Bunnies and Eggs Unite! **warning** blog diarrheoa ahead! 
Hey y’all. How was Easter? I have been very blessed to have a kind ‘surrogate’ family here and also a lovin boy who really made these festivities meaningful and warm-touchy-feely-kindacool. Such simple joys you know? I hope everyone can have the same happiness!!! I’ve been having holidays for a month now, most of the time being spent at home and just doing some boring organizing and working on my Food Chain Project. IT’S NOT THAT I DIDN’T WANNA BLOG – I JUST GOT SO DAMN LAZY LA! But, the last week of Easter festivities I had some action going on , so I’m happy to share with u some cool pictures! First we traveled back to Gϋglingen on the 20th, for Torte’s maternal Granma’s 85th birthday. Since 4pm they have been ‘partyin’ and usually many cakes are in order! It’s a nice thing that the family spends a long day with the grandma just chatting and eating. The family is large, so the conversation don’t usually run dry! Fruits in jelly cake are quite popular but a simple marble (marmor) is good too 
Hey-ho! The birthday 'kid' gets a chair lift 3 times (German tradition) Clyde the gymnastic cat balancing on the edge Real Bluebell flowers I think! Muskat Trollinger - a sweet red wine variety with a mango top note & Mum's one fave German wine. YET! Trip down Memory Lane with an Olskool Diashow Projector That blondie is Thorsten as a baby! Interesting how white babies are blonde from the beginning, ay? I will always pop out blackhaired ones.... damn dominant genes! 90s flashback. The neon family His Grandpa (the former shoemaker) owned horses back in the day Chilling out after a long dinner Cat nap anyone? The following day as Torte was busy fixin some doors for a friend, I followed his younger bro Mus to his study city, Mannheim, for sightseeing. Here's a fountain at the city square that reminded me of Victoria Square in Adelaide More ancient buildings to adore - the Wasserturm in city east. Oh hang on, Melbourne?!? It's Mannheim, complete with a WoolWorth that actually sells WOOL PRODUCTS (hohoho.... -_- ) As I went shopping for some easter eggs for the family, I saw the biggest Chocolate Chicken in my life! 'Milka', a German choc company, comes up with creative choco concoctions, like a choco egg with cream filling u can eat like a real egg! Famous 'Lindt' golden bunnies Bronze bunnies from another choc brand
Lindt and their many fancy flavors for easter! Some had an 'egg liqour' filling with berries, interesting...
Some really tacky Germans like hanging plastic eggs outdoors like it was Christmas
On Easter Sunday I joined the Muellers for a community breakfast in their church. Some 10 familes gathered and brought their own breakie gear, and we sat down quite tiredly and downed some coffee over conversation.
Fruit platter! That orange bulb-like fruit in leaves in quite popular in the region - sweet and tangy.
cute Easter table decor & colored eggs
Having breakfast with good ol German bread
Easter hunt! Despite the snow Thorsten's parents hid our presents under snow here and there at a wineyard resting place.
Bein a snowball 'ducking duck' - had to stand stil and avoid the snowballs hurled at me!
My new anti-gravity device!
Trying to do the tourist thing and make a snow angel. It was so cold!!!  Which probably explains my screwed up face coz ice was gettin into my ass crack!!
A funny plant covered in frost
Dormant vineyards -
in winter they are trimmed to 2 branches so that when spring comes all the 'energy' is harvested into just these two and it produces the best quality grapes and the fastest growth.
View from the top of a snowy Easter
Fish is on the menu every Easter. Because fish is not naturally found in this region, these came packed in plastic packaging from North Germany. A present from his grandparents! Amaretto (Almondic liqour) filled choc eggs and funky dyed eggs. 
Once in a year, most German bakeries bake lamb shaped bread for Easter. The following day on a Monday (public holiday) we travelled to touristic city still in Baden-Wuerttemberg, called Heidelberg to see my first Schloss (castle) and also the Altstadt (old city). On the way we spotted n interesting structure in the city
Heidelberg is most recognised for the 'Heidelberger Schloss' in the background, and the houses planted alongside the Rhine Neckar River. Another view of the Schloss before we began our ascent. Man it was SO COLD that day, 0 to -1C degrees I think! Finally we reached the top and there were so many Asian tourists there. I did the tourist thing and took a scenic picture! A pic of us - Rhine Neckar River at the back and a church right in the middle of the city. 
Tortelicious camwhore doing the thing he does best - lookin' hensem. 
That's a wideangle view of the ruins of Heidelberger Schloss! 
Watchout for those spikes up there! Really just like in Storybooks...(That fuzz of white u see? SNOW drizzle) Once we reached the top, it started to snow so badly so we escaped into the warm Museum of Pharmaceutical History in Germany. It turned out to be quite cool! 
Old steam distillation machine (making solvents for medicines I think!)
How a pharmacy looked like back in the granpa times! Smelt so herbily fresh and gooood. Just fancy storage for your medicine... I can imagine how Pharmacists can be viewed like really knowledgeable all-healing masters back in the oldies! I would have studied Pharmacy then ^^ But then again women wouldn't have been allowed to study too? Budding pharmacists at play  From L-R: Mus, Nic, Torte
Not really making drugs, but just concocting up some self recipe tea in the Kid's Pharmacy (Kinder Apotheke). Most of the good herbs and leaves were finished so we just used the herb 'scraps' with funny names that no foreigner could've guessed. This is how anally dispensed pills were made..... they're huge! Maybe they can be loaded into guns too.... OUCH! 
Nope it's not medicine but it is really the largest wine barrel I've seen! woot woot drinks on me YO! When the snow has thawed, it gets so cold and wet....it's not the best time to visit hey?! 
This is an interesting part of the castle that describes its 'Ruins' bit - part of the tower had crumbled off! I couldn't find a reason why but it could be due to the bombings.
We're now in the Altstadt, meaning 'old city', strolling on pebblestone paths and admiring golden architecture. A souvenior shop found an eye-catching advertisement for their beer glasses, filling them with Gummibears! We got tired of shopping around and crossed that bridge I showed you in the first Heidelberg picture, and here's the view from there! U can see the houses have really steep roofs so the snow can easily slide off and yes, some houses still have functioning chimneys! cute 
And the Schloss is still having some restoration work done. Actually on this side of the castle there were some bomb craters on the wall! 
Having a not-so-serious pic! 
Monkeys will always be monkeys....
An old records store.  Don't quite know how old this wooden emblem is but it looks so cool! I found it at the entrance of a pub. Poor sheep at the bottom  If you look closely the 'G' in front of 'chlidt' is actually how 'S' was written in old German scrit.
Some Easter decor in shops With buildings like these around, I feel like I'm shopping in the 15th century!  All of us at the courtyard of the castle (these royals had footballs fields of gardens just to frolick and fountains made in their 'honor')!Damn these rich people..! 
 Enjoy the fruits of our labor and breathe in the view! 
In that church I pointed out. But I'm waiting for the churches of ROME!
 Germans don't just drink from beer glasses. There's one vessel that
takes real tactic & SKILL to drink from, the Boot (Stiefel). And this is the biggest one of all!
It says "The man who finishes this boot at one time is the mannest of all men" - all 5 litres of it 
(I reckon I know someone who'll drop this feat - Yes I mean YOU, Jamesk!  U've got da powah!) 
An interesting Stein that costs... Euro 30 = RM 150! So I just take a picture of it instead of buying. 
There was an interesting bar that Mus recommended to us - an Absinthe bar that served 150 kinds of Absinthe! (for the alco-inclined, click above to the full pic of the menu)Absinthe is a distilled, highly alcoholic (45%-75% ABV), anise-flavored spirit derived from herbs & can have halucinogenic effects!
So....If you don't like anise, don't do it!
This is how you do it.... 1. Melt sugar in a clay plate by flaming a shot of absinthe over it.2. Dispense your absinthe, then pour the semi-liquid sugar while still aflame into your tall shot glass.3. SIP CAREFULLY! Don't SKULL! WOWOWO it was strong! I chose the 'Deva 50%' (green absinthe) while Torte took 'Montana 55%' (yellow), that's why we have a bottle of water to dilute it up!  (Nic is drinking a mocktail, no worries!) 
Survived my 2nd time!A prediction of how a nite of Absinthe-packing will turn out....
So this ends my documentary of my holiday highlights!
Hopefully it cheered u up abit and made ur day! 
TSCHUUUUSSS!! ps: Sorry for the editing mistakes, I don't know why I can't change some of them! And if you like some these pictures and wish to take some of them for distribution, just ask me. | 
