Understandable, since Halloween is a rather American tradition. In a theme of cross cultural awareness, here are a few observations about an American Halloween versus an Austrian one.
1.) A teacher I work with told me she only lets her children go to houses where other children live. Otherwise, some of the older Austrians will tell the kids to leave because Halloween is too American. Or they just have no idea why there are dressed up children standing at the door.
2.) Not every child is dressed up. In fact, the only people I saw in costumes were other Americans and a few older Austrians.
3.) Even though we saw no dressed up children, according to Austrians, Halloween is mostly for children. Although older kids/students occassionally have parties.
4.) There are no costumes at these parties (well, except for the one I was at). When I asked the kids in my classes if they had worn costumes on Halloween they looked at my like I was crazy.
5.) Halloween costumes are generally scary here. Costumes aren’t supposed to be cute. They should be terrifying and/or disgusting. Most of the people I saw dressed in ‘cute’ costumes also had fake blood smeared on their costumes and bodies. Nice.
6.) There is no candy corn here! Tragedy.
So if anyone would like to send me some candy corn, I wouldn’t complain! 🙂
Note: No fake blood on my costume.
The Foreign Traveler 