of a monastery called Allerheiligen...the word means All Saints, so it was the perfect way to celebrate All Saints Day!

The monastery was founded in about 1200 when hermit monks were looking for a place to open their remote monastery and a donkey found a water source and tossed a bag of money off his back. This was the place! The monks thrived deep in the forest until the monastery was secularized in 1803. The monks were forced to leave and plans were made to turn the monastery into a prison, but before the prison could be created, lightening struck, and a fire burned it to the ground leaving only ruins of the cathedral. (Locals claimed it was divine intervention!) Now the ruins, set in a forest valley with a pretty stream and waterfalls, enjoy the visits of tourists like us! The weather was cold and we had to hang out in the little museum about the monastery to avoid a short hail storm, but it was beautiful! It was easy to see why, for hundreds of years, the hermit monks felt closer to God here. We will definitely return in warmer weather to explore the many paths and eat in the Biergarten next door to the ruins. Click here for more photos.



Happy Halloween and All Saints Day!