Karlsruhe Local Customs

All over Germany you might notice these areas with gardens and little shacks all over. And you might wonder, if these are the slums of the city - but in the contrary:

these are Schrebergärten, external gardening spots for all those people, who have a flat without a garden to it. They rent a piece of Schrebergarten and spend every free minute in it!

These alotments started in the mid 1800s and while they were vital for food security until the 1950s, they are now more a green spot for the families!

Christmas and Easter are the two most important holidays in Germany. It is a German tradition to put an Easter bouquet up and decorate it with painted eggs. The kids go Easter egg hunting and here in the south of Germany they even get small presents for Easter.... There will be family reunions and gettogethers all over the place!

Easter is celebrated from Good Friday until Easter Monday and only on Saturdays shops will be open. All the other days everything will be closed!

Birthdays are something well recognized in this part of the world. Kids can't wait until they have them and adults can't wait to ignore them.....

Usually the person of honor gets presents for the birthday and many good wishes for a wonderful new year. A birthday cake is a tradition in most families.

The asparagus season lasts from the beginning of May until mid-June. During this time, almost every eatery in Germany offers a special asparagus menu (Spargelkarte) in addition to their regular menu.

A very popular method of serving the vegetable is with potatoes, butter or Hollandaise sauce, and either smoked or Black Forest ham. We love to eat asparagus with very thin crèpe like pancakes and ham - what a delight!!!

In Germany, the asparagus is almost always of the white variety (achieved by growing the stalks under mounds of earth so the sun doesn’t cause them to produce chlorophyll).
Since Karlsruhe is very close to what they call "die deutsche Spargelstraße" = the German asparagus street, we only have to drive a few kilometers to buy asparagus directly from the farmers......

Yummie

Every November, there is the Karlsruher Bücherschau in the Landesgewerbeamt near the Market Square. It lasts for about 4 weeks until the beginning of December.

The Bücherschau is a book fair, mainly featuring local publishers. Every year they have a featured country and a featured specimen of literature. You can go there and look at the hundreds of books, listen to lectures or even watch movies.

Entry fee is 2 € (or 1 € for students and senior citizens) and opening hours are 10 a.m. until 8 p.m. daily!

I thorougly enjoy this event a lot and try to visit every year!

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From November 28 until December 23, you will find a huge Christmas Market on the Market Square. There are dozens of stalls with either little gifts, sweets, gluehwein (hot wine with spices) or Bratwurst - and be sure that there are hundreds of people around as well!

In 2004 we started our VT Gluehwein meeting tradition, which was a lot of fun and which in 2006 even had international guests visiting from abroad: Natalie from England, Ingrid from the Netherlands and Sonja from Switzerland (apart from our two American VTers who live in Frankfurt...). In 2008 were were happy to welcome attendees from GB, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Germany, later even as far as the USA and in 2011 we had more Dutch guests and our easternmost attendee from the Czech Republic!

So, if you would like to join us in 2012 - feel free to sign up!

Karlsruhe was the first city south of Frankfurt to ever have a Singalong - and I was lucky to be in it! It took place in the Stadtkirche Durlach and we performed Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratory I - III. More than 200 singers from all over Karlsruhe came to sing this wonderful oratory, the orchestra was excellent and so were the soloists!

Do have a look at my video, if you would like to get an impression of what it was like! I do hope that this will become a tradition here - a local custom!!! And I am happy to say: it HAS become a tradition!!! The 5th Karlsruhe singalong will be on December 15th, 2012.

If you are travelling and in need of some reading material other than maps and guide books, Karlsruhe is the place to go. Karlsruhe has a very active bookcrossing.com community with different OBCZs - official book crossing zones. These are usually cafés or bars that allow bookcrossing to maintain a bookshelf there with books that can be taken by whoever wants to read them. These books are registered on the bookcrossing.com website and if you feel like telling us, which book you took, what you thought of it and where you plan to leave it again, this will add to the excitement. If not, just enjoy reading the book! There is one bookshelf in the Café Gelbe Seiten and there used to be one in the Cafébar Schiller on Kronenplatz (look at my restaurant tip).

Another nice thing are the official bookshelf on Lidell Square and Werder Square that invite you to just take and read any book you like. If you have any books you would like to leave there - much appreciated, but not necessary!

So, enjoy reading, folks!!!!