S is for eggs! Well, sort of.

I know this is supposed to be a language blog, but I'm going off-topic today. This is just too neat. My S post for the A to Z Blogging Challenge is about the fountain in the town of Schechingen.

The day before Easter my family went to Schechingen to see the Easter fountain. Each year the town's fountain is a bright and colorfully decorated twist and twirl of Easter eggs. These eggs are real eggs (a combination of chicken, goose and ostrich eggs) which are hand-painted. Each egg takes from one to 40 hours to paint. Eighteen to twenty people spend up to 25 days creating these stunning eggs and then many more hours to attach them to the fountain. All together there are over 9,600 eggs!

One thing I liked about the fountain is that the eggs were often grouped according to a certain theme. Some eggs were put together based on a color scheme such as these red and white eggs.

Others, appropriately, depicted religious figures and scenes.

Then there were Hummel characters

and eggs showing different Handwerker (tradesmen).

Even eggs based on various beers or products.

My daughter got excited when she saw Hello, Kitty.

There were even artsy eggs like these. Do you know the original paintings they are based on and the artists that painted them?

 

There were so many varieties from German culture, the arts, animals, soccer, cartoon characters, and so on.

Some were climbing the green leafy arches while others were hanging; some had the viewpoint of blue sky as a background, others the clear blue water in the fountain. 

 

All the eggs were so wonderfully created, that it is hard to pick a favorite theme or favorite egg, but here are a few which caught my eye.

I liked these flowery eggs.

This ostrich egg also caught my eye.

And this egg made me laugh. It's red stuck out like a sore thumb among the blue eggs and it was the last thing I was expecting to see on an Easter egg in Germany.

I hope you enjoyed the photos. I wish I could paint eggs as nicely as these. Last year we made rainbow eggs and golden eggs. This year we colored most in pastel colors and another batch we did in turquoise with silver highlights. Each year we like to try something different. How did you color your eggs this year?