Autumn's Beautiful Awkwardness

Something happened in the Dorf while we were away in Scotland: Autumn.

It's too easy to hate on autumn. Yes, it's the season before winter, but that isn't autumn's fault.


It is just the most awkward season. Is it the end of the summer or the beginning of winter? Should I enjoy fall colours or rage at the coming winter. When it's cold enough for sweaters in the morning and hot enough for shorts in the afternoon, everyone walks about with shorts and a sweater in the often vain hope it gets warm enough to ditch the sweater.

Some hate autumn. I like it. 

Maybe it's because my hometown is a city filled with trees, so every October you're treated a dizzying display of reds, yellows, and browns. Or maybe I welcome the colder weather to thin out the casual patio goers, so it's easier to get a table. Leaving only kindred spirits defiantly sipping their pints in the chilly weather!

My Carolinan Forest upbringing (look it up) makes me accustomed to a September that's pretty much another month of summer and an autumn prettiness that lasts into November. 

In the Rhineland, the summer lurches into autumn earlier than my Southern Ontario homeland and the pretty part is over quickly. Then a dank, dark, Dagobagh-esque dreariness rolls into the region and refuses to relent until April.

Despite its short-lived stay, autumn is great in Germany. Canada fights its annual culture war over putting pumpkin spice into everything, while Germans add seasonal mushrooms to everything. Pfifferling to be exact, not the magic kind. 

They put Pfifferling in the sauces, the soups, the pizza, on burgers. But unlike pumpkin spice in Canada, Germany has a social contract about not putting it into everything: Pfifferling has its place in German society and that place is not a latte or a cupcake.

This is also the season of Oktoberfest – admittedly, like lederhosen, this is a Bavarian thing, rather than a German thing – but Dorfers are still happy to gather around the standing drinking tables at their nearby bars for a frothy alt beer. 

My social feeds might fill up with Canadian angst about pumpkin spice or the coming winter or the crappy weather, but I like to remember this is the season for hockey, cosy sweaters, afternoon hikes through the woods, and, yes, even seasonal mushrooms.

Sure, autumn is darker and awkward and makes people wear shorts with sweaters to catch that sliver of warm sun before the darkness sets in – but that's exactly the attitude you want from a drinking buddy an outdoor drinking table. Cheers to the ten to twelve days of autumn before winter comes.

Autumn looks alright at the bars on the Rhein Promenade...

But it looks great outdoors.