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15. 02. 10. - 12:00

Fasching festival's firework of fun turns into a damp squib

By David Rogers

Anybody looking to have a good time with children in Austria would be well advised to avoid anything involving this organisation www.wien.kinderfreunde.at.

In the search for good events to recommend for parents we visited the "Family Carnival festival" - the so-called www.wien.kinderfreunde.at at the City Hall this weekend - and I can honestly say without doubt it was the worst children's event I've ever attended.

For those not familiar with local traditions, Fasching in Austria is the carnival season - originally a Pagan festival which came out of ancient Rome or Greece. Officially the season starts in November and continues pretty low key for about three months. Things really begin to happen though in February and this week it was the turn of the children to party.

We paid 9.80 Euros for one adult and one child aged four - and had to queue for 10 minutes - and I completely fail to understand why there was such enthusiasm to enter.

On the plus side the kids and their parents had made a real effort to come up with costumes and they all looked great - and in addition the City Hall (Rathaus) is a spectacular building even for the kids where the wide, low sloping carpeted staircases actually turned out to be about the only attraction.

The official attractions included a solitary man on a keyboard who kept telling the kids not to be so wild, a single mini bouncy castle capable of taking about 10 children at one time with the queue of about 100 waiting to get on at any time - and one questionable child of about 80 kilos that seemed intent on rolling on the rest.

Then there was the so-called Lego room which had about eight tables complete with a green Lego mat at each corner and in the middle a miniscule selection of Lego bricks. There was nothing other than bricks - no windows or roofs or ray guns or wings or wheels or any of the other things that make Lego interesting. If there were any Lego assistants there they were non-existent and certainly weren't interested in asking the adults who were occupying the children’s seats to move on. The Lego room had not managed to organise a single thing of interest for the children to look at except for three cardboard bricks with the name Lego on them. There were no sculptures of any form to show the potential of Lego. There was no one demonstrating building anything. There was nothing being given away for free or even sold at reduced rates to promote it. My son would have been happy with a Lego man to play with even if I had to pay Euro for it.

There was also a Play-Doh corner - which seemed to consist of about eight tables and a queue of about 100 children waiting to sit down.

The ÖBB, which is the Austrian National train service, had a section as well but there was no model trains to look at - no colourful ‘Mister Conductor’ figures or something similar. There was just a plainly dressed young man handing out colouring books. It’s an odd sense of fun that thinks going to a carnival to fill in a colouring book is worth 10 Euros.

There was a stage onto which a presenter was pulling children one at a time for some sort of game that only the child involved and the presenter seemed to be getting any fun out of - explaining why hardly anyone was bothering to watch it. Everyone seemed more interested in sitting at the tables and munching on doughnuts.

Downstairs there was a puppet show - a Kasperl - again a triumph of disorganisation and inefficiency. The room was extremely long and extremely thin - which meant that there were about 100 children sat on the floor in front of the puppet theatre with their parents sitting on chairs arranged behind a couple of low benches. Viewing chaos since no one could really see a thing. Within five minutes of starting the back seats had emptied for exactly that reason.

A much better idea would have been to have a roped off area that only the children could go into - and perhaps a narrow walkway that parents could line up in to grab their offspring as they came and went. Younger children further back could neither see nor hear what was going properly and so for most visitors the event was a waste of time.

Apparently there were also clowns around - when we arrived there was one walking a fake dog and somebody else on stilts. But they vanished two minutes into the 10 minutes we spent queuing and we never saw one again.

All in all it reminded me of a visit to Disneyland in Paris - where you had to spend at least 30 minutes before you could go on any ride. But at least in Disneyland it was worth the wait. Here you would spend 30 minutes waiting to get on a bouncy castle that could not take more than 10 people – or, wait for it, to spin the wheel and answer some Trivial Pursuit questions.

I did see the occasional face painter (one actually) but again it wasn't worth waiting an hour to have a student with no talent or ability drawing the sort of face mask that to be honest was far inferior to the average standard of costume.

What was fun at this saddest of all sad events? Well I have to say that the Austrian police on duty there made a real effort to talk to the children and went down really well from what I could see - likewise the volunteer firemen were really fun, including one that gave my child another flower after the previous one had been cut in half by the door.

I was tempted by the offer of a spectacular firework show. But what I got was a damp squib. I shall be writing to the organisers and asking for a refund on the grounds that what we were offered was a load of rubbish.

I hope that in future others will take warning and vote with their feet - there are a number of fantastic fun parks around Vienna that offer 100 times more amusement for children.

- - -

Maybe you were at this event? Do you agree or disagree with our writer David Rogers? If so please leave a comment below - or write a letter to the editor at news@austriantimes.at

Austrian Times

Related articles: comments

1. An encounter with Vienna police

   » Panorama 2010-05-05

   Comment by Austrian Times reader Lionel Di Giacomo

2. Fasching festival's firework of fun turns into a damp squib

   » Panorama 2010-02-15

   Anybody looking to have a good time with children in Austria would be well advised to avoid anything involving this organisation www.wien.kinderfreunde.at.

3. FPÖ candidate will boost Fischer bid

   » Panorama 2010-01-19

   President Heinz Fischer’s bid for a second term in office will benefit if the Freedom Party (FPÖ) decides to nominate a candidate.

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