 |
| My Eid dress |
I have another Ramadan in Germany this year (2013). This
time Ramadan starts on early July and ends in early August. And yes, it is
during summer time where the day is so long. The fasting time is around 19
hours daily!
I have to do my early eating (sahur) at around 03.00 AM and break my fasting at around 10.00 PM.
The first adaptation that I have to do is: my working hour. Fortunately, I have
flexible working hours. I have targets to deliver. So as long as the targets
are achieved on time, nothing matters.
My adapted working hours start at 01.00 PM to 08.00 PM. With
this schedule, I can have enough sleep after my sahur and go home right on time for preparing my breakfast.
The hardest thing in my fasting this year, it’s not the long
hour. It is the heat that makes it hard. In the dry climate of Germany, the
sweat is easily evaporated and we get dehydrated. This is the condition that I
want to avoid. So I have to wear long sleeve shirt and pants to keep my body
temperature. Of course it looks weird, during hot summer day, I opt to wear
long clothes!
Another difficult situation, or perhaps my biggest temptation
is seeing people eating ice cream in a hot summer day. For me, this is really
hard. The colors of ice cream and the coldness effect are very tempting. But of
course I have to be strong. The stronger the temptation, the more proud I
become in overcoming it.
Although it seems hard to do fasting during summer, it takes
less than a week to get use to it. And I feel surprised that in general I don’t
have any significant problem in doing it. I even enjoy it especially during
weekends, there is always invitations for breakfast. Or in weekdays, me and my
friends use to go to Islamic Centre to have breakfast. And all of these are for
free! So I could eat good foods for free for almost the whole month. Who
doesn’t want that??!!!
The Eid
 |
| Some of the foods. |
After having a month of Ramadan, it’s time for celebration.
In Bremen, there is an Indonesian Islamic group that has a praying place (musholla). The celebration for Indonesian
community is centered there. And again I am so surprised to find that there are
lots of foods!!! It seems that every housewives bring their homemade meals. They
are a lot!!!
 |
| Empek-empek, my favorite dish. |
 |
| Celebrating Eid with Indonesian community. |
