All the fun of the Fair

Yesterday saw G's school's Christmas Fair.  Still being relatively new to the school, we of course decided that we must go and support the Fair as much as we could.  Whilst this time we were unable to give our time - we've had visitors this weekend, I did bake for the cake stand, and we turned up and participated in the activities and spent our 'wertmarken' on various goodies there. 

The week beforehand, we had been asked to buy activities cards for the children (5Eur each) which would allow them to participate in various craft activities, these included fabric bag/wallet painting; candle making; orange and clove pomander making; biscuit decorating; face painting and an activity organised by a group of Japanese parents at the school which involved sticks and elastic bands (more of this later!)

I was pleasantly surprised at how busy the school was when we arrived, it seemed like a good turn-out, and of course the money we are all contributing is going towards the school and so will benefit the children so you don't mind too much the additional spending! There was a busy 'Christmas Market' zone in the main hall, at which some commercial traders had set out their wares - decorative items, calendars and the like.  I have to admit to whizzing round for a cursory look before heading down to the children's activity zone and the cake/beer/grill tents!!

It seems from our experiences at Kindergarten, Football Club and now school that you can't use cash at these events where they sell food and drink.  Instead, you need to buy 'Wertmarken', I'm  not sure if this is just to make life easier for those on the stalls or to get round some sort of tax/licensing requirements.  Anyway, I had my strips of tickets to exchange for goodies at school.

G wasn't up for taking part in any of the activities when we arrived, but once he saw H and L joining in he did decide that it was perhaps not such a bad idea after all.  He'd had his eyes on the bamboo stick activity - this involved a convoluted contraption, constructed from bamboo sticks and elastic bands - this eventually turned into a functioning, elastic-band shooting gun - all of the children had done this activity and were careering around the playground shooting each other - absolute chaos - but out from under our hair!!


L and H were a bit more sedate, and decorated their canvass purses, studded oranges with cloves (oh how the smell makes me feel Christmassy!), H went for the face-painting and L got carried away with the biscuit decorating - this involved lots and lots of little sugar balls, very sticky fingers..... and a massive grin on her face! (thankfully I wasn't on tidying up duty afterwards - lots of excited children, and bowls of small sugar decorations - hundreds & thousands, silver balls and so on make for a large amount of debris under the table!)

Obviously an event like this wouldn't be complete without the obligatory bratwurst (or 2!) and a small beer to wash it down with!  I've had it on good authority that the bratties were of top quality - and can vouch for the restorative powers of the beer myself! There was also a superbly well stocked cake stand with everything from baked cheesecake, to chocolate brownies, to flapjacks (mine!) to cupcakes and everything else in between!

All in all our first visit to the Christmas Fair seemed to be a great success, next year I will try to be more involved and help out - but well done St George's a resounding triumph!