Easter weekend

Here are a few more photos, of the apartment and of what I kept myself busy with on Easter sunday: baking a great asparagus quiche. Since I decided to stay in Göttingen over the holiday weekend, I thought I might as well go to many of the church services that were offered. I attended St. Jakobi, because it was sort of closest while still in the old city, and I found it's list of services first. I didn't take a lot of pictures of the inside, because I feel like I can't ever do places like that justice, but here is a handy link to a panorama quicktime video of the inside of the church, if you want to look. I went to a small Maundy Thursday service, a Good Friday service that was concentrated on the church choir, who was, of course, impeccable. Saturday nicht late I went to a midnight service, which of all of them was perhaps the most impressive. We entered the church in total darkness - the priest carried in one large candle and chanted three times walking up the center aisle that "Christ is the light". The choir followed him and got to light their candles, but we were still in the dark while the creation story, and Elijah reviving the bones in the desert were read. After the gospel was read we got to light our candles, and then the lights at the front of the church were turned on full blast on the altar, which was opened from it's darker "weekday" doors to the innermost side, showing Christ surrounded by saints, all figures sculpted from wood and covered in gold. It was impressive, to say the least. The altar is form 1402 and is still standing in the same spot and used for the same purpose it was originally planned for over 600 years ago. If you click the link on the church's webpage that says "Kirche" you'll get pictures of the altar. Then on Monday I went to an Easter Monday service (an official holiday in Germany) which was great. The choir sang "Christi lag in Totesbanden" by Bach, which uses the text from a hymn by Martin Luther. Martin Luther in turned based the hymn on medieval Osterspiele, or plays based on the resurrection that were part cabaret, part political satire, part adventure, and extremely popular. A modern German translation of part of these plays were read between the movements of the Bach piece, and fit the text extremely well (the Luther hymn is still in the hymnal in the church, so everyone had their prayer book opened to the hymn to understand what was being sung.) I'd like to see someone put up an entire medival Easter play some time, I have to admit. All the various professions in the town have to appear on stage and admit that they've been swindling all the townspeople, which is why they're being collected by Satan and brought to Hell. When Satan tells Lucifer that Jesus is coming, though, Lucifer gets scared, because "God can't die!" Then Jesus and Lucifer have a battle, at one point in which Lucifer turns into a dragon that eats Jesus. Then he has to spit Jesus out (just like the whale spit out Jonah, we're told) and then Jesus swallows the dragon and defeats the powers of evil. Basically, I just want to see Jesus swallow a dragon, but the rest would be neat, too (they did not act out the dragon scene in the church, unfortunately).

Anyway, that left Sunday free to do other things. I decided to spend the afternoon cooking, making a quiche and an arugala salad. Then I was invited by my across the hall neighbor to go to the Osterfeuer. This is a "Dorffest" - which I usually hear referred as "only" a Dorffest as an excuse, somehow, but the Dorffests I have seen have always been well attended, so I'm not sure who's being apologized to. Anyway, Osterfeuer (Easter fire) is a big bonfire, sponsored by the fire department, and is pretty common in small towns in northern Germany. I was there with some people who had moved north after living in the south, where the tradition is more to have a Funkenfeuer closer to the Spring equinox - usually the Sunday or Saturday after Ash Wednesday - to chase away the winter and to burn witches (now only burnt in effigy). Anyway, the pictures I have posted are of the apartment on Sunday, of my Sunday dinner, the fire, and of Buck, for those of you who haven't seen a picture of him yet.

That's all for now - I got my bank card in the mail today (yahoo!) and now have all of the cards I've needed to get things done. So I'm going to stop writing and go do some of them.

Easter Goettingen