I like to think that the whole country of Germany took the day off for my birthday on January 6.
In actuality, it is a national holiday to celebrate Epiphany, a time to celebrate when the wise men found and worshiped the child Jesus.
I really enjoyed having the day off for my birthday. After a leisurely morning, I decided to take advantage of the rare brilliant sunlight to go for a coffee in our neighboring medieval village of Schaffhausen.
While there, I noticed the different bakeries had kiosks outside their shops selling Königkuchen, or King's cakes. I remembered that in some cultures, these cakes are served on January 6 to help commemorate the day, and a tiny plastic baby Jesus or sometimes a small king, is embedded in one of the pieces of cake, and one lucky person will find it by presumably biting down on it while eating the cake. (There's a reason we don't have these in the States. It is actually illegal to embed an non-edible item in a confection.)
I thought it would be fun to try out one of the cakes, since I've never had one before.
I bought the smallest one they had and excitedly
brought it home to try it out. It was an odd shaped round loaf of bread with bulges here and there, and with granulated sugar and sliced almonds on top and raisins inside. I cut a triangle out and ate it. I was surprised, but shouldn't have been, when I almost broke a tooth on something very hard. I pulled out a little white plastic figure of a magi.
I guess that means I get to wear the golden paper crown that came with it. :-)
I'm sorry to say the Swiss King cake was very disappointing. It was really just dry bread. I was expecting something more confectionary, or at least a good dense moist bread, since the Swiss do bread so well. Maybe it wasn't fresh anymore or I should have gone to a different bakery. Well, I wasn't impressed.
That evening, Andrew blindfolded me, took me on a long meandering drive and then carefully led me to the house of a fellow missionary family who hosted a surprise get together for my birthday. Friends from the village came by for delicious cupcakes, cookies and ice cream and decaf coffee. We gathered around the table playing games and laughing. It was a good time. And I received some beautiful roses!
All in all, it was a fun Epiphany, or birthday.
In actuality, it is a national holiday to celebrate Epiphany, a time to celebrate when the wise men found and worshiped the child Jesus.
I really enjoyed having the day off for my birthday. After a leisurely morning, I decided to take advantage of the rare brilliant sunlight to go for a coffee in our neighboring medieval village of Schaffhausen.
While there, I noticed the different bakeries had kiosks outside their shops selling Königkuchen, or King's cakes. I remembered that in some cultures, these cakes are served on January 6 to help commemorate the day, and a tiny plastic baby Jesus or sometimes a small king, is embedded in one of the pieces of cake, and one lucky person will find it by presumably biting down on it while eating the cake. (There's a reason we don't have these in the States. It is actually illegal to embed an non-edible item in a confection.)I thought it would be fun to try out one of the cakes, since I've never had one before.
I bought the smallest one they had and excitedly brought it home to try it out. It was an odd shaped round loaf of bread with bulges here and there, and with granulated sugar and sliced almonds on top and raisins inside. I cut a triangle out and ate it. I was surprised, but shouldn't have been, when I almost broke a tooth on something very hard. I pulled out a little white plastic figure of a magi.
I'm sorry to say the Swiss King cake was very disappointing. It was really just dry bread. I was expecting something more confectionary, or at least a good dense moist bread, since the Swiss do bread so well. Maybe it wasn't fresh anymore or I should have gone to a different bakery. Well, I wasn't impressed.
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