Easter in Stralsund

In Germany Easter is a four day long weekend (Good Friday and Easter Monday are holidays). We took the train up to Stralsund on Thursday and came back on Monday. The evening we arrived we took Clara to the village playground, and she had a fantastic time! Here we are on our way there:


The playground had the best toddler slide I've seen so far. Clara's shoes didn't stick to the sides or bottom (a big problem on a lot of slides near us in Berlin), and she absolutely loved it!





Clara and Tanja racing turtles... The slide from the earlier pictures is the elephant in the background of this one.



On Friday we went to the town (and peninsula) Zingst (wiki, map). The weather was great! It wasn't as windy as usual, and the top layer of sand was warm. Before we went to the beach Clara got to indulge in an ice cream. There was a whole lot of grandparently indulgance on this trip, let me tell you (ice cream, cookies, and chocolate everyday!).



At the beach Clara decided to put her feet in the water while she went walking with Opa. The feet came out pretty quickly, though!


On Friday night we dyed Easter Eggs in preparation for Clara's first egg hunt Saturday morning. The hunt went pretty well, although Clara was a little tired and I think a little freaked out by being the center of attention while everyone expected her to do something.



I took a whole lot of photos on this trip, there are dozens more like this, so it was hard to figure out which were "the best" to put up. After the egg hunt we had lunch, and Clara astounded everyone by eating three of the Easter eggs she had found earlier (just the whites). Later in the day Clara got some super tickles from Tanja, I love this photo because the hand doing the tickling is moving so fast that it blurred!


We spent Sunday in Stralsund, visiting three more really great playgrounds as well as seeing the town. Clara's language skills are really developing, at some point she said very commandingly "da da!" and when I asked "what" she pointed emphatically and said "ba!" (she was pointing out a bike to me, I often stop in the street and point out parked bikes to her!). Her newest word is "Müll" (trash), and I think she's also started to say "tree" (this is a bit disputed...). Clara had a lot of trouble getting to sleep this weekend, and I wonder if it's the "18 month sleep regression" that kids get around the time that they start to learn to speak? Anyway, back to the photos. I don't know why this chair is sitting on the sidewalk, but it's awesome:


At the pier in Stralsund:


Sooner than anyone wished it was already Monday, and time to go. I think Clara understands trains and seeing/not seeing her Oma and Opa, because she gave Oma some super last minute snuggles in the train station:


Clara's aunt and uncle rode in the train with us on the way back to Berlin.



There were a lot of funny moments on the trip back, because somehow D-bahn had double booked all of the seats in our car! Luckily for us we boarded at one of the first stations and were sitting in four of our five reserved seats before someone else showed up to claim them. Of course it wouldn't have been so funny if we had been standing the whole way...

That's it for the Easter post! Except for this bonus photo from Monday morning: