The Zorbish folks here get seriously into Easter. They have a tradition of making beautiful Easter eggs using techniques including batik-dying, etching, and embossing. Back in the day, these used to be presented to feudal landlords as tribute–decorated on Good Friday to be eaten on Easter Sunday. But now they’re blown out and kept as ornaments. We went to an impressive exhibit on them at the Stadtmuseum in Lübbenau, and I bought some there as well as a few from a little shop where the owner decorates them herself at a bench covered with sticks of colored wax, dye baths, and bristling cans full of the traditional applicators cut from goose quills. I also picked up a length of local resist-dyed indigo cloth still made at a mill in Pulsnitz that has been operating since the 17th century.
Today we made a bike trip along the canals to Burg for a lunch of hefeplins (yeast crepes) and got a bit lost on the way back, which resulted in a serendipitous stop at the beautiful Burger Hofbrennerei distillery with its yard full of silkie chickens; a pull on the handbell brought the owner out from his traditional timber house, and he sold us a couple of bottles of their schnapps (apple and quince for me, raspberry and hazelnut for Birgit). Spotted a traditional kahne (gondola) with an early-season load of tourists on the way back to our guesthouse.
Next, we popped into the local quarkkeulchen lady’s kiosk for a half dozen of her tasty beignets and a couple handwoven willow baskets (net Spreewald haul pictured above). Finished up with a dinner of root vegetables, maultaschen (German meat ravioli), herbed quark, and a really nice green sauce that Birgit whipped up from seasonal bärlauch (ramps) that our host picked in the woods that day and gave to us. All in all an amazing Spreewälder holiday.
The Rookery 