Funny Traditions - Germany's Alternative Valentine

Valentine's day is the annual opportunity to secretly show your love to someone. In Germany, however, there are areas where men get a second chance to show their interest in a girl later in the year.

On the evening of April 30th, young single men go around town to put a Maibaum (or Maypole in English) in front of the house of single girls. The tree, typically birch, can be several meters tall and is decorated with colorful paper. Sometimes they even come with a heart with the name of the lucky girl on it.

While on my way to work this morning, which is a 15-minute walk, I spotted somewhere around twenty trees all over town. I decided to take a few pictures so I could share them with you:

This one even has a little card with a message "für Felice" ("for Felice").

The trees make the streets a tad more colorful!

This picture shows clearly how big these trees are sometimes!

The trees are often bought from a local forester. However, some men harvest their own. This activity is not without risk! You can get fined for it! My colleagues even told me that the police has extra patrols in place in city-parks to catch the occasional amateur horticulturist.

How weird it might seem to some, I really think this is a nice tradition. While writing this post, however, I started to wonder what the girls receiving these trees think about it!

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Thanks for stopping by | Michel