Halloween in Holland

I kept looking for signs of Halloween here, but I never really found them.  I had heard from some friends that it was sort of catching on in the last few years, but I never saw any costumes or decorations in stores or anything.  No special candy, pumpkins, ghosts, Charlie Brown specials…nothin'!  Apparently the weekend before Halloween, they had some great trick or treating in the americanized town of Wassenaar (where we go to church and where the big American school is, hence lots of expats) but we were still in Prague that weekend.  So, we had to figure out a way to celebrate all on our own.

Halloween was on a Wednesday - a half day for school kids each week throughout the NL.  So after school, we walked over to the Blijdorp Zoo.  Did I mention that we bought zoo passes to our zoo here in Rotterdam since it's just a few blocks from our house?  Well, we did.  Money well spent.  We had a great time as always...

Here's K monkeying around

Carv - The Missing Link

That weekend, our best Holland friends, The Shurtliffs, came over for a night of Halloween fun.  The kids put on their favorite dress-ups and let me do their makeup...

These weird gourds were the closest thing I could find to a pumpkin at the supermarket.  My friend Kari thought they looked like some sort of hybrid cross between an onion and a pumpkin.  I didn't dare cut them open, the kids just colored them instead...

 Then we made some homemade caramel apples and caramel popcorn.  Like everything else about this holiday in Holland, they turned out weird.  The butter here is so different, and I haven't quite figured out how to adjust for baking yet so the caramel didn't turn out right.

I was feeling so guilty that I didn't make more of an effort to have a more American halloween for the littles - you know, order some costumes online, try harder to find some candy corn or other American candy, find a good place to go trick or treating, etc.  But as it turned out, there was not one complaint.  They didn't care even a little bit.  They were happy with what they got.  Add that to the list of reasons why I am glad we are having this adventure right now at this time for our family.  If our kids were a little older they might not be adjusting so well, but they are already in the mode of going with the flow. And for that reason our Halloween was a happy one, even if it was in Holland... and just a little bit weird.