Wilkommen In Österreich
I arrived in Austria with my 2 biggest suitcases (yes, I had to pay the extra baggage fee because I don’t have any status on Lufthansa) packed with all the most important things I’ll need for the next month – mostly warm clothes, important papers, and a few English-language books. We have two shipments of “stuff” coming – one in hopefully about a month via air with some more clothes, ski boots, and our computer, and another that could take 2 months with our furniture, bikes, and everything else.
In the meantime until we find an apartment and our things arrive, we are staying in a corporate apartment. It has a great location in the middle of town so we can walk to almost everything we need. The first week was a little disorienting, but we are starting to learn our way around and have found the closest grocery store, tried a few of the many bakeries, started to check out the local cuisine and restaurants.
It was at one of these restaurants that we were introduced to a weird Austrian holiday tradition. We sat quietly eating dinner when we hear a loud metal clanging from the entrance. It turned out to be the sound of large bells attached to a person in a really scary devil costume. He was followed by a few more like him and they wandered around the restaurant stopping at each table to stare and poke the patrons.
The costumes were really something to see – fur bodies and detailed masks with horns – and so creepy. After a while, another character entered. This time it was someone dressed like an old-fashioned Santa with long red robes, a bishop’s hat, and a staff. It turned out to be Saint Nicholas himself. The tradition goes that he and the beasty named Krampus wander around together near December 6th. If you’ve been good, St. Nick will give you candy. If you’ve been bad, you have to face the devilish Krampus. If I saw these costumes as a kid, I’d be terrified enough to be good forever.
We must be behaving here in Austria, because in the end we came home with a handful of candy and escaped from Krampus!
Tags: Austria, Living Abroad, Tag Index
halftime
December 23rd, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Here are a bunch of pics of the Big K.
http://unrealitymag.com/index.php/2010/12/22/the-evil-companion-to-santa/
December 25th, 2010 at 12:11 pm
The ones we saw weren’t quite that awful, but close and still scary.