Easter in Vienna

[This is the post that was supposed to be for 31 March 2013, Easter Sunday.]
First a few notes. Lucy and I got quite sick the week before Andrew's birthday and Easter. We had bad experiences with the medical system here in Austria, and it took a week to get the antibiotics we needed. We are so thankful for antibiotics. Because we were sick, and then the rest of the family started to get colds and illnesses, we didn't do a lot. This has been the coldest March in 50 years in Europe, or something like that. We had snow on Easter.

Also, it took me about a week and a half to figure out that the children had smeared the camera lens with sticky goo. I couldn't understand why all the photos were blurry. Aaugh.

Then, we've been having problems with the Internet service. Sometimes it just doesn't work. We liked the Internet in Budapest, except for all the U.S. sites that are blocked in that country. (Why can't you watch Sesame Street in Hungary?)

In Austria, and other Central and Eastern European countries, the people put pussywillow or forsythia branches in their houses and churches as symbols of spring and new growth. Then, in their houses, they hang little eggs on the branches. Some eggs are plastic (I bought a few of those) and others are real eggs that they clean out and then paint. They have glass and wooden eggs as well.

One of our pussywillow branches with fancy eggs on them.

The children's pussywillow branches with plastic eggs. Yes,
they managed to knock it over, which is why I put plastic eggs
on it.

Another tradition here is that the people give Easter lambs to the children. The Easter lamb is a nice pound cake in the shape of a lamb.

The Easter lamb we ate. We enjoyed it.

On Easter, the people here give children "Easter nests," which are Easter baskets. So I put together some Easter nests as well.

Kirk's Easter nest, with some candy for me as well.

We found some very cute chocolate and frosting figures, which we put in the nests.

Birds in a nest.

A chocolate egg with candy in it.

We visited two churches this week. Rupret's church is the oldest church in Vienna and it has the oldest stained glass window in Vienna.

The window is actually very small, as is the church.

The other church was the Calvary Hill church, where they have a display of the crucifixion and Calvary's Hill with life-sized wooden carvings of the events.

In front of the Calvary Hill church.

And, in keeping with visiting old stuff, we went to the Roman ruins in the center of Vienna. They are all 10-15 feet underground now.

This is the floor, with the heating system. They would blow hot air
under the floors to heat the houses of the very rich people.

We had Andrew's birthday. He turned 9. Even though I was sick, I managed to make a cake. We found a cake mix (they only have one kind in Austria, chocolate) and I made some ganache for the frosting and put on lots of sprinkles. It was a nice cake.

Andrew with his cake.

I guess we did manage to do some things even with the illness in the house.