Going to festivals in spring and welcoming the full moon in autumn is a tradition of Asians in general and Vietnamese in particular. Every August, when the early autumn sun tans the grapefruits and the cool, chilly afternoons, children far from home eagerly prepare for the reunion and the feast night with their children and family, then bustling about making appointments to go to festivals and carry lanterns together…

Childhood is wrapped up in many memories, but the colors of the Mid-Autumn Festival and the sounds of lion dances, singing, and drums are still special memories that occupy a corner of the heart, and that anyone far from home yearns for. 

That is why every year the Vietnamese community in Germany celebrates the Mid-Autumn Festival with many colorful decorations and objects such as star lanterns, drums, lion heads, unicorn costumes? Partly to help children understand and remember their roots, and importantly, to help everyone get close and feel the atmosphere of the homeland festival.

Preparing for Mid-Autumn Festival in Germany

Most of the decorations will be sent from Vietnam or homemade and must be prepared about 2-3 months in advance . As for the fragrant moon cakes, you can buy them at Asian stores, or make them yourself with the molds you bring from Vietnam. However, buying ingredients to make cakes may not be as complete as in your home country, but it will still be an interesting experience.

Autumn in Germany is about 14 degrees, so you will celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival with  sweaters and scarves ????)) instead of the cool windy full moon night. The Mid-Autumn Festival party in Germany is not full of trays of fruit and cakes like in the homeland, but will have sausages, grilled meat with German bread. Here you will not carry lanterns under the moon, but most parties will be held in the morning/afternoon.

Staying in a country far away from Western civilization and celebrating the traditional festival of the nation will be an exciting, memorable and unforgettable experience. But you will also feel extremely happy when bringing the unique culture of your country to another country.

Please learn more about the Mid-Autumn Festival in Germany through the story of a My Careerer who has lived in this country for many years!

My Memory: The First Mid-Autumn Festival in Germany

?Like other young people, I have the ambition to conquer and experience a faraway place 13 hours away from Vietnam by plane. In my suitcase, in addition to books, clothes and necessary items, I did not forget to bring a moon cake mold. This is my favorite dish since childhood. Time flies so fast? and the day I have been longing for has come. That was the day I first showed off my moon cake making skills away from home. But everything turned out to be much more interesting. I searched for ingredients to make cakes at Asian stores. Surprisingly, there were a lot of dried foods such as wood ear mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, coix seeds, Chinese herbal medicine packages, dried vermicelli, glass noodles, rice paper, tapioca starch, rice flour, banh gio flour, fish sauce, shrimp paste, spices?… but there were not enough ingredients to make moon cakes. So I walked out of the Asian store with a full moon cake with 2 eggs, green beans and lotus seeds from Kinh Do.

At that time, I was happy because not only did I save time making cakes, I still had delicious cakes to eat, but I also knew that in Europe, there was still a place that made my soul throb with the taste of home. And from that day on, my passion for cooking arose. On weekends, I invited my friends to gather and cook Vietnamese dishes together. To me, Vietnamese food is not only a daily meal, but also a beautiful culinary culture with national characteristics that needs to be preserved for the 2nd, 3rd generations, .. abroad to understand and remember their roots.

The war? never ends in Vietnam every August :))) Which team are you on?

After returning to my room, I was even more surprised when I received a notice to attend the Mid-Autumn Festival party organized by the Vietnamese community and Vietnamese students in the city where I study. Later, I learned that most cities have a Vietnamese community and student association. Even in big, bustling cities, there are associations of fellow countrymen from many provinces/cities in Vietnam.

The Mid-Autumn Festival that year was very exciting and no less than the festival held in Vietnam. The program opened with a dance and singing performance by young people wearing Ao Dai and Ao Yem/Dup skirt. I was very impressed with the way our overseas Vietnamese preserved Vietnamese culture. Most of the uncles, aunts and sisters had long, silky black hair. The children were very proud and wanted to keep this hair color. The number of attendees that day was quite large, with the presence of Germans and foreigners. The main part of the program was the lion dance with star lanterns and Mr. Dia and Mr. Teu dancing. I immediately felt homesick! The biggest difference was that this party was held at noon and instead of enjoying Moon cakes, I got to eat sausages and grilled meat with German bread. It was a wonderful cultural exchange experience that made my emotions both happy and sad.

Full moon night feast from skillful hands

Perhaps because of this feeling of dissatisfaction, my friends and I decided to organize a small Mid-Autumn Festival party on the Sunday evening close to the 15th day of the 8th lunar month. We were very lucky because our family sent us things from Vietnam, so we had moon cakes and piglet cakes in very cute woven bamboo baskets. Oh, in Germany you can buy yellow-skinned pomelos in all supermarkets that sell food. A secret is that the fruit is very large and not as juicy as our pomelos. So we had a rather “luxurious” Mid-Autumn Festival feast away from home. That was really my first official made-in-Vietnam Mid-Autumn Festival party in Germany, even though there were no star lanterns or lanterns, I was still very happy.

Now this My Careerer has returned to Vietnam and continues to develop his teaching career, but every autumn, the memory of the first Mid-Autumn Festival in Germany comes back, and Germany appears with the orange-yellow tones of the changing leaves season, of the afternoon sunlight typical of that land. Autumn in Germany is beautiful, and the Mid-Autumn Festival of Vietnamese people in Germany is a brilliant cultural highlight for the exchange between East and West.

Besides the Vietnamese Mid-Autumn Festival, what else is there in autumn in Germany?

Have you seen the movies Moscow? Falling Leaves and Two Horizons? Autumn in Europe is really beautiful, especially in Germany. The air is fresh, no dust, the wind blows gently, cool but the sun shines warmly. The surrounding landscape is dyed with the yellow and red leaves of the layers of trees and the yellow and red mats scattered all over the streets of Germany. Once you set foot here, you will feel more clearly the typical Western antiquity like in the documentary films shown on TV about foreign countries.

Autumn colors in Germany

Jogging in the morning in Germany, especially in the fall, will also give you many interesting emotions. Autumn in Germany is about 14 degrees Celsius, jogging in the morning will be cold but sunny, and will make you both a little afraid of the cold and addicted to the feeling of waking up in nature. That feeling is like eating chili, even though you know the chili is spicy, spicy enough to make your nose run, but you still like to eat it. Germany has many interesting things, and autumn in Germany is a time worth experiencing.

Wishing My Career students good study and a memorable and impressive experience with the Mid-Autumn Festival and Deutschland Autumn.

See also: The 2022 My Career Moon Train has arrived.