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Maybe you came across this German tradition yourself because your neighbors brought over bread and salt when you moved into your first apartment in Germany. And maybe you wondered why they bring over something to eat 🙂

Gifting new neighbors or friends who move into a new home with bread and salt dates back a long time. Bread is a staple food, when we don’t have bread anymore we’re in trouble. We even find this simple fact in the Bible: “Then Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35). And salt has always been very precious. Let’s check the Bible for that again: “Jesus is saying to his disciples and followers, you are the salt. I see you and God sees you as precious.” (Matthew, 5:13). 

In the old days bread and salt where seen and valued as a gift from heaven. No matter how poor a family was, these two items needed to be present. Nowadays bread and salt can be seen as a metaphor: bread is vital for our survival and salt adds flavor to life. And that is what we wish for the person who has moved into his or her new home: always enough bread on the table to survive and enough salt so that life will be fun 🙂

It is actually not considered rude or anything when you ring the doorbell of new neighbors, bring over bread and salt and introduce yourself at the same time. Maybe this is the start of a life long friendship.

By the way: You can be a bit creative here: When you know the person you will give the bread and salt to has a bath tub how about substituting the salt to bathing salt? Or when he or she is a beer lover you could also hand over a bottle of beer as it is called “flüssiges Brot” (liquid bread) in German 🙂

Ready-to-buy gift sets

On amazon you find a number of bread and salt themed gift sets [affiliate links]

The post Welcoming new neighbors in Germany with bread and salt appeared first on Living in Stuttgart.

Easter in Stuttgart – The religious background

On Easter, Christians all over the world celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ and so do we in Germany. According to the Christian Bible, Jesus has been crucified on Good Friday and revived on Easter Sunday. So Easter Sunday (Ostersonntag) is the day when the main celebrations are going on. Religious people attend a special service at church, but even nonreligious families gather, have brunch or lunch together and organize games and presents for the kids.

Easter in Stuttgart – Fun traditions

We have many fun Easter traditions here in Germany:

Painted Easter eggs

The Easter eggs are probably THE symbol of Easter. There are two ways how you can prepare your own, pretty Easter eggs: You can boil eggs until they are hard and color them. Or you take raw eggs, blow out the egg yolk and white, color the shell as well and put a thread through it so that you can put it in a tree or branches of trees you have brought home with you on your last stroll. And of course there are the countless chocolate eggs you can find in every store. They are the most popular Easter eggs amongst kids 🙂

Fun fact: In Sonnenbühl, a small town close to Stuttgart, you can visit a special museum dedicated to Easter eggs!

Easter rabbit

The Easter bunny or rabbit is most beloved by the kids as it brings chocolate Easter eggs and presents! 🙂 But the Easter rabbit is not as nice as Santa Clause who places his presents always at the same spot. No, no, no. You have to find the eggs and the Easter nest first and believe me, the Easter rabbit is VERY good in hiding his presents. When you have a garden, look behind every branch! Sometimes the nest is even hidden in a tree. But nests can also be found inside houses and apartments. The Easter bunny really goes everywhere 🙂 Tipp for the helpers of the Easter bunny (aka parents): write down where the bunny has hidden the nests! It has happened to more than one family that they found nests months later! 😀 So what is in the nest you might ask now. Usually sweets like chocolate eggs, chocolate rabbits and sometimes even little toys.

Historical fun fact: Easter eggs and bunnies date back to pagan worshipping.  They used to be symbols of fertility and were used for celebrating spring.

Baked Easter lamb

The tradition of the baked Easter lamb goes back generations and before chocolate eggs became popular, it was the main treat after the long time of lent. The traditional baked Easter lamb is made with yeast dough (Hefeteig). You can either buy an Easter lamb in every bakery or create one yourself (there are many recipes on the internet).

The symbol behind the lamb: The lamb refers to Jesus Christ who took his crucification like a sacrificial lamb.

Colorful Easter trees

When you walk through your neighborhood or visit German friends you will see colorful decorated trees or branches. Decoration trees with painted eggs definitely looks gorgeous and adds some more color to the awakening nature.

After I did some research I found out that this tradition can be traced back to one family from Thuringia. More than fifty years ago the Kraft family started to decorate an apple tree in their garden with colorful eggs.

Easter markets

Easter markets are the little sisters and brothers of our famous Christmas markets. Here you will find beautiful artwork as well as sweet treats. They are definitely worth a visit, not only if you’re still in need of the one or other Easter decoration object. However, this year, in times of the Corona crisis, the markets won’t take place unfortunately.

Easter fountains

When you see a nicely decorated fountain these days you have found an Ester fountain! They are especially famous here in the southern part of Germany. The most famous fountain can be found in Bieberach by the way.

Fun Easter games

Many games exist that will keep your little ones busy on Easter.

Egg tapping used to be my favorite game. You need two players and two hard boiled eggs. The players tap the eggs against each other. Whose egg breaks loses this round.

Another fun game is the egg run. You can play this with a larger group of children. Everybody gets a spoon and a hard boiled egg. You define a parcours the kids have to run. Then the eggs get placed on the spoon and the game starts. The first player to finish the parcours with an unbroken egg wins the game.

And then there is egg roll. You need a hill for this game. The players place their hard boiled eggs at the top of the hill and let them roll down. Whose egg crosses the finish line first wins this game.

Easter in Stuttgart – The dates in 2021

April 2, 2021: Good Friday/Karfreitag (public holiday)

Good Friday is the day where Jesus was killed according to the Christian Bible. So this day is usually a quiet public holiday. Religious families will serve fish on this day and avoid meat.

Culinary fun fact: When you’re living in Stuttgart for a while already you might have come across one of our Swabian specialities: Maultaschen. Did you know that there is a fun, historical legend behind these local “raviolies”?! This is how the saying goes: Smart Cistercian monks of Maulbronn Abbey didn’t want to resign from eating meat on Good Friday so they came up with the idea of hiding it inside the pasta-like dish, assuming god wouldn’t notice. That’s why Maultaschen have a very special nickname: Herrgottsbscheisserle – what could be translated to god-cheaters. 🙂

April 3, 2021: (Easter) Saturday

The Saturday after Good Friday isn’t a public holiday. Shops will be open. But if possible, do your shopping for the long weekend before Easter Saturday as the stores will be crowded and it will be hard to maintain the 1.5 meter distance between customers.

April 4, 2021: Easter Sunday/Ostersonntag (public holiday)

Easter Sunday is the most important day of the Easter celebrations. Religious families will attend the service at church. Many people, friends and/or families, gather for brunch or lunch. The kids will start searching for the Easter nests. Taking an Easter stroll is also a tradition in many families however this year, it is recommended not to travel too far for your Easter stroll – or even better: stay at home.

April 5, 2021: Easter Monday/Ostermontag (public holiday)

This is usually another quiet day. In normal years many people like to go for walks and hikes, others drive back home from their visit of friends or family. However this year, how about spending a lazy Easter Monday at home 🙂

Please note that Easter in times of Corona will have to be celebrated a bit different. If you can, stay at home and don’t invite friends of family over. I know, this is hard. But it is the only way how we can prevent the virus from spreading any further.

How is Easter celebrated in your culture? Is it celebrated at all? Please share your story with us in the comments 🙂

Happy Easter everybody! Frohe Ostern!

Picture credit: canva.com

Transparency: This post is based on my own opinion and contains personal recommendations as well as affiliate links.

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First of all – and to avoid mails from my German readers 😉 – of course not EVERY German loves the Eurovision Song Contest. But a lot of us do, me included 🙂 So let me explain what the contest is about :

Eurovision Song Contest in Germany – Waht is all the fuss about?

The Eurovision Song Contest is in fact the longest-running annual international TV song competition. It started back in 1956, can you belive this?! So forget about trends American Idol and such! 😉 Singers from counties that are part of the European Broadcasting Union can participate – so don’t be confused to see countries that are not part of the European Union in the competition, those are two different things!! Since 2015 even Australia is taking part, simply because the contest is such a big thing over there, too. 😀

After preselections of the songs – in the member countries themselves and by a jury afterwards – every participating country submits a song. On ESC-night, those songs will be performed live on tv. This is obviously the best part of the show :-).

Afterwards the voting part begins. The people of all the member countries can vote for the song they have liked the most – just not for song from their own country. There is also a professional jury in every country that casts their own votes. Each country has one or more representative(s) who announce the points live on television. This part always takes veeeery long. Finally, the country with the most points wins the contest. The winning country will also be the host of the contest in the coming year.

Eurovision Song Contest in Germany- Why is it such a big thing?

Well, this question is tricky. In my opinion, the Eurovision Song Contest is loved in Germany mainly because it is such a fun event! When do you get the chance to listen to songs from so many different countries? And a lot of artists put on a show which makes watching their performances even more entertaining. For me, the Eurovision Song Contest manifests what Europe really is about: being different and celebrating this difference! Plus, it’s all about music and who doesn’t like a good song, right?! 🙂

Eurovision Song Contest in Germany- How to make it an even greater event!

Moritz and I have come up with a very fun tradition: Each year we try to put together a buffet that consists of food and drinks from as many participating countries (or countries that could participate – in case I didn’t want to wait till the results of the semi-finals to find out which products I should buy :-)) as possible. Thanks to this tradition we have tried things we would have probably never considered taking from the shelf in the supermarket if not for this event. Believe me, it is a lot of fun trying all the different food and drinks from this All-European-And-Beyond buffet!

So here’s what I found in the supermarket for the Eurovision Song Contest in 2017:

Eurovision Drinks

• representing Switzerland: rivella Lemonade
• representing Australia: Bundaberg Ginger Beer
• representing Hungary: Balaton Red Wine
• representing Portugal: Antonio Lopes White Wine
• representing Denmark: Carlsberg Beer

Eurovision Buffet

• representing Germany: Swabian noodles (Spätzle) with lentils
• representing The Netherlands: Old Amsterdam Cheese
• representing Greece: Dolmadakia Stuffed Wine Leaves
• representing Spain: Spanish Olives
• representing Poland: Cwikla Beet Root relish
• representing France: French Onion Soup
• representing Austria: Vienna Sausage with mashed potatoes
• representing Bulgaria: Djuwetsch Mixed Vegetables
• representing Italy: Bruschetta

Eurovision Dessert

• representing Belgium: Waffles
• representing Bosnia and Herzegovina: Eurocrem Chocolate Dessert
• representing Iceland: Skyr Yogurt

Eurovision Snacks

• representing Serbia: Munchmallows
• representing the Czech Republic: Karlsbader wafers
• representing the UK: Salt and Vinegar Crisps
• representing Croatia: Domacica cookies

21 items representing 21 counties! Not too bad! I 2016 I only had 13 different products.

Real pros don’t buy stuff from the convenient food section in the supermarket of course but prepare everything themselves. ;-P Due to a lack of cooking skills and time I became a huge fan of the international food shelf in our local EDEKA supermarket :-)!

Next to the buffet, we always have a list of all the participating countries and play jury ourselves. The artists get points for their songs, their performances and their dresses. Usually, we come up with a very different result, compared to the one from the voting procedure. 🙂

I hope you have as much fun watching the ESC as we do! If you organize an Eurovision Buffet, too, please sent me a picture! 🙂

The post A guide to celebrating the Eurovision Song Contest in Germany appeared first on Living in Stuttgart.

I was talking about Christmas decorations with a colleague last week and he told me about the American exchange student who stayed with his family last Christmas. When they decorated the Christmas tree together, he asked where the Christmas pickle is. My colleague was confused and thought he might have misunderstood the question. Then the exchange student told him that it is commonly believed in the US that it’s a German Christmas tradition to hide Christmas pickles in the tree.

I didn’t believe him and thought we has making fun of me. So the next day, he brought me the pickle the exchange student gave him and his family as a present when he left.

Well, I have to admit, I actually like this pickle-tradition-thing. When I googled it, I found out that the idea of hiding it in the tree is that whoever finds it first, receives a special present. Maybe we’ll adopt this (American!) tradition next year 🙂

But for this Christmas, we are quite happy with our picklefree tree. Merry Christmas, today especially to all Americans! Be good to your pickles 😉

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