Christmas market

Late this afternoon we took the girls to the Christmas Market in Baden, just outside of the Casino. First up, a ride on the Merry-Go-Round:
Next, a pony ride! Maggie didn't want to do one, she decided that the track would take her too far away from me. She still likes to stay very close. To that end, we've talked about getting some velcro clothing, to keep her stuck to me, but really that's just a joke. At least, I hope it is!

After the pony ride, zuckerwatte!

Look at this tree. I dubbed it the leaning tower of treeza. HA! In America, we would have a big crane put 25,000 lights on it. Or more. In Austria, you just have to use your imagination.

Teddy bears in a gingerbread house making cookies! Can you even imagine anything cuter?? This was in a store window in Baden's pedestrian district.

So, this was interesting. Apparently this guy is called Krampus. He's like the evil Santa Claus (who visits children on December 6 here), and his job is to stuff the naughty kids into his sack on December 5 and take them off to his cave, where he presumably roasts them and eats them for his dinner. Apparently people dress up like him during the first week in December and scare kids with bells and rusty chain. Nice. If I didn't look this stuff up for the blog, that would have come as a rather unpleasant surprise for the kids. Wouldn't it be nice to have someone who grew up here, to give us a clue about these little cultural idiosyncrasies? Yes, yes it would. Sarcasm.

To forget about the Krampus unpleasantness (not really, didn't know about him yet), we obviously needed a ride on the ferris wheel!

What a fun evening! We finished it with a ride on the tractor shuttle, which took us the long way back to the parking garage, but was a lot more fun than boring old walking.

The girls bought Christmas presents for each other yesterday, too. Plus, Nick and I dropped our suggestions off to St. Nick for their December 6 presents. The girls are so excited!