#ratschen

Here are a couple of pictures of the event - I will put more into a gallery in the next post. We have all of us sitting there with our specialised equipment (to remove the inside of the egg, and then hold it to be painted), then Kathi's Easter Bunny egg, Ulrich painting his classic egg, and my 1991 abomination.

So. That was day 1. On the Saturday, I was invited to join the Zelgers to two events - the 'Fleischweihe' (which literally translates to 'Meat blessing') and a typical Austrian Osterfeuer - a giant Easter bonfire. The Fleishreihe was really nice - families come from around the area and bring a beautifully-presented basket of cured meats, eggs and bread, to be blessed by the priest before they eat it on Easter Sunday. This ceremony involved a lot of noise, because it is tradition to take along a 'Ratschen' which Americans may recognise as the origins of those horrible noisemakers at sports games! 

So the priest came out, looked at all the baskets, gave a short sermon, the kids made lots of noise with their Ratschen, the baskets were blessed with holy water, and then he split the crowd into three to sing a canon. It was a really nice traditional ceremony, and I must say some of the traditional clothing that people wore there was absolutely stunning. Here are some pictures:

Pepi and Ulrich beginning the walk up to the top of the hill

All of the Easter baskets lined up (and a Ratschen down in front)

This little guy in his immaculate clothes, next to the big daddy Ratschen

The main event

Ulrich with the basket

Me and Carlos in our normal clothes

Finally, event number three, on Saturday evening, was the big bonfire. Graz itself has problems with air quality so open fires are banned, but just outside of the city limits it is a free-for-all. We knew when we were getting close to the city limits because suddenly the air was completely thick with smoke! I don't have too many pictures (well, I do, but they all look the same) but the ones I do have fail to convey the size of this fire. It was at least 2 storeys high, and we had to stand well back, otherwise the heat was too much! Unfortunately it was raining, so things got extremely muddy, but it was still a sight to see this enormous fire.