Assuming that you're accustomed to the western culture, you know that Easter break is the time where all shops and stores literally stuff their shelves with a variety sort of chocolate bunnies and eggs! You'll see them in amazing designs, colours, brands and even sizes! Belgium is just as much the same - let me tell you, it's a wonderful place to be when this happens! Whole stores are laden with chocolates in different shapes and sizes: so far I've seen chocolate sheep, rabbits, eggs... TONS of eggs... and lots more. Well count my lucky stars that I'm in Belgium right now!
Happy Easter Folks!
Just for the sake of it, I bought myself a chocolate bunny!
It cost me 6 euros, which was B$12.
As a tradition for the locals: parents would buy chocolate eggs and hide
them all over the garden for the kids to find and collect in their baskets!
It's that just cute?
The chocolate bunny and the LARGE eggs were made with
Callebaut Chocolate - one of the finest local chocolates in Belgium.
They're so good, they even have a Chocolate training school here!
Coming from a non-Christian background, I've always found it odd that Easter is celebrated by bunnies and eggs. When I was younger, I always thought: "why the odd combination?? It's not like rabbits lay eggs!?!?!". So a few hours ago, I decided do a bit of enlightened reading on the history of chocolates + eggs + rabbits + Easter. Quite an interesting read actually!
This chocolate bunny was as long as my arm!
But it was so adorable, I just couldn't help but buy him.
I haven't eaten him until now. lol. He's just too adorable.
He's still smiling inside my fridge! hehe
One writer, named the "Chocolate Traveller", states that rabbits and eggs are symbols of fertility that predates Christianity. These symbols and ideas actually were adopted from Pagan practices. If you're interested to read more, follow this link!
Some stores even offer bigger chocolate bunnies.
At Neuhaus (another famous Belgian chocolate store), they sell chocolate bunnies as tall as myself! With a hefty price tag of 70 euros, which is B$140.
Isn't that INSANE?!
Now why fertility you may ask? Well, Easter takes place before the time of the spring equinox (usually the 21st of March). The spring equinox has been celebrated around the world as a time of birth and renewal, after months of long winter nights. Makes sense now doesn't it?
In someways easter is a celebration of a new Spring: new flowers come into bloom, grass becomes thicker and greener, life slowly returns back to earth after months of bleak, cold, chilly nights and freezing snow.
As I said before, Good Friday isn't a public holiday in Belgium but the Good thing is that Monday is (Easter Monday)! So what do we have planned for this 3 day weekend? Well we're definitely spending one day on a 1-hour roadtrip to Holland. The flower festival is to open, so we're definitely stopping by to check it out.
Holland is famous for their tulips - brightly coloured, flashy, gigantic tulips. Over there, they're grown on endless fields... so imagine seeing an ocean of colourful tulips that reaches to the end of the horizon. Yup. We're definitely going there!
0 comments:
Post a Comment