Behold the Great Pumpkin

Something I love about the Deutsch; they celebrate everything!  A few weekends ago there was the Bad Homburg Lantern Festival.  The weekend after that, we headed out to a farm in Wallau, about 30 minutes’ drive from us, for a Pumpkin Festival.  It was wonderful.  The day was perfect; sunny, clear, crisp.  The festival started with a lovely ecumenical service, where we all thanked God for the pumpkins.  We couldn’t understand all of it but there was a lot of “Gott” (God) and “Kurbis” (pumpkin).  There was even a song, where the main refrain was “Thank you God for the pumpkin”.  A choir of “Landfrau” (women of the land) sang hymns accompanied by a few piano accordians.  The large congregation, sitting on wooden benches, sang lustily.

After that we wandered around the craft stalls, the kids had pony rides and spent a very long time playing in an enormous pile of hay that was put out for that very purpose.  At lunchtime we ate pumpkin soup, pumpkin chili, pumpkin sausage and of course wurst im brötchen (sausage in bread – found anywhere there are Germans eating).  We purchased half a dozen little pumpkins in funny shapes to decorate at home (this week’s craft project) and some hokkaido pumpkin, which I just made into soup yesterday.

Wonderful, wonderful!

Same same but different

Ah, the English language.  Its complexity and diversity never ceases to surprise me.  I find it amazing and exciting that so many of us from so many different places, speak the same language.  But do we?  I am always coming across words that mean something different somewhere else, or has no meaning at all.  Here are some:

• capsicum (Aus) / pepper (UK)
• vacuum-cleaner (Aus) / hoover (UK)
• singlet (Aus) / vest (UK) / tank top (USA)
• torch (Aus) / flashlight (USA)
• slipperydip (Aus) / slide (UK)
• thongs (Aus) / flipflops (UK/USA)
• g-string (Aus) / thong (USA)
• stockings (Aus) / tights (UK)
• jumper (Aus) / sweater (USA)

And the list goes on.  I’ve learnt to be fairly adaptable and mostly remember to use the right word within whatever cultural context I’m operating.  And my little verbose monkey is pretty chameleonic too.  Hopefully the other one will be too.  However, we don’t always get it right.  So, if you hear us slip up every now and then, please don’t give us a hard time about it.  We’re trying really hard to fit in wherever we are.

And one very important lesson I’ve learnt from all of this is: just because it’s different, doesn’t mean it’s wrong!