The Obligatory Birthday Post 2025

April 18 was my birthday and also Good Friday. So my initial plan to go out and have lunch at a nice restaurant somewhere was scuppered, because Good Friday is the one day in Germany, where almost everything is closed.

Good Friday is a so-called “silent holiday”, where even things that are perfectly fine on other public holidays are not allowed. The most infamous rule is that dancing is not allowed on Good Friday and clubs are forced to close. Amusement parks and fairgrounds are also forced to close. Opera houses and theatres are also closed and in general and cinemas are only allowed to play a highly limited selection of movies that are deemed appropriate, so they mostly close as well. Restaurants and bakeries are usually closed as well (and the restaurants that are open don’t offer meat dishes) and shops are closed anyway. Those rules are completely outdated, but whenever someone criticises them, the response from conservatives and self-styled defenders of Christianity usually is, “Well, if you don’t want to respect Christian customs [which oddly enough do not exist in neighbouring countries which are much more religious], then maybe you should just go to work.” This isn’t as much of a threat as they think it is, because plenty of people would gladly go to work on Good Friday and get another, better day off.

Anyway, since my birthday happened to fall on the one day when almost everything is closed and anything that might be fun is banned, I decided to just stay home and have sailor’s curry, which is my traditional birthday (or somewhere around my birthday meal). Of course, sailor’s curry contains pork, but luckily the killjoys can’t tell you what to do in private.

Sailor’s curry is best made at least a day before you eat it, so I spent the evening of Holy Thursday making curry. Which meant that on my actual morning of my birthday, all I had to do was heat up the curry, cook the rice and chop the side dishes. Which still takes time – part of the reason sailor’s curry is a special occasion dish is because it’s time consuming to make – but the fact that the prep time is divided into two sessions helps.

One unexpected issue was that I was low on mango chutney, one of the side dishes served with the curry. So I went to the grocery store where I have been buying mango chutney for years, only to find that they no longer carries it and neither did the second grocery store I tried. I guess part of the problem is that the “international food aisle” hasn’t gotten bigger, while the selection expanded. For example, Korean foods, which you had to buy at an Asian grocery until recently, are now commonly found at regular grocery stores. On the downside, other products vanished from the shelves and apparently mango chutney was one of them. At the third grocery store, I finally did get mango chutney, but only by Lien Ying, a German manufacturer of Asian foods, though I prefer Geeta’s or Patak’s or Sharwood’s. Still, Lien Ying chutney is better than no chutney.

Here is the curry, rice and side dishes on the table. And no, I did not use a fancy table cloth just for myself.

The sailor’s curry itself and basmati rice.

The side dishes. Clockwise from the left: Indian lime pickle, atjar tjampoer (Dutch Indonesian pickled vegetables), onion, hardboiled egg, mango chutney, pickled beetroot, gherkins and banana.

And here is the curry, rice and side dishes all mixed up on the plate. Looks messy, but tastes amazing.

On the plus side, there are enough leftovers for tomorrow, which means I only have to cook rice again and chop some of the side dishes, which saves me time and gives me a second day of delicious curry.

I also got some congratulations from friends and family via phone calls, WhatsApp messages and social media. No cards in the mail, but then physical greeting cards are an endangered species. I also had one visitor, my neighbour Iniye, who brought me a flower, some chocolates and a card. The chocolates were Zeebanket, Belgian seafood chocolates, which are a long-time favourite of mine.

Which brings me to birthday presents. As last year (and previous years as well), there were very few actual birthday presents, mostly just things I bought for myself and decided to declare birthday presents.

Birthday presents. We have, clockwise from the top left the Masters of the Universe Classics Battleground Evil-Lyn a.k.a. 200X Evil-Lyn, Classics Horde Zombie He-Man a.k.a. Slime Pit He-Man, Masterverse New Eternia Roboto, a flower, Zeebanket chocolates, Masterverse New Eternia Beast-Man, “Where the Dark Stands Still” by A.B. Poranek and Classics Draego-Man.

The only one of these (aside from the chocolates and the flower) that’s an actual birthday present to myself is the Masters of the Universe Classics Horde Zombie He-Man a.k.a. Slime Pit He-Man, i.e. He-Man after he has been turned into a slave of the Evil Horde by the Horde’s Slime Pit. The figure was a convention exclusive and is very expensive, one of the most expensive Classics figures there is. He’s also very cool, because he’s green and translucent and an evil zombified He-Man. I recently saw Slime Pit He-Man on offer for what was a good price for this particular figure (though still expensive) and thought, “Well, it’s my birthday soon, so I’m going to buy him as a present to myself. Expect some fun with this guy soon, especially since I came up with a way to simulate slime without pouring actual slime over a very expensive action figure.

The two Masterverse figures just happened to ship around the time of my birthday. Where the Dark Stands Still I picked up in a bookshop also shortly before my birthday. The two other Classics figures I found on eBay for a good price and they happened to arrive just in time for my birthday. The Evil-Lyn figure is Lyn as she appeared in the 2002 He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon, except that the outfit is not quite right, because they just repainted Teela’s outfit rather than give her her proper 200X outfit. She’s still a gorgeous figure, though, and you can never have too many Lyns. I guess I will put her with Keldor, because this is the version of Lyn who was Keldor’s girlfriend before he became Skeletor. Or maybe I’ll put her next to the Faceless One, who is her father in this version of the story. Unless she just wants to flirt with Duncan or hang out with Orko.

Draego-Man, meanwhile, was one of the new characters who was created for the 30th anniversary of Masters of the Universe in 2012 and the coolest of the bunch by far. He’s usually fairly expensive, too, because he is very cool – basically a giant dragon warrior – but I got lucky and found him for a good price. Expect some fun with this guy as well as well as better photos of all the new figures out of their packaging.

For dinner, I had some Vietnamese noodle salad which I picked up at a local grocery store. It’s one of those prepared “to go” salads they sell, but it’s really tasty.

And that’s it for my birthday this year. I have more posts in general and also more toy photo stories planned in the near future.