Turnfest or Where to look for the Real Fun

 ”Today, the Internationale Deutsches Turnfest starts” I said to Francesca. “Let´s write about Turnen (gymnastics)”. 

“Okay” Francesca said “I have done gymnastics in a Turnverein as a child. Where does the Turnfest take place?”

Sometimes it shows that Francesca´s children don´t attend a public school in Frankfurt. I first heard about the Turnfest six month ago when the headmistress of my son´s school informed the parents association that in June all schools in Frankfurt would be closed for a week because of the Turnfest.

Schools in Germany never close outside the holidays. In  school life, everything is regulated. I even know the exact date when summer break will start in 2017. School is sacred. Turnen is even more sacred.

Its importance for the German lifestyle goes way back into the 19th century. Then,  part of the identity of the developping  Bürgertum-middle class based on the leisure time they could afford  to enjoy. As dutiful Untertanen-subjects to the emperor, they combined pleasure with work: to keep fit became an act of patriotism.

As early as 1811 Turnvater Jahn, the founder of the movement. opened the first Turnplatz in Berlin. He gave the movement its rules, its slogan (Frisch, fromm, fröhlich, frei) and its equipment (Reck, Pferd. Kasten, Barren).   The first Deutsches Turnfest took place nearly  nearly 200 years ago. Its aim: the battle against effeminacy of the German manhood. 

That is one of the reasons why schools in Frankfurt are closed for the Turnfest: The 100 000 participants will sleep on the floor in the classrooms and eat on wooden benches in the gymn halls. This is part of the spirit: no eiderdowns and  soft matresses, but hard floors and thin blankets. In a German sports club  hardship is part of the fun.

I learnt this – the hard way – when  I joined a rowing club. After a year of rather dull excercise I was allowed to take part in a Wanderfahrt, a rowing excursion down the river Mosel. ” That´s great” I rejoiced and started to dream of cosy Gasthäuser, little inns,  where I would snuggle under feathercuvets in a romantic attic room, drowsy from a sunny day, a glass of Mosel wine and a hot bath in the tub to relax my sports-strained muscles.

“Do you want me to organize the rooms in the Gasthäuser?” I offered, prepared to do my share of work.

“We sleep in the club houses.”

“Oh … Do other rowing clubs offer guestrooms?”

The old lady opposite me had been a member from this club for 50 years. She had carried heavy wooden rowing boats on her shoulders to the station 2 miles away for her first Wanderfahrt before World War II. She weighed a 100 pounds– a 100 pounds of steel.

“We sleep on the floor of the boat hangar. If you must, you can bring a camping mat. Though most of us do without.”

I will do without Wanderfahrten, I swore after the trip. My muscles where sore as a grapefruit, my back ached and I wasn´t able to bend my legs for a week. When the pain faded, I realised what hardships are good for: exciting stories. How boring would it be to read  about the trip in the Vereinsmagazin, the club magazine: “The weather was good, the food excellent and the beds warm and soft.” Oh no, we could write about boats hanging dangerously above our heads, of cold-water showers, of mysterious dark corners in rooms we couldn´t switch on lights in, of spiders running down the walls, and of the difficulty of getting some sleep in a room full of people groaning because of sore muscles.

I´m sure that the people camping in my son´s school  will report in the same way: “The water fountains at the opening ceremony were great. Do you know what happened afterwards? ” And they will tell the tale how they couldn´t find their room in the middle of the night because they didn´t realise that there were two staircases, how they had to get down again to find the toilets and it turned out that they were outside, on the other side of the school court, that  they had only two showers for two hundred people and no hot water after 6 a.m, that John und Jane were found sharing a sleeping bag …. 

Depending on the size of the sleeping bag, this shows remarkable  gymnastic talents. 

In Germany, most romances start either at the workplace or in the sportsclub. 

But this is another story.

©Truegerman

Mainz – Minipresse – Small Print?

One proud boy with his Grandpa´s book @Francesca

This week-end the bloggers of this page attended the Mainzer Minipresse as exhibitors. Truegerman hand-made books and I was there to present my father´s first book. It was quite exciting and we met a number of interesting folks, with beautiful work on display. Here are some pictures:

Beautiful Riverside - Minipresse Tents Mainz @Francesca

Looking towards Mainz Kastell from the Rheingoldhalle @Francesca

My Dad´s book alongside handcrafted books from the Netherlands @Francesca

The Vampire Cookbook on the News. Hurrah for Bluestove Editions our Co-Exhibitors @Francesca

Some of our favourites : Bluestove Editions – Cookbooks (Webpage will follow shortly), Nizza Verlag  – Books about Food in Frankfurt (www.nizzaverlag.de), our neighbour from the Netherlands at the Minipresse  – Handmade books, Calendars, with his own compositions and poetry (www.josephjohnvisser.nl) and sculptures of books with instruments from Hungary (www.martonbarabas.hu).

Living in Nowhereland

“I was deeply touched when I read the story of your father, the American, who stayed in Europe for love”, I told Francesca. “For all my childhood, I wanted to be an expatriate”.

Though I wouldn´t call it this way, then. I even didn´t know the word. But I felt, deep inside, that the world should be my home, not this dark corner of the Black Forest, with its steep mountains, narrow gauges, long winters and rainy summers. I didn´t see my future amidst those five families, closely related since centuries, where an outsider is anybody coming from farther away than the  next village. And even those weren´t accepted easily. For me, nothing but the world should be my home.

 

During the long afternoons after school, homework done, without my friends from the far away college, I buried myself in books. English sience fiction, publications of German exilees during World War II, volumes on foreign countries nourished my mind.

Australia was my favorite land of escape. I remember the red coloured linen hardcover of the book I cherished most. Its  black-and-whites of the wide desert, the vast pastures, the exotic trees and wildlife inflammed my phantasy. That was where I want to live, I decided when I was eleven. Nothing else caught my imagination or distracted me. At twentyone my dream should come true.

I didn´t emigrate. Prudent adventurer that I´m, I decided to check my dreams before going to the extreme. Thus, I applied for a students grant for a six month stay in Australia, got it, took the  2000 Deutsche Mark I had inherited shortly before from my grandaunt, bought a ticket, said good bye to my friends and family, and flew away, hoping never to come back.

 The plane was filled with dreams like mine. My neighbour on the left side, a 60 year old women with blonde hair and the figure of a young girl, visited her daughter in Sydney and was sure to find there the handsome stranger she was looking for. To my right, there was Uwe, the farmers boy form a remote village in northern Germany, who ate bananas on the plane for the first time in his life. And me, an twentyone year old student of agriculture, with a small backpack, and endless naivté. Anything could happen to me, I was prepared to welcome it with an open heart.

What I wasn´t prepared for was the the feeling of not-being-at-home, the uneasiness, the insecurity that would never leave me as long as I stayed in Australia. Though, after my six month stay, travelling from the south to the north to the west to the east, after hitchhiking with lorry drivers, farmers, zoologists, evangelical preachers, golddiggers and even a piano tuner, after talking to cowboys, professors and politicians alike I probably knew Australia better than most of its inhabitants, I always and deeply felt in the wrong place. With shock I realized: I am a German, down to my bones, the typical german I never wanted to be.

For all these 180 days in Australia, I missed the earnestness of the endless political discussion I used to have every night with my friends at university; I missed the fear of a nuclear war so present in the 80s in Germany; I missed the sexual liberalness of Europe; I missed the frozen feet and cold hands I remembered from the dark long winters in the Black Forest and I missed the sourness  of the redcurrant in my mothers garden amidst all the plenty of sweet tropical fruits. I became a patriot while being an expatriate.

 On the flight home I met Uwe again. He went back because his parents needed him on their farm, though I doubted if they would live happily with him thereafter. The farmerboy  had become a new age adept with long blond curly hair and the body of a surfers god. On first sight I hadn´t changed that much. I was still the chubby girl with the short hair, only now with a more experienced naivté. Back home at university the real changes showed. At a time when every woman clothed in walking boots and lila dungarees, I wore the miniskirts I learnt to wear in Australia. I  enjoyed an easy smalltalk and thus annoyed the political leaders of my student group. I doubted commonly held beliefs and principles, because I knew now that different culture find different solutions. In short, I was slightly off the track in my behavior, didn´t belong any more. I had become an expatriate in my own country.

 For years, I couldn´t decide where I wanted to be a stranger most: in my fatherland or abroad. I kept changing places, gave abroad another chance when I worked as a trainee at the European Comission in Brussels and finally settled. Now I life in Frankfurt, the most cosmopolitan city in Germany, in a part of the City where my son with two german parents belongs to the smallest minority in school by far. I have found my natural environment: the Niemandsland, the Nowhereland.

©Truegerman

Father – Daddy – Dad

I met my Dad coming out of a lift. I didn´t give him a chance of nervously pacing around a waiting room, sitting down and jumping up again. I was there when he arrived at the hospital, being carried around on the arm of a nurse.  I don´t remember this momentous meeting, but my father does.

What I remember are the times he took me to the printshops. I felt privileged to sneak a look at the enormous machines, smell the ink and see the huge paper rolls that were used to create the newspaper, which my father worked on. It was also very noisy, but I didn´t mind because that was part of the magic.

My Dad the journalist

I took it for granted that we lived in Europe, my father came from the States and had married an italian lady. Until recently I did not appreciate where he came from. In the course of this year we have spent many hours chatting about his childhood in a cozy midwestern town called Oak Harbor. We talked about the accident, which nearly killed him when he was seven and left him with one eye. We talked about him leaving his town and beginning life on his own at the University of Notre Dame (while still sending home all his wash ) and how he tried to get a foothold as cartoonist and journalist in the States after graduation.

He went to Europe as a tourist and decided to look for a job while there. He got lucky in Rome, where the “Daily American” was being published. A paper where, while it still existed, I also was able to visit the printshop. This is where he met a girl called Maria. He went off to Paris to work for the Herald Tribune, but found that he really missed the lady that became my Mother – Mummy – Mum. She joined him, while mastering climbing mountains of bureaucracy that were not used to dealing with an American and an Italian that wanted to get married in Paris in the year of 1957.

I discovered in our chats that he had saved every letter my mother and he wrote in this time of their long distance courtship. He saved every letter his mother sent him. He saved his lists of wash sent home from University. He saved every cartoon and copies of many of the articles he wrote.  We decided to go through all his material to organize it. For me it was like walking through time, discovering what was on my father´s mind and happening in his life at the time and with him there to explain and elaborate on pictures, drawings, stories and letters it all became real.

Sometimes things happen for a reason. I had just finished compiling an anthology for an adult learning course. It was a lot of work and of course I was doing it for free (which is something I cannot really afford, but who can nowadays). While we sorted through my Dad´s work I came upon familiar drawings of a pirate. He was called Captain Bucky and the drawings showed him golfing or skiing, things we normally don´t associate with pirates. But to my great surprise there were a lot more drawings of Bucky, which I had never seen and a story my father had written about the pirate. That´s when the pieces of the puzzle fell in place.

I had drawings. I had a story. I had an author and I had just learned how to create books. The idea was born and my father liked it. What a way to celebrate being over 80.

 

Pirate Bucky knows what to do with Cannon Balls @John C. Krueger

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soon the first print of “The Jolly Roger Twins – Pirates who fly Kites” will be produced. Little did I know there was a lot more learning to do, but throughout it all my Dad and I had a wonderful time creating his first book. And being 80 and suffering from makular degeneration, doesn´t stop him from making plans for the next one.

It will be called Roma Oma and Europa Opa.

@Francesca

Here is a sample of my Dad´s professional writing from the sixties:

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=140&article=13333

Break fast – That´s how it feels in the morning

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day” I said to Francesca. ” Unfortunately, breakfast time in Germany is between 6 and 8 in the morning.”

At this time of the day, I can´t imagine to eat anything at all ever again for my whole lifetime. Even to look at anything edible makes me sick.

This has been a constant cause of battle between my mother and me. When I went to school, I had to leave the house at 6:30 to catch the bus. As a good German mother she insisted on me having a substantial breakfast. As a not-so-good German child I resisted. Who can eat Graubrot-grey bread, the staple diet for breakfast in the seventies, at 6:00 clock in the morning? It tasted the way it was called: grey and muddy. My mother tried Müsli-oat meal flakes. No fancy mixes then, but pure, wholemeal plated oat. Who can eat the staple diet for horses, at six a clock in the morning?

Finally, we found a compromise: two soft boiled eggs, and nothing else. This was victory. Soft-boild eggs traditionally are reserved for Sundays. On this day, Germans enjoyed the pleasures of eating: A big breakfast with Sonntagsei, homebaked Hefezopf and cooked ham started the day. Three hours later, the Sonntagsbraten followed: roasted pork with gravy. Another three hours later, the “Kaffee und Kuchen“. Another two hours, finally, the Abendbrot, a light meal with frankfurters or a Wurstsalat, a salad made of finely chopped sausages.

As on Sundays my parents allowed themselves to sleep in, I harbour sunny memories of these breakfasts after eight. The only other time my early morning rhythm and German work ethics came together nicely was when I worked on a farm. “Pigs and cows first” – this working order woke me up at 5 o´clock in the morning. I pulled on my dungarees and went out to feed the sows, piglets, cows, calves, bulls, hens, cats, kittens, dogs  and puppets that cried for forage. Three hours later,  I happily sat down to a voluptous feast of rolls and eggs and homemade jam.

“The French work to be able to eat. The Germans eat to be able to work”. I´m not sure which nations invented this saying. but both sides use it as a diffamation of the other.  So, to skip the early morning meal means not  to prepare yourself properly for a day of work.

Ironically, I breakfasted most when I worked least. At college, we established the nice custom to start each early morning study group at a kitchen table laid with everything our hungry stomachs wished for: fresh rolls, good cheese, the sausages sent by our mothers in weekly parcels full of food.  Unfortunately, politics soon spoilt this simple pleasure. Müsli-cereals-became the only accepted dish for the early hours. When I say Müsli, I don´t talk about those harmless varieties, sugarcoated, sweetened, processed.  I´m talking about the real thing: oat grain flaked by hand. Though even this could get worse. The ulitmate fad in eco-conscious nutrition was a dish made of handgrained wheat or oat, soaked in water the night before. In the morning, this slimey pulp was served with – nothing else. Only the most audacious dared to add a halfspoon of honey from freerange bees.

In the nineties, breakfast cafés became fashionable, though only in cities. In the countryside, nobody would dare to sit in a café at nine o´clock in the morning so everybody would see he/she wasn´t working. In the cities, this was the sole purpose: to be part of the in-crowd that were so smart they didn´t have to slave their hours away in a nine-to-five job.

After the seven years of  sumptuous two rolls-one croissant-ham-eggs-freshly-pressed-orange-juice luxury at eleven clock in the morning, the meagre years brought Latte Macchiato, the triumph of the dairy industry. Now, even women who are on a diet since the day they were born  drink half a pint of milk every morning.

My Latte is waiting for me. As it is after 8 o´clock in Germany, a Saturday morning and my spouse brought home a big bag from the bakery, I might dip in a croissant, the way the French do it.

Though they stick to Café au Lait, as Starbucks had to learn since it opened its first shop in Paris in 2004.

The French have very impressive ways to say Non, especially when somebody endangers their food traditions.

But this is another story.

©Truegerman

Typical German Breakfast

I wish I had more time.

Brötchen

That is a must be. You know those lovely, fluffy, just right crunchy crust bread rolls that you used to be able to find everywhere; freshly baked by a Baker that got up at four in the morning to make sure that Germany had fresh bread when it was time to wake up? Unfortunately this might be six in the morning  during the week for most. So handymen insist on a second breakfast time around ten, when they can seriously indulge in the art of breakfast. During the week-end and thanks to late sleep-ins, having breakfast in bed, or with the whole family around the table, letting it last for an hour or even going to a café, which offers abundant breakfast, is a luxury treat which everybody can afford.

The problem is that the Brötchen usually is not so fresh anymore, because factories replace the Bakeries one by one. It is hard to find people who are willing to face the hours of this trade and when they do, they find themselves overwhelmed by the competition from the factories.

Despite these changes, you still acquire your bread in a Bakery. The choice is great and it used to be that anybody that knew the names of the Brötchen (signs are a later development) or bread they wished to buy, and did not have to point at it instead (like me) was treated with a lot of respect by salesperson and fellow-buyers alike. Know your bread.

You also will always find the non-queue at the Bakery. As soon as more than three people are waiting to buy, you can feel the tension growing. Who came after you, who was immediately before you? Will somebody, usually the frail elderly looking person, suddenly display signs of unexpected vigor and push you aside and ignore your disgusted looks as she buys her bread ahead of you and possibly some little kid that the salesperson cannot see behind the high counter? Why don´t they form a line, so it will be evident? Maybe it is part of some secret initiation to being German? I haven´t seen it on the questionnaire for new Germans yet, but I will suggest something.

Once you have found one of the rare remaining real bakeries or an acceptable replacement nothing should come between you and your german breakfast. It is not hot except for the tea, coffee or boiled egg. You get Wurst and Cheese and Marmalade. If you are at one of the many student cafés that offer breakfast until two o ´clock in the afternoon, they will add joghurts, muesli and fruit to the choice. I can see many a student living off breakfast alone.

Nowadays I have very little time for week-day breakfast and the kids get tired of anything “new” within two days, so it is back to cornflakes and toast. As a child I remember the breakfast on holidays. We would stop off in Austria, on a little farm, and there were the delicious Brötchen, with butter that was served in little curls, a glass of orange juice, home-made jams, meats and cheese and eggs fresh from the hens: It was a great way to start a holiday and a day.

Later I would indulge in the german style breakfast at my boyfriends house. When we split I lost 4 kg without trying.

I could go on and on about the breakfast I remember. When I am on holiday nowadays, one of my special treats is to try the local breakfast. In Italy that is not a lot of fun for me, because it is coffee and a croissant and you stand at a bar. No, I am more into the british, irish or german way. In Scotland this includes haddock, in britain hot tomatoes and in Germany the Brötchen and last but not least taking it easy.

I like that.

@Francesca

The story of …. Tanz in den Mai

 

“Now that I start to pay attention, I realize that Germans find a lot of reasons to party”, I said when Francesca proposed to write  about Tanz in den Mai-Dance into 1st of May”. 

This night resembles those Christian churches you find all over Europe, which were erected on former pagan sacred sites. When I grew up, everybody in our village spent the afternoon of the 30th of April clearing the yard from anything moveable, because the night to come was  the night of practical jokes. In the dark, the male village youth  would gather and look for wheelbarrows, carts, or machinery left alone under  the open sky. The next morning, negligent owners would find their  possessions high up in a tree, fixed to a lamppost or heaved onto a roof.

My parents always where proud of securely  stowing away  everything. Nobody could get the better of them, nobody. Till one First of May, when my mother wanted to drive to a “Kaffee und Kuchen”  invitation. At three a clock, she went out to get her car she parked on the curb. “Call the police”, she cried when she rushed back in 30 seconds later. “My car is stolen”. My  father grabbed the phone. While he dialled, he looked out of the window. His eyes hit a red object sitting on the garage roof: my  mother’s tiny Fiat 126.

 

In my village, this night strictly was “boys only”. Later I learnt  that the 30th of April for centuries was the night out for the women.  In mediveal belief, at Walpurgisnacht, witches mounted their  sweeps and rode to the Brocken, a montain in the Harz, where they were  to meet their master, the Devil, to a wild orgiastic dance. Goethe wrote about this myth in his  ”Faust”, the  most classical of German classics. A  he did it in part 2, which nobody ever reads, this Tanz in den Mai was forgotten for two centuries.

The feminist movement dug the legend out again, dusted it off,  and made the 3oth of April a night out for the girls. This time, strictly no men. In lila dungarees I danced to Patti Smith  or listened to Ina Deter wailing: Neue Maenner braucht das Land-what we need are new men.

 

As the new man still were in the making and the old type of men struck back in the conservative 90ies,  the feminist movement lost power. The trade unions tried to pick up the newly neglected date and declared it the opening night of  First of May, workers day, a public holiday in Germany. Now I drank beer for a good cause and listened  to the Songs of International Solidarity.

As we got globalization and international recession instead, Tanz in den Mai was orphaned again. Today, the Club scene adopts the idea. As I walk through the streets, posters like this announce Tanz in den Mai in many of the many hip clubs in town.

  Maybe I will try this one and listen to DJ Maxi. I don´t know his message, but at least this club admits people over 30, as Ü30 tells me. 

Those age-brackets  sprang up during the last few years. As nobody wants to get old but gets old anyway, the entertainment industry adapted to unchanged habits. Recently I even spotted a Ü40 sign, for all those who lived through the Ü30 parties of the last decade and still don´t want to give up on partying.

I´m one of them, though for a long time I didn´t go dancing because I wasn´t energetic enough any more to go out at 11 0´clock at night, dance till 2 0´clock in the morning, and then go to my office the next day – and even work there.

For people like me, the club owners invented the after-work party: it opens at 5 o´clock in the afternoon, dance starts at 8 o´clock. Thus, I can leave, pleasantly  exhausted by hard dancing, at 10 o´clock. Sometimes I even can kiss my son good night. 

Though I would prefer a Ü40 option here too. Last time I queued to get in the guard told me: “If you are here to get your son, maybe you would rather call him on his mobile.” 

But this is another story.

@Truegerman

 

 

 

 

 

Tanz in den Mai

Know your Easter Egg

They have been around for months now and that is probably why, when Easter finally comes around, I am surprised.

I mean all the Easter chocolates in their various shapes and sizes, such as Easter Bunnies, Eggs or Chickens. I have whined about this before (it´s my blog and I whine if I want to, whine if I want, whiiine if I want to). As soon as one festivity is over the chocolates or other typical foods for the next one pop up in all the shops, even if the celebration is still months away. So there they were all these months and me ignoring them until the very week Easter is actually happening. And then I say “Already?”.

If my children were still in german pre-school I would have had some warning when the teachers ask  for empty eggshells to be provided for the ritual painting of the eggs. At home you can boil your white eggs with onion skin or paint them with special food colours, if you can stand eating eggs that when you peel them they might be blue.

I was amused when a german educator at an international school, complained that she could not get the parents to join in the fun and bring in empty eggshells for their children to paint. Of course I only stated to the Educator that most of her parents are not used to this tradition, while I thought to myself that those parents might object to the rather yucky part of emptying an egg for the purpose.

Another way of knowing it really is time is when garden trees suddenly grow the colourful egg fruit. Trees that just barely are showing the first signs of spring, get a little push of cheer. It is not as widespread as decorating for Christmas and I still remember when I saw my first “Eggtree” in a village in the Taunus. The eggs were beautiful handpainted affairs and a little message of good cheer was attached to the fence. Maybe it all started in that little garden.

I remember Easter Egg hunts in my childhood. It was exciting scrabbling through the bushes and looking behind trees to find the treasures. By and by colourful “real” eggs, where replaced by the chocolate variety. One Easter brought a surprise which cannot be beat to this day: the birth of my baby sister. The eggs I remember from that easter, where the ones my Dad tried to fry, while my Mother was in hospital, and which he burnt.

The TV would be on on those Easter Sunday mornings, while we waited for the blessings by the Pope to be shown. It was always amazing and moving to see the crowds in Rome, waving their little flags from all over the world. As my older sisters moved out, it became part of the tradition that they would invite everybody for Easter Breakfast. If Easter coincided with a sunnier spring season this was a great way to start the day and later enjoy a walk in the fields or woods, along with all the Germans who love walking or rambling.

I always  wondered why a Rabbit brought the eggs until I read that it wasn´t always a Rabbit. Other regions had other animals bringing the eggs. And Eggs are brought because they are symbols of the new life every spring brings, a symbol which was already celebrated in ancient times by Egyptians and Persians.

I wonder if the pre-school Educators of those times made a call for empty egg shells.

Happy Easter.

@Francesca

Easter is here – Frohe Ostern

“Don’t ask me about our traditions for Easter”, I grumbled when I met
Francesca. “I’m still angry”.

A few hours ago I had had the annual Easter-present discussion with
my son.
” As my Easter-present I want …” he started.

I intercepted immediately “We don’t do Easter-presents”.

“But …(fill in the name of his friend who gets one) always….”

My son has friends for all situations. The friend that goes to bed
late at night, the friend who gets icecream every day, the friend who
is allowed to play Nintendo ad libidum, the friend who doesn’t go to school when
Rhamadan ends. Why doesn’t he mention the friend who doesn’t get
sweets for six weeks during Lent. 

Traditionally, for my mother, Easter was the day summer started. Therefore, after Easter, we could get rid of the ugly, scratching handknitted woollen knickers we had to wear in winter. As a child, I never really understood the logics behind: sometimes Easter was early in March and our egg hunt took place in deep snow. Sometimes Easter was late in late April and we could have fried the eggs on the hot tarmac. Only as an adult, at last,  I came to understand what these

traditions are for: to reduce the amount of daily discussion on how things are done
from 100 to 10.

As I’m writing this I listen to the radio: “What do you eat on Good
Friday?” the reporter asks random people on the high street.
“Rollbraten-rolled beef,” they say, or ” we barbecue”. My ex-catholic
soul is shocked. I can’t even remember what we ate on Good Friday,
probably nothing, as in catholic tradition, the last day of Lent should be the day of
strictest fasting. Instead, I went to church twice: to the catholic
mass with my father, to the protestant service with my mother. Both
were equally long and tedious. I accepted this as my part of the
seasonal suffering, and looked forward to  Easter Sunday.

This joyful day always started with two hardboiled, hand-dyed eggs and an Osterzopf, a sweet cake made of yeast dough. We
children got an Osternest, an Easter nest, filled with sugar-,
fondants- and chocolate eggs. Then we went to church – a pleasure this
time. The choir greeted us with a powerfull “Christ ist erstanden“,
the priest wore his golden cloth, the mass servants swang heavy
incense burners, and we children felt that we were once again allowed
to laugh and play.

Later, the egg hunt took place in my uncles´garden, where he had to hide 25 eggs
for the pack of kids in our extended family. During the search, he
always managed to let fall a few extra sugar eggs that sprinkled the
grass like the a Haensel-und-Gretel-trail.

In the evenings, we gathered in front of the TV to watch the “Passion
of Christ”, a three-evening-in-a-row miniseries. And on Easter Sunday, we equally fascinatedly watched the Pope saying “Urbi and Orbi”.

Today, roasted lamb for dinner has become part of the Easter
tradition. Way back in my childhood, sheep were extremely rare in Germany. They
existed only theoretically, as part of a going-to-sleep ritual:
Schäfchenzaehlen-counting imaginary sheep jumping over a fence – one,
two, three …

My first real sheep I saw when I was 21 and worked on a sheep farm in
New South Wales. The other farm hands soon learnt not to trust me with
the mustering: counting sheep after sheep jumping through the gate -
one, two, three….

But this is another story.

@Truegerman