Easter Monday

It is interesting how you slowly get used to new things.  Our first year here we were first so shocked by everything being  closed on Sundays.  All the stores and shops.  The hardest part was the grocery store if you had forgotten to pick something up.  I never had to plan ahead in Seattle because stores were always open. Not just every day of the week but 24/7.  Here stores are open Monday through Saturday and grocery stores from 7AM until around 8PM.  Once we were finally getting used to that

we realized that there are SO many national holidays here and on a national holiday all the stores are closed too.  In the States there were national holidays - like Labor Day or Memorial Day and sure, some things are closed but even on Christmas Day the grocery stores are open, even if just on limited hours.

Here in Berlin, in addition to the normal holidays and national holidays they also celebrate Christmas Eve and 2nd Christmas.  So for 3 consecutive days the stores and everything is closed.  Same for Easter.  Good Friday is a holiday as well as the Monday after Easter.  The first year we were here I was always caught unaware.  What?  Another holiday??   Then there is also Ascension Day and Pentecost.  Both national holidays - everything closed.  In addition to all of their other holidays.  It seems that in the Spring between Easter and the end of school they never even have one full week of school.  There is always a holiday.  This year I was actually prepared, partly due to having to stock up in the age of Corona and partly due to learning over the past two years.  I was a bit worried because for the past two years we have had medical emergencies on the Friday of Easter weekend (oh, I forgot to mention that most people take the entire week off.  From Good Friday until Monday an entire week after Easter) So our first year here Marty had another eye emergency.  He has having significant changes in his eyesight which typically means there is a beginning of a lacquer crack.  A very rare eye disorder. 

This had us in the ER and racing around to find eye specialists when most are out of town on holiday.  Then last year was when Josie had Mono but we didn't know yet.  She was SUPER sick and we spent the entire week after Easter trying to have her seen by someone when again most people are away on vacation.  I was a bit anxious leading up to the holiday weekend but I think this year the world wide pandemic played out to be a bigger deal than our personal family medical emergency.  Thank God.  Not health scares here.
We enjoyed the day much like all the rest in the past 4 weeks. I made another loaf of bread.  This time an Italian loaf since we were having left over Italian food for dinner.  This used WAY more yeast and several more ingredients.  The results were a very tasty loaf of very soft bread.  Imagine a really soft old fashioned dinner roll.  Yummy!!  The kids LOVED it.
Plus the day included a bonus Skype call with our good friends the Kitcheners.  They live in the UK and we had to figure out how to handle our upcoming planned trip to visit them in London at the end of May and attend the musical Hamilton.  Sadly the Theater had already sent out emails canceling the show and we had to decide on a refund or to keep our money with the theater and attend sometime later in the future.  I'm sure we will see it at some point but we opted for the refund.  And sadly another trip canceled.  Another bites the dust as so many things are these days 😞