Frohe Ostern! Happy Easter!

Well, this is a bit late. But since this was actually my first Easter in a German-speaking land, I wanted to share it. I spent my other three Easters away from home in Greece, Italy, and Greece again -- t's a tough life -- so I was really excited to experience Easter in Germany. Except, I really didn't. Aside from eating a hollow, chocolate bunny, I didn't really celebrate Easter as I should I have.

I found it a bit difficult to get into the whole Easter season this year. Probably because it's tough when you're doing it alone. I started with Ash Wednesday and didn't eat meat on Fridays, but that was kind of where it stopped. Easter candy didn't even entice me until the very end. I love Lindt bunnies!

Good Friday and Easter Monday were both public holidays, so it was a nice long weekend. Sadly, the weather did not cooperate with my ideas of going to the zoo and riding bikes. It ended up being quite boring, yet, really nice. There's only so much you can do when everything is closed for three out of four days. In fact, the stores were practically empty by Thursday night - especially the egg section! Fun Fact: eggs are so fresh they aren't even refrigerated in stores.

Saturday evening was filled with "Easter fires" in specially designated locations where large bonfires represent fertility through ashes and scare away winter. And because fire is fun. I wanted to go. I really did. But, the closest I got to an Osterfeuer was watching it on the local news. Fun Fact: it recently came out that two years ago a woman burned the body of her father in an Easter fire and continued to collect his retirement checks. You can read the article here.

Another interesting topic I learned while watching the news, was the topic of youth and clubs being closed on Good Friday. No dancing. Even though the youth seems to care less about Easter and what it means (maybe not just the youth?). It felt a little bit like Footloose. Except there really was no dancing.

My other favorite tradition was that of Easter Trees. Outside of people's homes, you could find many different types of trees decorated with a variety of eggs. Plastic eggs in bold colors to wonderfully decorated blown eggs (real egg shells with the yolk blown out of it via a small hole on top and bottom). They were lovely to admire.

And that was the gist of my Easter Weekend.

P.S. I even got a sweet (pun intended) care package from Angela with Thin Mints and Cadbury eggs!