Being Italian and finding myself divided between the German, French and American culture, I must confess that this Easter in particular I had a lot of fun thinking about the different traditions.
A couple of weeks ago coming home from work I was sitting in the train in front of two ladies who, evidently being only acquaintances and looking for a small talk subject, talked for the whole trip about different and new techniques of painting eggs. That is the classic moment in which, belonging to a different culture, you think "Okay, I'm in Germany".
Here in fact everywhere you turn you see painted eggs, not just chocolate eggs but true edible ones that you even get as a little present in shops.
Honestly I find very sweet the tradition of painting eggs with kids and then hiding them in the courtyard. About this you can even hear the most funny stories of parents or grandparents forgetting the eggs hidden somewhere and rediscovering them months after by chasing the bad smell.
But honestly, it makes me giggle so much that in Germany children receive boiled eggs (and okay a little bit of chocolate too) whereas in Italy we look forward to this:
We receive big chocolate eggs.
When you open them you're overwhelmed by the big shining crinkling wrapping paper (which you can reuse for many DIYs, by the way) with a surprise inside, and, even with 24, I just look forward to it so much!
Eventually you regret it since the eggs you receive grow mathematically in proportion to how big your family is, and after a couple of days of eating chocolate for breakfast, lunch and dinner you develop a sort of refuse.
Maybe to many these traditions are already well known, but when you live in another county even entering the supermarket makes you thinking about these little things.
I had both boiled painted and chocolate eggs this year. I still prefer chocolate of course, no wonder.
Oh and here, take a bonus picture of a cat.
