Life: Idiotropic

Wednesday was the night that the Germans hail in May with parties and celebrations in the larger towns and villages in the region. It's also the eve before May Day when the young men drink beer, blast their music, and cut down trees for the women they love. There are birch groves where young boys can now legally pay and cut down a sapling, but some still find trees elsewhere or they buy huge elaborate crepe paper hearts and heart or tree get hung on the home of the girl in the night or early morning to show that she is taken. Girls used to guard the trees that their boys left so that another boy would not steal her tree and put down his own. That would mean that she would "belong" to that second boy. Tante Tinny told me that her husband put a 15" tree on top of her house on May Day when she was only 16. He was older and was conscripted into the army in the war, so he fought and they dated long distance until he came back when she was 22 and they got married.

Thankfully for us this year, the police announced that the loud music would not be tolerated, so we didn't hear nearly as much as we normally do.

May 1st is May Day in Germany. It also happened to be Ascension Day here too - Cristi Himmelfahrt - literally translates to: Christ Heaven-Goes. It's Cristi Hemmelvaart in Holland too and a long holiday weekend for us, so we took the two days and went to Holland to see the famous Keukenhof gardens that I've wanted to see since I moved here.

Even the drive there was pretty. The gardens lie in the bulb region of Holland where for miles around you drive by brilliantly striped fields of flowers.


I'm not going to ramble too much here, but these are absolutely the most beautiful gardens I've ever seen. Only open for a few short weeks each spring, this spring bulb garden has over 100 tulip varieties amidst many other bulb flowers. In fact, of 7 MILLION bulbs planted by hand here, 4.5 million of those are tulips. Amazing, huh?

We endured rain during which the restaurant was inundated with humanity to the extent of standing-room-only and no tables by the time we'd gotten our 4 trays of food. So I stood there bewildered with my 3 little girls, Tiara, and Kirk and our trays of hot food, wondering what in the world we'd do. Finally we put our trays down on an unused counter area and started to eat there. Seeing the little ones barely able to reach, one of the kind ladies working there told us to go to the wine table. So, there we ate. Standing at a small wine-covered island in the middle of the cafeteria style restaurant amidst people reaching in for wine every few moments. The little girls were finally at perfect height and I stood there holding my plate of hot chicken and rice in one hand and my fork in the other feeling quite conspicuous, but hungry enough not to care.


Umbrellas sold out in the first moments of that deluge. I didn't bring ours. But, thankfully it passed after a while and the sun eventually shone again.

The rain on the flowers was beautiful anyway, so I was happy. Squares of tulips laid to the side in unison, beaten by the wind and rain. I was a kid in a candy store with so many beautiful flowers and camera always poised. The kids enjoyed the freedom of movement there and the frequent little attention grabbers - kids playgrounds, baby ducks, pieces of art and sculpture... there's a great mix there.

All in all, we spent 5 hours there and would have easily spent more if the playground had not been so wet. But after 5 hours, the girls were tired and needed to rest. Thankfully, our hotel had a fabulous swimming pool in which the girls all got to play. Elise could even touch the bottom with her feet at the shallow end and Arianna finally mastered swimming underwater with her eyes open all by herself - an accomplishment for which she's quite proud.