Easter / Oster

We arrived back in Salzburg yesterday afternoon sorry to be leaving Sonnwies behind, but happy to find that it was sunny and warm here. You can see photos from our trip to Südtirol here or from the link in the photo albums in the side bar.

Just as talk of Halloween started in August, talk of Easter started just about as soon as Halloween was over. And so it was a very excited boy this morning who discovered that the Easter bunny had come, managing to find him in Salzburg even though he is usually in New Jersey and just yesterday had been in Italy. Not only did the Easter bunny leave a basket with candy, but she (the Easter bunny cannot be a boy, did you know that?) also filled the Easter nest that Nikolas made at Sonnwies with candy and left a few presents as well. After all, a boy cannot just have candy, but needs plastic knights, a few stories about knights, a dinosaur coloring/activity book, as well as a new movie (The Incredibles), of course!

After the fun of Easter basket surprises, it was time to dye some Easter eggs. We had fun exploring a packet of German egg dyes which was a far cry from Paas dissolving color tablets. The dyes include gelatin in them, so you have to warm the dyes to make them liquid and then roll the eggs around in your hands to cover them with gelatin. Sticky at first, they dry nice and shiny and the dye show up really nicely on the brown eggs that are common here. Of course as soon as the eggs were dyed, Nikolas had to sample a few for breakfast.

Not long after that, we jumped into the car and headed out to the Easter egg hunt at the Salzburger Frelichtmuseum, a 50 hectare open air museum with old houses and barns and shops from various regions of Austria. The egg hunt was not what Nikolas remembered from last year at Kunkel Park. There, a field was cordoned off with ribbon, the grass absolutely covered with plastic eggs. At the sound of a whistle, the kids broke through the ribbon and stormed the field, grabbing as many eggs as they possibly could, bigger kids pushing over littler kids, coordinated kids (or really mean-spirited parents) grabbing eggs off the ground as uncoordinated toddlers attempted to bend over and pick them up. The entire event was over in less than one minute. And for what? All the plastic eggs were then traded in for a handful of candy.

The egg hunt here was a real hunt, eggs hiding in dark corners of the old buildings, in buckets and troughs, under benches and bushes, and among the trees. There was no running and pushing and, in fact, many adults were helping direct children in the right direction towards eggs that they had spotted. Nikolas ultimately found three eggs, and there are no trade-ins for candy here. What you find is what you get - just a hard boiled egg - and Nikolas was perfectly happy with that.