a bike ride to Bürgel

This last Saturday the weather was lovely and we decided to go on a bike ride east, to Bürgel. This town is famous for its pottery, particularly that which is glazed dark blue with hand-painted white dots, like this stuff:But that isn't all they have. The town has at least a dozen individual potters, probably more like 20. And this is in a town of only 3400 people, counting all the surrounding villages as well. The last weekend of June there's a huge pottery festival here, with 98 artists booked to show their wares. Next time you come to visit, mom, we're definitely going to bring you here. And it's only 13 km away (by car that is, if you take our more pleasant cycling route you end up with a round trip of 36 km).

Along the way we also took pictures of some of the lovely spring flowers, like these mini-daffodils in our courtyard,and this collection of spring bulbs in a garden in Bürgel,
and this tree on our street, which has been flowering since December (and smells so sweet!),
and these twisted pussy-willow-like plants, which were in this parking lot where we stopped to check our map, and then were asked to leave by a security guard,and finally this forsythia hedge, which was just blossoming. (It's fully opened now, five days later.)

Aside from the flowers, we only took a few pictures in Bürgel, such as the interesting decorations around the church's door:And a close-up of the guy right above the door (I'm sure there's adequate clues with his orb and the water to figure out who he is, but I don't have the energy at the moment):Here was the nicely-decorated door of one of the many pottery studios:While there, after riding up and down many hills to get there, we went in search of a beer and bratwurst, not usually a hard thing to come by in small towns in Thüringen. The one pub that looked like they'd have such a thing was closed on Saturdays (but open on Sundays), following the general trend regarding German business hours and convenience. There was a restaurant where we could have gotten a beer, but there was no bratwurst, and the food was expensive. In fact, despite the sun, we didn't smell a grill in the whole town. Partly I think this is because Germans tend to dress and behave more according to the calendar than the weather (or common sense). For example, the German thought might be: "it's February so I must wear a toque", not "it's 20 degrees outside in February so I should BBQ in a T-shirt", which is what most Canadians would think. (Okay, so the Germans might not actually use the word "toque" in their thoughts, but they also don't think in English, generally.)

In fact the whole town of Bürgel was pretty dead, so we decided that our mini-picnic of taboulleh and fruit would have to be enough, when, on the edge of town, we noticed a lot of parked cars and pedestrian traffic. What were they all there for? Ice cream, of course. Don't be fooled into thinking they were only eating ice cream because it was sunny - Germans love ice cream. Of course everyone likes ice cream, but the quantities that they eat and the frequency with which they eat it is really remarkable. And so Jeremi and I had our first full-size German sundaes.
Yes, they were delicious, but I'd trade them for two pints and two bratwurst any day.