It has already happened a few times. That maintaining this blog has some very, very curious side effects on me. It’s constantly adjusting and widening my general perception of various things that were formerly more or less “invisible” to me. Take the tradition of the Liebstattsonntag (Liebstattsunday) as an example: I knew it existed. I knew that many people were trying to meet in and around my hometown to have some good times with their close ones and to gift them one of these gingerbread hearts from the above picture. But what I didn’t know was that all of this was not some kind of newly invented “Cousin of Valentine’s Day” but that it’s indeed a several hundred years old tradition over here in the Salzkammergut. Honestly, realizing this feels a bit embarrassing to me. Bbut then I think: better now than never.
Oh, and the link between this post and it’s title is this one: there is a saying around and about the Liebstattsonntag. In German it says: “Gegen jede Art von Schmerz hilft ein echtes Liebstattherz.” which roughly (unfortunately without the nice rhime) translates into English as follows: “Against all kinds of pain helps a true Liebstattsonntag-heart.”