Thanks, Tenna!

Around 1945, as a young boy, Volker Kraft saw his very first Easter Tree (Eierbaum, Osterbaum or Ostereirbaum, in German), and decided he would have one of his very own when he grew up. Time passed and young Volker became a married man with a family. But his childhood dream stuck with him and he decorated his first Easter Tree in 1965 using 18 colored plastic eggs. In a few years, he and his wife stopped using plastic eggs and instead used real eggs which they decorated after using the insides. When their children grew up, they started helping with the decorating,and the Easter Tree became a family tradition, known not only in their home town of Saalfeld, but all of Germany. After their kids moved out of the house, it seemed the Easter Tree would finally catch a break, but grandsons arrived and the Krafts went back to decorating their giant tree. The number of Easter eggs hung by the tree?s branches grew every year,and in 2010 it reached an incredible 9,500 eggs. It takes 2 to 5 people two weeks to decorate the tree. It stays fully decorated for 2 weeks before Easter and one week afterwards.