st martins

at church yesterday, jennifer s. told me about a german holiday parade that was taking place at 6pm in spangdahlem and that huge free pretzels were going to be given out. uh, hello! i am so there! free food? sa-weet! so i convinced steve to go (he wasnt too happy about it as he wanted to stay home and hang out) so we grabbed our coats, blankets, and headed towards spang town. i had no idea what st martins day was all about, so we went not really knowing what to expect. we saw a HUGE fire from the autobahn so we headed towards that direction and found a ton of people walking away from it with these homemade paper mache' lanterns.

so we did as the germans do and parked our car in the street almost blocking traffic from all directions (if you live here you know what i mean! so hey, OPSEC right? we're just trying to blend in!) and walked out. we were confused as to what was going on but ran into some friends from church that explained where they were headed to. everyone had just left the giant bon fire and were walking towards the towns fire department to get free pretzels so we followed behind. these pretzels were so big! brynn and i shared one as there was no way she would be able to eat one by herself. and of corse, no german holiday (or any event for that matter) is complete without a huge tent with a bar filled with alcohol!

after we grabbed our pretzels, they handed out kinder eggs to the children. brynn loves these things but im always a little hesitant with the little toys inside as they are small and brynn STILL puts everything in her mouth.

since we missed the beginning to this event, we headed back down to the massive fire to take pictures and get warm. its been getting pretty cold at night so it felt great to be by a fire. brynn was afraid when we got too close, so we kept reassuring her that everything was ok.

we are really going to miss these fun events! these past few years here in germany have really flown by.