The ruins of Burg Frankenstein sit on a hill overlooking a small rural community just South of Darmstadt, in Germany.
I don’t know if the locals ever got together and mobbed around the countryside wielding torches and pitchforks, but they do celebrate Halloween every year. The custom was introduced here 30 years ago by American servicemen stationed nearby. It has since grown into a major tourist festival where guests can enjoy dinner-theater on the castle grounds and party all night with goth ghosts, grinning ghouls, sexy vampires and friendly monsters. Much Gluhwein is consumed.
Here’s the Burg Frankenstein Halloween site, and here’s a link to a striking and distinctly Karloffian Frankenstein Folding Mask. Download the PDF file, print it out and test your origami skills. It’s a little complicated if you can’t read the German instructions, but you’ll figure it out. This is a really cool mask!
4 comments:
that is cooool...
I've been to Haloween at the castle, it's great fun :-)
Eberstadt is the town / village under the castle - when I lived there I could see the castle out of our kitchen window... happy days :-)
I was stationed in Germany during the 80s right outside Darmstadt in a small town called Bebenhausen. I've been to Burg Frankenstein many times. One winter in 1981 we(me and fellow GIs) had a great snowball fight on the walls of the Burg. I remember it being built in the 1200's (yes Germany has a long history), but it is mostly ruins. A really atmospneric place for Halloween. If you somehow found yourself alone there in the middle of the night, I imagine you might see a monster or two roaming the old castle ruins.
A snowball fight at Castle Frankenstein! Great story, Bryan.
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