European Easter

One of our great pleasures on this trip was to be in Europe over Easter time. Bear with me as these photos are a little out of order. The first photos are from Mondsee which is a small village in Austria which is where we were on Easter Sunday. All the ladies were in their dirndl skirts and the men in their leiderhosen and many of the women were carrying baskets. I wondered out loud what was in the basket and was fortunate enough to be heard by one of the locals who showed me in their basket - cheese, eggs, bread and cake.

All the goodies were being taken to church to be blessed and then taken home and eaten! I thought they might share them around, but no.

The dirndl and leiderhosen are apparently quite expensive, but come with large side seams so that as you age and widen you can still keep wearing them. They are often used at important occasions - weddings, family gatherings etc.

They are all quite individual in colour, but the design is traditional. We arrived in Mondsee before the church service for the day so that we could see inside the beautifully decorated church where they filmed the marriage of Maria and Col. von Trapp for The Sound of Music

Just before Easter we went to a series of villages just behind Colmar in France. I have just included a few of the fantastic Easter decorations of the quaint houses there.

Easter Eggs, chickens and Bunnies were the order of the day.

Some of these were shops, but most were just homes.

They were all enchanting and I took so many photos!

Even the boat we were travelling on got into the act. We ate the chocolate ones but I think the brightly coloured boiled eggs were part of an egg salad the next day!

These adorable bunnies were on sale in a market in Salzburg. They apparently were made out of some sort of flower cone, maybe a dried banksia.

Before we left France (preEaster) we were in Strasbourg and as we went into town on the very user friendly bus/tram system people were getting on with small bunches of hedge. I thought maybe it was like laurel leaves on Anzac day. Then it dawned on me. It was Palm Sunday, and this is what they were taking to church as Palms!!

So Easter in Europe. Not a single hot cross bun was offered to me, seen for sale nor passed my lips. I'll just have to wait until next February when they start selling them in NZ.