My friend, Maria, lives in Antwerp and plans to take her daughter back home to Canada to celebrate a real Halloween some year. I’m imagining her daughter (and Annie) discovering at an older age that there is this place where you are allowed to dress up, walk house to house and then people give you a pillowcase full of candy. It is going to seem like Nirvana.
In the meantime, we do the best we can.
For our Halloween there was pumpkin carving…
And dressing up in costumes…
And the traditional Halloween donkey ride…??
The restaurant where we met, Nattererboden, is a favourite for parties as it is quite rural (although only 15 minutes from town) and has an outdoor playground, indoor play area, petting zoo and occasionally the donky riding. All in a large traditional restaurant setting with fantastic food. (I know I’ve questioned this before, and I know there are exceptions, but why do restaurateurs in Canada so often think that “family-friendly” means lots of plastic furniture and processed food??)
The kids played in the playground despite it being rather crisp outside, carved pumpkins, made Halloween baskets from a pattern I found on a craft site, and ate candy. The trick or treating aspect wasn’t there, but the kids still had fun.
There are oodles of fun events throughout the winter in Austria, but I’m still glad I’m introducing Annie to my childhood traditions. I’m going with the belief that Annie will be an international child, instead of just confused. And of course for my girl, anything where there is sugar involved is a great event.