Frohe Ostern.

Spring is slowly coming to Germany, and along with it has come the apparition of many trees adorned with colorful Easter eggs, which I guess is THE way to decorate for said holiday. The start of the summer semester also arrived, meaning that I had my first French class at 8.30am on April 1st. This was a little silly because following the first day of classes, there was a 4-day break for the Easter holidays. Something like school starting just before Labor Day in the States. (Or just a cruel April Fool's joke.) This class came as a surprise, and while it went well and I even managed not to speak any German, my body wasn't able to properly adjust to the sudden early wake-up.

Easter has always been an important family holiday for me and, much like Christmas, I was happy to be able to spend it at my favorite home-away-from-home in Detmold. I had an early ride-share on (Good) Friday morning that took far too long and was far too complicated to be worth the good price, but I finally got there in the early afternoon. Sabine took it upon herself to feed me a beautiful and delicious 4-course lunch, for which I was very grateful after many hours of being exhausted, frustrated, and hungry. Then I napped and had Tessa time with my favorite German canine.
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Sabine still has the Easter eggs that I decorated when I came to visit in 2006. They're carefully strung up on one of their Easter trees.

I just went through my Belgian blog because I remembered posting pictures of the very same eggs four years ago, and look what I found! It turns out I was also there on Good Friday then. Amazing how time goes around and around with things changing at different paces, if at all.

Sabine, Tessa, and I went for a lovely afternoon walk on Saturday. Tessa got to swim for sticks in a pond. Oh, nature nature nature.

The night of the Easter Vigil was full of fires. There are big bonfires that pop up all over this part of Europe during the Easter Saturday, Sunday, and Mondays. It's an old tradition that I didn't learn too much about on Wikipedia, except that it's symbolic for the end of winter and coming of spring. Many Osterfeuers burn some sort of epitaphs of Winter, such as puppets or something. I don't know how much of it has to do with the christian "New Fire," though it probably depends on where you are. We spent the first few hours of the evening at a friend's little fire where we had a potluck with various other friends and family. They had a special kind of bread dough that you cook on a stick over the fire called Stockbrot, which literally translates into "Stick bread." You can see that on the left. Trappi made some delicious fried potato pancake sweet things that he's reheating in this photo.

Can you find the Jonas in this photo?

After that little fire, we went to a biiiig fire that was surrounded by lots of drunken youths. Probably not the greatest of ideas, but that's how it goes.

We were all tuckered, cold, and smokey by the time we got home, so most of us went to bed. Sabine and I got up before everyone else to go to church (I had so missed the Easter Vigil service), and I was tickled to see that the Eather Bunny had left baskets of not only Schokolade, but also practical things for all of us.

Sabine had also baked yummy little nests for breakfast.

Church was relatively quiet, but nice and with lots of singing. This was followed by a big dinner at home with the family and some of Jonas' friends, after which Sabine and I went for a long walk while everyone else took naps. We got some good conversation in. I love spending time with her.

The weather got pretty yucky after that, so we didn't end up doing much else. Actually, we watched Ice Age II in German, which was hilarious. Hilarious. The next morning I went brunching with Jonas and some of his friends before catching a train back to Hamburg. (I was tired of the complications of ride-sharing.) Overall, it was a pretty quiet Easter, which was exactly what I needed.

And now what I need is to sleep at more decent hours. More later!