Swedish Easter

I am not a Christian and I had no clue about Easter celebrations before this year. Though Swedes claim themselves to be not religious, they celebrate so many religious holidays so seriously: e.g. my previous post about 'Lucia Day' and now Easter!

The Swedes claim that they started to celebrate Easter even before Jesus was born. Because they celebrate Spring through celebrate Easter! (???!!!) Look at the picture on the left, the tree branches with colored feathers tied on them. This is a typical decoration every house has around Easter time. This is to celebrate that chickens will be laying eggs in spring time! (Apparently, in old times, chickens are not laying eggs all year around. I am not sure if this explananation is credible.) That is why people put such a decoration at home. Then of course, Easter eggs.

My morning on 7th started with searching for the Easter egg. I heard usually they are hidden under the mud in the gardens. Aron's mum had mercy on us. I found my egg in a basket full of dolls. And then, it continued with eating eggs during lunch, dinner and then again the second the day. One piece of important info here: the Swedes eat boiled eggs with Kaviar - enormously yummy!

The Easter dinner I had was full of traditional Swedish food: raw herring, meat balls (Swedish meat balls are the yummiest in the world) and sausages, boiled potatoes with lingonberry sauce, etc. Aron's family was a very relaxed one. Nobody dressed up for the dinner. However, Maria (Johansson, my flatmate) took her official dinner dress home for the Easter dinner. This is a detail needs some highlight - Easter dinner with your family in official dinner gawns!

So much observations to record for now. The 4 day's break was way too short because it broke the normal weekdays VS weekends rythemn but not long enough for you to rest enough and seek for going back. Well...better than no break! Most of all, thanks to Aron, I learnt how to ride a bicycle! (Note: not all Chinese can bike. Though when you think of China, you think of a very smoggy city with hundreds of people on their bikes! It is true though - Beijing is like this!!! :P) The next step for me is to learn swimming!