Travels with Tricia

Category: Germany

  • Germany’s Sommertagszug Tradition: Greeting Spring & Bidding Farewell to Winter

    In parts of Germany three weeks before Easter, it’s customary to celebrate spring’s return with a summer procession, or Sommertagszug. Believed to have pagan origins, the fest celebrates spring’s return and winter’s banishing. Children take to the streets with sticks adorned with colorful, ruffled ribbons, topped with pretzels and eggs. In Heidelberg, they walk along…

  • A blue bucket filled with yellow mimosa flowers sits at a fresh market in Croatia. The flower is associated with International Women's Day celebrations.

    Celebrating International Women’s Day

    Today is International Women’s Day, a commemorative day that’s celebrated in different ways throughout the world. In some countries, the focus is on women’s accomplishments, whereas in others, it is a day to merely show gratitude towards women.

  • Fasching Festivities, German Style

    For the ten years I called Heidelberg, Germany home, I was lucky to have a bird’s-eye view when Fasching festivities took the university town by storm, as I’m sure they did today.

  • The village of Oberammergau's St. Peter and Paul Cemetery Germany, covered in snow

    Angels, Busts, and Saints Dressed in Snow: A Wintry Visit to Oberammergau’s Cemetery

    Perhaps it is a bit macabre, but I find cemeteries – particularly those in foreign locales – to be fascinating and fitting spots to reflect upon a place’s culture and history, and upon life itself. When my husband and I last visited Paris, we spent several hours strolling through the city’s famous Père Lachaise Cemetery, passing headstones of…

  • Dizzied by a Dazzling Array of Dirndls in Bavaria

    Whenever I see Bavarians dressed in traditional German attire, I can’t help but recall a playful prank that my former American colleagues routinely played on friends and family who would come to visit them in Germany. The husband and wife would get laced up in their finest Trachten-wear (German traditional dress consisting of men’s Lederhosen…

  • Twisting Tongues in Bavaria

    German words have a reputation for being exceedingly long. Sometimes they’re also rather descriptive. The German language’s penchant for precision is perhaps best described in Mark Twain’s humorous essay, The Awful German Language, which you can read here. Twain penned The Awful German Language in an attempt to describe the frustration he felt while learning German. Twain’s essay…