Wielkanoc
Easter Saturday was spent doing chorey things like cleaning cars, preparing enormous amounts of food and creating bouquets of flowers to be placed at various gravesides.
We also picked up random family members from the countryside and took our little basket full of eggs, sausage, bread and salt to church to be blessed. In ye oldene dayes they used to take ALL the food they were going to eat on Easter Sunday to church, but now they just take symbolic things. Much more sensible.
In the evening, as we celebrated the end of lent with a selection of beer and chocolate mini eggs at our temporary very large home, I told Marek about Easter in Britain; the Easter bunny and our Sunday morning Easter egg hunts.
The next morning, I saw the Easter bunny had followed me to Warsaw and I ran around like a little kid, gathering my eggs with glee. Bless the Easter bunny's cotton socks. He gave up after hiding a few in the kitchen, but maybe thatwas e due to the post-lent beer he'd been indulging in.
We went for Easter breakfast with Marek's family. After exchanging bits of a blessed egg with one another (you guys I'm not kidding, that's what they do) along with wishes, we sat down to a table piled with far too much food.
The family marveled at how I'd gone without chocolate for over 6 weeks (well, apart from that small failure on Ash Wednesday, first day of Lent, when it slipped my mind that chocoate biscuits had chocolate in them). I confessed to my dream the night before, where I'd had a huge slab of chocolate in front of me and was chopping it up with an enormous knife, ready to share around. I think the fact that I was willing to share proves this chocolate addiction is well under control.
Then, after we'd eaten breakfast, it was time for lunch. Unfortunately for me, lunch started with flaki, which in English is tripe. Otherwise known as nasty little bumpy bits of white chewy meat, in a soup that is infused with the stinky odour of that meat, which comes, interestingly enough, from a cow's stomach. Yum. It's not just the thought of where it comes from that makes me want to run away as fast as my feet can carry me, flailing my arms in the air and shouting 'bleurgh-eurgh-eurgh!' it's more the fetid, all-encompassing smell that accompanies the flaki. I asked for an extra small portion, managed to get a couple of mouthfuls down and then swapped plates with Marek, who had already downed his, bumpy bits of stomach skin and all.
Today, Easter Monday, it is tradition for boys to splash water on girls, in a primitive, playground-flirting kind of way. It's actually raining, so the boys will have part of the fun taken away, as all the girls will be soaking anyway, but if you're out and about in Warsaw today, be sure to take a brolly. The news yesterday had footage of the police from last year, confiscating buckets and water pistols from the 'hooligans' who have taken this tradition on with enthusiasm.
Luckily, Marek coming towards me with his hand in a glass of water doesn't quite fill me with the terror it would need to make me want for backup. Happy Easter!
We also picked up random family members from the countryside and took our little basket full of eggs, sausage, bread and salt to church to be blessed. In ye oldene dayes they used to take ALL the food they were going to eat on Easter Sunday to church, but now they just take symbolic things. Much more sensible.
In the evening, as we celebrated the end of lent with a selection of beer and chocolate mini eggs at our temporary very large home, I told Marek about Easter in Britain; the Easter bunny and our Sunday morning Easter egg hunts.
The next morning, I saw the Easter bunny had followed me to Warsaw and I ran around like a little kid, gathering my eggs with glee. Bless the Easter bunny's cotton socks. He gave up after hiding a few in the kitchen, but maybe thatwas e due to the post-lent beer he'd been indulging in.
We went for Easter breakfast with Marek's family. After exchanging bits of a blessed egg with one another (you guys I'm not kidding, that's what they do) along with wishes, we sat down to a table piled with far too much food.
The family marveled at how I'd gone without chocolate for over 6 weeks (well, apart from that small failure on Ash Wednesday, first day of Lent, when it slipped my mind that chocoate biscuits had chocolate in them). I confessed to my dream the night before, where I'd had a huge slab of chocolate in front of me and was chopping it up with an enormous knife, ready to share around. I think the fact that I was willing to share proves this chocolate addiction is well under control.
Then, after we'd eaten breakfast, it was time for lunch. Unfortunately for me, lunch started with flaki, which in English is tripe. Otherwise known as nasty little bumpy bits of white chewy meat, in a soup that is infused with the stinky odour of that meat, which comes, interestingly enough, from a cow's stomach. Yum. It's not just the thought of where it comes from that makes me want to run away as fast as my feet can carry me, flailing my arms in the air and shouting 'bleurgh-eurgh-eurgh!' it's more the fetid, all-encompassing smell that accompanies the flaki. I asked for an extra small portion, managed to get a couple of mouthfuls down and then swapped plates with Marek, who had already downed his, bumpy bits of stomach skin and all.
Today, Easter Monday, it is tradition for boys to splash water on girls, in a primitive, playground-flirting kind of way. It's actually raining, so the boys will have part of the fun taken away, as all the girls will be soaking anyway, but if you're out and about in Warsaw today, be sure to take a brolly. The news yesterday had footage of the police from last year, confiscating buckets and water pistols from the 'hooligans' who have taken this tradition on with enthusiasm.
Luckily, Marek coming towards me with his hand in a glass of water doesn't quite fill me with the terror it would need to make me want for backup. Happy Easter!
posted by Becca | 7:57 am
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