October 28

What’s Halloween like in Germany?

It’s October, the spookiest month of the year leading up to Halloween! I am actually always pretty excited about this time of year, I love the aesthetics very much and you could say it’s my favourite holiday! Since it’s the first time Halloween comes around while I am writing for this blog, I decided to make a post about it and tell you what Halloween is like in Germany. I hope it will be fun and interesting and if you still have any lingering questions about it, feel free to ask them in the comment section^^

First things first, technically Halloween is not a Holiday in Germany, meaning that you don’t get a day off because of it. But you will either have the 31st of October be a holiday or the 1st of November, that’s because most of Germany’s holidays are actually tied to the christian religion and those, in particular, are celebrated because of Martin Luther and his reformation of the church. I actually know no one who is actually “celebrating” that in any way, but still, we get a day off and I think most people actually use it to celebrate Halloween 😉 This is actually why some older or very religious people are against it being celebrated at all. They feel robbed in a way, but more on that topic later.

Similar to Christmas when the spooky season starts you can buy candies and decorations in every store. Sadly it’s not 3 months or more before the actual holiday, but we are happy about what we get, right? You can buy bat-shaped gummies, sceletons, and cobwebs to hang from your door, and of course pumpkins! Although I have to say that not as many people will create Jack-o-Laterns to put up in front of their door in Germany. My family actually never did, but that was less due to us not wanting to have fun carving out a pumpkin and displaying it and more about not really liking the taste of it and not wanting to waste everything that gets scooped out. Maybe Germans just are not into Pumpkin spice as much as the rest of the world is xD

Everybody is celebrating differently, some people like to lead up to the holidays by reading spooky books or watching horror films, other people only wait for the 31st to come, so they can finally dress up. These days it’s pretty normal for children to dress up in mostly spooky costumes to go around trick or treading, ringing at doorbells and asking people for candy. Because it has become so popular in Germany, most people will actually have something ready to give them. And the very advanced ones will have their whole yard decorated to scare them 😛 I always loved to dress up and run around, it was not even about the candies I have collected, in the end, I often gave them to my friends anyways. It was just cool to take on a role and present it to everyone. I did it until I was 15 years old, when an old grumpy grandpa open the door and asked me how I dared to participate in these child-like activities. At my age, he supposedly was already fighting in a war or something.

It’s not that I have lost all of my passion for Halloween that night, but I was less eager to around and let old people insult me for what I loved. Gladly at that time, I was in a theater group and every year around Christmas we were asked to get dressed up and spook around a shopping area, to make it more of an event to go shopping around the holiday. It was really great because we not only went from shop to shop and screamed at people, we did really make a show out of it. Sometimes we would do something similar to a zombie walk or we would try and keep still for about 5 minutes, which was actually what fascinated the people the most. It was also pretty great to just have more options on what to wear with all the normal theater costumes and other people doing the scary makeup for you. My favorite Halloween costume I ever wore and got to act in was a broken porcelain doll. I got special white paint which cracks up over time and a very cute dress and when I walked in the shopping aisle I tried to do it as puppet-like as possible. Sadly I have no picture of it, but it will always be one of my favorite memories.

There are Halloween parties too for all the people who are too old to go trick or treating but still want to dress up. I actually can’t talk too much about it, because despite my love for this holiday, I never went to one. Can’t really say why maybe because the opportunity never came up or because I imagined these parties more being made for people to get drunk and less for spooking around in costumes. I am sure those are fun for some people and it’s great that adult people are allowed to enjoy the Halloween spirit there too. Maybe one day I will go to one, this year I have other plans, but we will see if that will work out for me or not.

Lastly, I want to talk about people who hate Halloween in Germany. Like I mentioned some Christians have a big problem with it, mostly because they have a holiday of their own where the children are allowed to dress up and go around asking for candies. But I assume it’s less fun because you are not allowed to dress up as a mommy or witch for example and not nearly as many people prepare for it. If I remember correctly their holiday is in January and if a child would knock on my door then, I hardly would have any candy to give them. Old people also often hate Halloween, not only because of the experience I have made, with them thinking it’s only for little kids, but also because of how Halloween changed over the years. Because I would say that yes, the Halloween we are celebrating in Germany today, is heavenly influenced by how the Americans are celebrating it. But that does not have to be a bad thing, right? Fewer people complain about how we celebrate Christmas and it’s basically the same thing. All influenced by Hollywood films 😛

If you’d ask me Halloween is for everyone who can enjoy it. If you don’t like creepy crawlers or skeletons being hung up, you don’t have to celebrate it. If you feel like it’s too much, stay inside and not answer your doorbell, it’s totally up to you. But if you get any joy out of dressing up, running around playing a role, or decorating your house with cobwebs, don’t let yourself be stopped. Other people like to crochet, you might be into pumpkin carving, age really does not matter here. Do what you love and what makes you happy. I plan to go on a little celebration in one of the tattoo studios I got tattooed in this year. They make different events like pumpkin carving, preparing a spooky Labrinth, and Halloween-themed games. I don’t think I will be able to attend all of them, but I really like the idea and effort behind it. And after last Halloween was very uneventful because of Corona, I try to enjoy it even more. Happy Halloween everyone!

Greetings and good wishes
The Madd Hattress

Category: Personal Life | LEAVE A COMMENT
October 20

Shadow and Bone – Differences between the book and the Netflix-Series

“Shadow and Bone” is a very popular Netflix Series about a Russian-inspired Fantasy world, in which witches and warlocks are called Grisha. In most of the Countries, Grisha’s are actually feared, or even hunted down. But the land of Ravka treats them like royalty, raises them in wealth, and trains them to become soldiers in an age-old war. The story, which has been called the Harry Potter of the new generation, is heavenly inspired by the books of Leigh Bardugo, but after reading the first one myself, I noticed some major differences that I wanted to share with you. So if you thought about maybe reading the books because you loved the series much, as I did, this post is perfect for you 😉 But it might also be interesting to the people who only read the books too, if you want to see what got adapted and what did not. The things I will be pointing out are SPOILERS, if you are new to this series and don’t like to hear spoilers at all, I would highly recommend go watch the series now and come back after that. It has only 8 episodes and it’s very bindgeable 😉

1: Alina is not Shu, nor belongs to any other minority
This might not be something affecting the story directly, so changing it made no real difference there, but it was still something that really confused me. The first few minutes of the first episode show that as a Shu-looking woman Alina has to face racism every day, which of course is a problem we have in our world too. But in the books, Alina is only an orphan, nothing is said about her heritage, she is not criticized because of her skin color and she does not even seem to speak any of the languages outside of Ravka. Don’t get me wrong, being an orphan, having your life completely change, and having to face jealousy from other Grisha does not make her life easier, but still. Making her part of a minority group like that, without any real reasoning behind it, makes it seems as if they wanted her to be more of a victim and that does not sit right with me.

2: There are no parallel timelines, so more Mal and Alina?
If you loved the way the story was told in the series, being able to see the crows preparing the heist, Mal trying to get to Alina and Nina being abducted and growing onto her kidnapper, you will be disappointed in the books. Because the only storyline we get to experience in full detail is Alinas, we only get a small glimpse of Mal at the end when their storylines became one again in the series, after finding and defeating the stag. But until then, we don’t even know that Mal is looking for Alina and honestly, we don’t even care about him anymore. If I would not have seen the series first, I would not even have known, they were in love with each other for the first 2/3 of the book. Alina does say she is in love, but we have no information about Mal whatsoever and with him seemingly not answering her letters, we readers will tend to like the Darkling as a possible love interest way more. Which is another thing, caused by the different style of storytelling: In the series you could see the Darkling being manipulative, hiding things from Alina, you just knew something was off. But in the books, you don’t really get that feeling. I can’t really decide which way is better…

3: The Darkling is not an “older” man
A bit like changing Alina to being Shu, at least for me it felt like they changed the Darkling to be intentionally older than he was described in the books. Yes as a powerful Grisha and with all of his backstory being known at one point, he is very much older than Alina, but in the books, he does not look that way, he is actually described as being as young as Alina herself. And I think it’s important because the whole first book is about how naive Alina is, how she falls for him and his orders and how he slowly begins to own her. I think that partially is due to the way he is looking, Alina seeing someone not older than her, forgetting about his long life and being more easily manipulated by him. To be honest, that might also be why I felt as if it was obvious that he had bad intentions from the start. And again I don’t know which execution I liked more: the series being very open about Alina and Mal belonging together and the Darkling being bad or the books only hinting at Alina and Mals possible future but having the Darkling be less obviously the bad guy, making readers actually root for him.

4 +5: The crows and the Grisha hunters are not present
For many viewers including me, the crows were even more interesting than the whole Alina-being-the-savior storyline. They were just more relatable than a prophecy character who became royalty overnight, not to mention the brilliant acting and very fitting casting choices for lovable gangsters. The only problem is, they are not present in book one. They are not mentioned once, they don’t just show up at one point as Mal does and basically, their whole storyline in the series never happened in the books. After doing some research while also trying not to get spoilered myself, I came to the conclusion that the characters actually only exist in their own books called “The six of crows”. The same goes for the Kidnapping timeline, Nina and Matthias also have their story told in the Crows book series. Both seem to only have inspired the character we know from the series, their stories being altered to match the new storyline, but you can still consider the duology their original story. I actually think the series was more interesting including them in the way they did and it did not change Alinas Storyline up to this point at all, so I think it was a clever decision to make, also not having to do multiple series but putting all the cool stuff in one. The only problem is, if you were looking forward to reading about the crows or even Nina and Matthias, you will either have to wait or just read “the six of crows” right away, instead of the original Grishaverse trilogy.

All in all, I have to say, that I was a bit disappointed in the books, having had certain expectations from watching the series first, which of course is more my fault than Bardugos. But I think many people will be in the same situation, so I thought it was worth writing about. I was very sad that my favorite characters were missing, that the story was basically the same as in the series, meaning that I did not even get as many cool details out of reading the books as I would have liked and I think I do actually prefer the way viewers were introduced to Alina and Mal’s relationship in the series. In the books, because we don’t know about his efforts, we don’t really grow attached to the idea of them being together, even though their love is very clearly shown at the end. I am looking forward to reading the next books, since apart from the other timelines, we saw in the series, but not in book one, it ends more or less exactly where the Netflix series ends. So everything from book two will be new to me and maybe it will make reading a bit more interesting and who knows, maybe the crows do show up at one point and if not, I already have their own Duologie at hand 😉

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress

Category: Book Review, Review, TV/Web-Series | 3 Comments on Shadow and Bone – Differences between the book and the Netflix-Series
October 13

Gamereview “Hollow Knight”

The last time I talked about a game on here, it was about a combined experience of gameplay and watching a tv series, that I found so special that I had to share it. This time I want to talk about a game which is also one of its kind, you may have heard of it before. “Hollow Knight” was published in 2017 so it’s already some years old but it has not lost its charm since then. It’s a platform jump’n’run like super Mario, but it has a very eerie vibe to it, which makes a further comparison to its cheery counterpart almost impossible. Let’s jump right into the review.

Review
The story of the game is kinda hard to put together because it’s not something linear that leads you through the game. You get fragments of knowledge from people you meet and statues you find, which leads you to explore the story and discover all the pieces on your own. For me that was very different and I have to say, I felt kinda lost at some points, and in the end, I really did not play the game to find out what it was about. Might be a plus to some people who really want to solve the mystery, but I kinda ignored it. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because it means the game itself, got me coming back again and again.

The general mechanics are fairly easy, you are playing an unnamed character, as far as I have understood it, it’s not the Hollow Kight, but for the purpose of this review let’s call him Knight 😉 Knight wakes up in a cave, follows some kind of call, and ends up in an almost empty village. There he meets an old bug, who tells him that all other members have gone into an underground dungeon to fight and never came back. So Knight decides to do the same and jump down a well to get into a sewage system and his adventure starts.

In typical jump’n’run fashion, you are exploring a sidescrolling environment, fighting your way through enemies with a sword, and find secrets and hidden items. What’s interesting is that the one environment you are entering is actually only a part of a big map with different areas that have different enemies and different designs. You can find the other areas by beating bosses, learning new moves, and finding new ways to travel. It was very intuitive because you have to revisit tunnels where you have been before, as soon as you learn to jump higher or wider, to explore caves and so on.

I have heard some people comparing the game to “dark souls” because it’s harder than most of its kind. But since I have played and terribly failed at dark souls, I think I can safely say that “Hollow Knight” is at least playable 😉 If you die, you will lose all of the currency you have earned, but you can get it back by fighting “the remains you have left”. At some point in the game, you also unlock some kind of bank where you can go back and store the so-called Geo you find and save it from getting lost in battle(but be careful with that xD) and other options too. In the same way, you can also unlock a way to quick travel, which can be very convenient, and combined it make a less nerve-wracking experience than dark souls.

Final Thoughts
All in all, it’s a challenging game that might be harder than Super Mario, but not as hard that it would keep you from finishing it. It has a mysterious story that frames the experience, but can be ignored if needed. The gameplay is very intuitive and interesting and the environments are minimalistic but stunning. The music seems very well composed so that it accompanies you on your journey, but it does not distract you from your tasks. The boss battles are diverse and every new move you learn will be needed to access a new area. I think it’s a very great game 🙂

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress

Category: Gaming, Review | LEAVE A COMMENT
October 8

Papergang Box September 2021

The September box actually arrived almost immediately after the August box came in the mail, meaning I had to pay the before mentioned taxes again -.-” If you want to know more about the situation take a look *here*. But hopefully, this will be the last box with those extra costs and I try not to let it ruin the opening of the box for me 😉 Let’s take a look inside together!

In the box, we get an A6 daily planner with a beautiful yet simple mountain-type design, similar to the front of the box. We also get 3 birthday greeting cards with fittingly designed envelopes, an A5 art print which I like the most out of all we have gotten from Papergang this year! Last but not least we got some sticker markers with different designs and 6 differently colored felt tip markers.

I am very happy with this box, everything can be used together and I like the designs and earth colors they used very much 🙂 Like I said the print is my favorite up till now and the sun going up and down in the sticker marks is pretty cute 😛 What is a bit disappointing are the felt tip markers, they are very reminiscent of the german Stabilo markers, but they feel a bit cheap compared to those. Having “Papergang” written on them has a nice touch, but not if it’s in exchange for quality, you know? Aside from that, there is nothing to complain about 🙂

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress

Category: Mystery Box, Papergang, Review, Subscription Box | LEAVE A COMMENT
October 6

No subscription boxes anymore…

… at least not the ones you are used to by now :/ Today I want to write about something that I find very sad, but which also made me very angry last week. I actually received multiple packages for which I had to pay the post-delivery service for custom taxes I did not know about. As a student, I don’t have that much money and since I had bought many packages recently, I had to pay almost 100euros just for taxes. You can imagine that if I would have known about it, I would not have bought so much in the first place. Let me tell you what exactly the problem is and why it looks like I won’t be able to get any more of my beloved subscription boxes in the future…

Since I know that my readers are scattered all over the world, I know that tax problems are not the same for everyone. But I am sure you all have heard about the Brexit situation that was going on for the last 3 years or so. Basically, some politicians in the UK joked about making a public vote about if the UK should stay part of the EU or not. After that joke, they could not take it back anymore and the public vote actually forced them to exit the European Union. You might think it’s not a big deal if they are part of it or not, but it actually is because countries within the EU have special rules applied to them, benefits so to say which do not get granted to other countries. For example, as a person living in any EU country, you can travel and even move in between other EU countries without having to apply for a visa ever.

Another benefit is that you don’t have to pay certain taxes, mainly at the different countries customs, making trading in between countries just easier for everyone. And when the UK had forced itself to make the decision to leave the EU, they tried to still keep some of the benefits and they tried to assure everyone inside and outside of the country that they would not have to face many problems because of it. They would try to make trading treaties and such with the country leaders and the private person who wants to buy something, will not feel a difference. Well, I felt it and it’s a big one.

Basically because of all of these promises they made and treaties they wanted to get, the whole process of the UK leaving the EU took much longer than expected and for the normal person, it got really hard to tell what was decided on and when it will be an official law. The media did not even report on the Brexit news anymore, because people were tired of hearing it, and also nothing seemed to change for some reason. But in July this year, something seemingly did change and I did not know about it. Basically, it seems as if the treaty for trading and not paying customs, which they had talked about would to be a problem, did not get to be made, meaning that you now have to pay the normal taxes for any package from the UK which you have to pay for a package from any other country.

My biggest problem actually is, that no one informed me about that. I have a year-long subscription to the paper gang stationary box and neither in my emails nor on their website have they ever informed any of their EU members about the change. Which I find very unfair because I would basically have to pay 10-20euros more for it now, per month. And it’s not the only subscription I have! Being so positively surprised about the Artfulboxes I also made a year-long subscription to them JUST RECENTLY. If I had known about it earlier I would have not done it and I feel scammed in a way.

You might think, July is over 2 months past, why did you just learn about it? Well if you follow my paper gang reviews you know that even before July there were some problems with the delivery of the boxes. It always seemed to have been a different problem, but it often lead to my boxes either arriving later or not arriving at all(being replaced). So I actually have not gotten any boxes for the last 2 months because of what I thought was a similar problem again. I also was not worried about it, because I thought it would be able to be solved like the other delivery problems were. And again, nobody told me about what was wrong, so there were no steps for me to take.

Sadly all of the boxes I have received up to now and a new box I will be receiving soon(but had to cancel for the future already) are shipped from the UK. Meaning that if the companies themselves won’t find a solution, I can’t afford to get them anymore. While writing this post, I am about to ask the Company OhDeer about why everything happened the way it happened and if they plan on taking any further actions or not. Depending on when they answer, I will update this post. Wish me luck I guess, but sadly I am not hopeful 🙁

UPDATE: Actually the customer service at OhDeer never seems to disappoint! They have gotten back to me very quickly, apologizing for the chaos and trying to explain to me that they might have actually found a solution to the tax problems! I assume they either did not tell their customers about it because they wanted to solve the problem ASAP, hopefully without anyone noticing, or because they would actually not have known how much everyone has to pay because it seems to be different in every EU country. Either way, I think they should have told people about it, just to prepare for chaos like the one we are in now. But I guess everyone makes mistakes and since they are trying everything to make it up to us customers again, I think we can forgive them 🙂

As I have just mentioned they seemed to have found a solution to the tax problem by finding a delivery service which lets them take care of any extra costs instead of us the customers. In my case, that would mean that since there are no custom taxes to pay, the mailperson won’t have to get it from the custom center so technically I should be charged nothing in the end, which is what I had paid for in the beginning, right? So I am pretty happy IF everything works out the way they explained it to me. I will definitely keep you updated, reaaaaally looking forward to the October box now. Hopefully, I will be able to keep my subscriptions, at the least the ones at OhDeer. But if anything changes, I’ll let you know!

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress

Category: Mystery Box, Papergang, Review, Subscription Box | LEAVE A COMMENT
October 4

Papergang Box August 2021

After many many troubles, about which I might even make a post on its own, my august Papergangbox FINALLY arrived! Actually, I have not that much to say about it, other than I really like the colorful block design on the front, let’s take a look inside!

In this month’s box we have an A4-ish Notebook with lined pages, an orange pencils case with a chunky metal zipper, a pack of A5 sticker sheets in 2 different designs, a ballpoint pen with black ink, and 3 erasers with rounded edges 3 different marble effects and printed quotes.

I have to say that I am VERY happy to finally have gotten a pencil case for all of the pencils I got in my previous boxes. To be honest, if we view it as a year-long subscription, I would have liked the pencil case earlier, to be able to store everything I will get from early on. But asidefrom that, I have no complaints about it, the pencil case feels very nice, it looks great and it’s spacious^^

Let’s talk about the other items in this box 😉 I do like the marble design of the erasers very much and I know quotes are kinda OhDeers signature trade, having them on books, pencils, and erasers for sure, but I feel like the marble design would have been cool on its own. I do like the design of the ballpoint pen too, even though it feels a bit cheaper than other supplies from them and I would have loved a marble design on it too^^

What is really confusing to me is the notebook, because when I saw the sticker sheet I thought of bullet journaling, which was (or is?) a great idea for a boxes theme! Even though I would have liked some more pens to highlight text or use different colors for headers and stuff. But what I would really need is a BLANK notebook, to be fully free in the designs I want to make, to stick my stickers everywhere I want. With the lined notebook we got, I feel somewhat restrained, because I can’t use all the space exactly as I want, without the lines guiding. And bullet journaling for me is all about not being guided and doing my own thing.

So, the theme, if there was one, seemed a bit lose to me. If it was about bullet journaling we have not got enough pens and the wrong notebook. If it was about taking notes in general, I feel like the stickers are too detailed. And why do we have cool erasers but no graphite pencil to go with them? Maybe I am searching for something again, which is not even there intentionally, which would be a wasted opportunity for me. But all in all, I was still very happy about the box, mostly because I finally got my pencil case 😉

And do you remember the “extras” I was promised for the delay of my packages, this one in particular? Well, I think that I have gotten them, but they are not what I had expected. I guess I should not complain about free stuff and I do like some of it, I just had something different in mind. I got 4 different cards for different occasions, I love the fox the most but sadly can’t give the card to myself, right? xD I also got one very random pen with a random quote, but it has a very small tip, which is very interesting!
But I do have to say, I like the cards that we get in the Papergangbox, in general, the least from everything, because you can’t do anything with them, you can’t create something because it has already been created. So getting 3 different cards as an extra to make up for the stress I had recently did not really sit that well with me. Still, I take it and I will find someone I can send the cards to. And since I am currently in contact with them anyway, talking about compensations for different problems, I hope to be satisfied in the end. Because their customers service never let me down up till now 😉

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress

Category: Mystery Box, Papergang, Review, Subscription Box | LEAVE A COMMENT