Easter Wells (Oster Brunnen)

As per my footnote in the Flat Stanley post, we drove to a little town called Biederbach about 45 minutes away from here on Saturday to see their Easter Well. The region is known as the Frankische Schweiz, or Franconian (Bavarian) Switzerland. Here's a little bit about it courtesy of Wikipedia...

The Franconian Switzerland (German: Fränkische Schweiz) is an upland in Upper Franconia, northern Bavaria and a popular tourist retreat. Located between the Pegnitz River in the east and the south, the Regnitz River in the west and the Main River in the north, its relief reaches 600 meters in height. The Franconian Switzerland is one of the oldest and most popular holiday areas in Germany.[citation needed] It was given its name by Romantic artists and poets in the 19th century who compared its landscape to Switzerland. The Franconian Switzerland is the region with the highest density of private breweries in the world.

And here's what they say about the Easter Wells...

The Franconian Switzerland is the origin of the so-called Osterbrunnen. It describes the colorful decoration of public water wells during the Easter season. During the time of modernization and the construction of canalization, this custom had lost its significance. Only in the early 1980s, it was rediscovered and in 1986 169 villages again decorated their water wells. Today, more than 200 villages decorate their village well with colored easter eggs. The main reason for this custom is probably the significance of water for the arid high plateau of the Franconian Switzerland. The Bieberbach Osterbrunnen (Egloffstein) was admitted to the Guinness Book of Records as "the largest Osterbrunnen of the world".