Dyeing eggs for Orthodox Easter in Bulgaria

I spent the morning dyeing and decorating eggs with my 33-year-old nephew and sister-in-law in Sofia for Orthodox Easter (which is this weekend). I learned a very cool trick with parsley leaves. You boil the egg in salt water and when it is ready you spread out a parsley leaf on the side of the egg. Then you wrap the egg with an old nylon stocking and secure it with a twisty tie. When you dip the egg in the dye you will get a negative image of the parsley which looks very cool. You let the eggs dry completely and then you cover them with a thin film of oil to make them look shiny. I had so much fun doing this!

Back in Germany

I landed in Germany just in time to catch the last day of the annual summer Kollnauer Fescht.  I lived in this little village in the German Black Forest for a year between 2014 and 2015, and I haven't been back in over two and a half years.  It's nice to see that nothing much has changed. I drank a glass of the local wine, Müller Thurgau, and enjoyed the general frivolity of the street festival. What is so wonderful about these German local events is the intergenerational aspect of the sociality, and the simple merriment of sitting outside and drinking cold beer.