As a kid, what did you look forward to most about summer vacation/break/holiday?
This is a tough one — I don’t know what was my “favourite” part of summer vacation. I think I just loved that I’d get to spend even more time playing outdoors. I have many memories of lemonade stands with my best friend, imagination games, “painting” the fence-boards with water and seeing how long it took my masterpieces to evaporate, riding my bike down the little alley behind the houses, walking through the rain and puddles…
I think something I always looked forward to was strawberry picking time. My family & grandparents would always go to a you-pick-your-own place, spend a few hours getting roasted and gorging on fresh strawberries, as long as the kids’ attention spans would last. Then invariably a few days later my Grandma would make strawberry jam, and with that, jam tarts. Oh, how much I wish I could have tea and a fresh jam tart (or three) now!
Aemmeleia's Ephemera 
i remember looking forward to sleeping in! school in germany starts at eight, or even seven fourty five, my school bus left at 6.59 (my irish friends find this hilarious! but that’s german timetables for you!) so i was getting up at six (at least my mum tried to make me get up at six…) every school day!
other things i loved were: reading all through the night, spending time at my cousins’ houses, the public swimming pool, trips to the ice cream parlour, spending all day pottering around, going to the nature reserve to watch the fire flies; when i was younger hours and hours of exploring with my siblings and building ‘huts’, trying to teach the rabbits circus tricks, going for picknicks, picking flowers and making flower crowns with giant daisies, playing in the stream trying to catch tiny fish (and running home screaming if one of us got stuck in the mud or got a leech!), we also liked treasure hunts when we got a bit of a crowd together, a few of us marking a trail and making maps and riddles and the others following half an hour behind.
our parents really were quite lucky we were quite able to entertain ourselves and the area was quite safe.