Halloween in Berlin

We discovered that Halloween is becoming a new tradition here in Berlin, there aren’t decorations on the houses or streets, but the young people and kids are enjoying the idea of getting dressed upped and going to parties. We got invited to a party at our landlord’s house, Sebastian, in Kreuzberg. Costumes were mandatory, and we were more than pleased to oblige! I love Halloween, that may sound a bit strange coming from a Brazilian, specially because in Brazil it’s also becoming a new tradition. When I was a child, I spent 5 years living in the USA, and I’d always trick or treated…I have a lot of fun memories about that time! All that excitement reminisced these past few days and I actually got anxious to go to the party…hahaha

Rafael loves making masks for Halloween, and for the first time I helped him do it. We started on Friday so that the plaster cast would be dry by Saturday, allowing him to paint it. It took about 30 minutes for me to plaster cast his whole face, and it’s also a very cheap thing to do…each plaster cast roll costed € 2. This time he decided to make a devil type mask, which at the end I think it was pretty creepy 😮

As for me, I decided to paint my face like a Mexican sugar skull, I’ve always wanted to do that! We bought the face paint at a very cool magicians store, Zauberkönig, they have everything you can imagine there, and it’s also a very old and traditional store here in Neukölln. We were supposed to start painting my face around 4 pm, but we were busy doing some other important things, so we started at 6 pm…and the time just flew by. If you’re thinking that I did it all by myself, you’re very wrong…haha. Rafael did the whole thing! I am sooooo lucky to have a talented boyfriend, he even did my flower crown! Since it was his first time painting anyone’s face, it took about 2 hours to get that result. We wanted to paint more details, like the petals around the eyes and a red rose on the chin, but there was no time left…maybe next time. But that didn’t change my amazement on the final resulted, I loved my skull and I wish I could wear it more days during the year! hahahaha

As soon as we got out on the streets here in Neukölln, some people were staring at us and laughing, nobody was dressed around here. But when we changed the subway station heading to Kreuzberg, there was almost a costume party happening in the subway 😀 Kreuzberg is indeed the place to party!

Sebastian made this traditional german drink called “Feuerzangenbowle”, it’s with red wine, fruits, and at some point you put a cone of sugar on top of it and soak it with rum (80% alcohol) and then you light it up so that the sugar can melt into the drink. It was amazing, super delicious and also fun to watch!

Marina, Sebastian, Rafael and I. (Courtesy photo of Marina and friends)

The party was a blast! He and Marina (Sebastian’s wife) decorated their whole apartment, there were pumpkins, paper bats, candles and colourful lights. She even baked brownies and cut them into coffin like shapes (which were delicious by the way). Marina is Russian and she’s also learning the german language, so there were some of her classmates there, and with one of them we had our longest german conversation yet…yay!!! This might sound silly, but trust me….it isn’t! hahaha. The whole night was really fun, everything was perfect, the food, drinks, people and of course the hosts. Marina and Sebastian are such a nice and cool couple….who has the best landlords in the history of time?! Uhhh…we do! hahahaha