Autumn days

Autumn is great time of year in Germany. There are loads of festivals which revolve around wine and beer and the weather is normally still nice- there's a bit of a chill in the air but for the most part it's dry with blue skies. Last weekend we went to Heilbronn and walked around the vineyards and enjoyed the scenery over a coffee.

In September we went to the wine festival in Stuttgart with some friends. There were lots of little restaurants constructed for the event, with cute German style décor. We tried lots of lovely wines from the area. My favourite was a kind of sparkling rose. Everything tasted lovely with the German food- I had some Käsespätzle, a Swabian dish.

Another weekend recently my family came to visit and we went to the first Octoberfest in Karlsruhe. It was basically just a huge tent, there was no carnival like there would be at the Munich Octoberfest or Stuttgarter Wasen. But it was really enjoyable nonetheless. I reserved a table for ten and managed to get a group together last minute. We enjoyed the music, drank huge liters of beer and sung and danced.

My sister and I also decided to buy dirndls for the festival, German style traditional dresses. It took us several hours of shopping and about six shops to find nice ones that fit and cost under one hundred euro. Dirndls are big business this time of year! Everyone was fighting over the last ones left in the shop as if their life depended on it. But eventually we found two nice ones. Trying it on in the shop, I felt a little silly and thought, am I really going to wear this? But once we were on our way to the festival, we saw loads of people wearing dirndls and lederhosen and fit right in!

Something I have noticed living here is that the restaurants often update their menus according to what's in season, so at the moment there are lots of dishes with pumpkin. One of my favourites is pumpkin soup, yum.

The clocks went back recently meaning a nice lie in at the weekend. But now when I leave work in the evenings it is already dark. And the last few days the weather has gotten much colder, there was even frost this morning. Looks like winter is nearly here. Tomorrow is a holiday here and looking forward to the long weekend, and I'll be kicking it off in style by attending a Halloween party this evening.

Hope everyone is having a nice autumn and happy Halloween!!