HALLOWEEN (FOR FOREIGNERS) IN 1979
Today is Halloween, for those who celebrate that day. I am travelling through my memories back to the year 1979. Almost 50 years ago. Jesus, I’m getting old. Back to the apartment building at Lerchenreinstrase 19 in Zurich, where my family and I lived, in the autumn of that year.
A lot of things happened to me in Zurich. I got into a lot of fights. I learned to speak, read and write in German. I also learned to speak a little English, so that I could play with the other foreign kids in the building. These kids were the Canadian boy, the Japanese siblings, and American kids who were older. We didn’t usually play much together and we didn’t have any Swiss friends. The Swiss kids didn’t want to have anything to do with us foreigners. They would rather beat us up than play with us.
Occasionally however, us foreigners did something together, such as on Halloween. My older sister and I, had never heard of Halloween or seen anything about it. This happened before we moved to America a few years later. When it came to Halloween, all of our parents, i.e. the foreign scientists and their spouses, decided to let us kids celebrate Halloween together, put on costumes and then walk to each other’s apartments and do a trick or treat.
And so it was that my sister was dressed up as a grown woman with lipstick and a long coat. I was made into an old man with a moustache and a Russian hat. The other kids were aliens and other strange animals. When everyone had gone to each others apartments, most of the kids had some sweets in their bags. We all went out to the lawn behind the building where all the balconies were. There, one of the parents who lived on the 7th floor, had put a string in a bag with lots of sweets and swung it back and forth, over all the children standing on the grass below.
The goal was to swing the bag lower and lower, until one child would grab the bag and win the game. In the end, one of the big kids managed to grab the big bag of candy and the game was over. I have to admit that I was a bit jealous that it wasn’t me who had grabbed the bag and gotten all the candy. Despite that, it had been a fun evening and my sister and I ate a lot of unhealthy sweets that evening. It was my unique Halloween in Switzerland.
Happy Halloween.
A.G. Munson
