Anti-Halloween with Slavic folk tales, Toulouse - 31 October

Why “anti”

Halloween in France means pumpkins, plastic skeletons and witches from somebody else’s stories. We have our own, and ours are scarier. So on 31 October we’re throwing an Anti-Halloween built on Slavic and pagan folk tales: Baba Yaga in her mortar, Koschei the Deathless, forest spirits, water spirits and a little bit of Viy (the monster from Gogol’s horror story, if you never read it at school). That’s even what the night’s quizzes are called: “Fairy Tales and a Little Bit of Viy”.

It’s day two of the Slavic Weekend and the heart of it. Friday is a banya for twenty, Sunday is crayfish and Mafia for a small crowd, but Saturday is when everyone comes together.

The venue and the crowd

The night takes place at the restaurant Bistrô XIII Toulouse, 13 av. des Minimes, 31200 Toulouse, from 19:00 to 02:00. We’ve agreed it with the restaurant: the menu that evening is a special one, made for us.

We expect 50 to 100 guests. The restaurant seats up to a hundred and that’s the ceiling, hence the required booking. It’s the community’s biggest meetup in Toulouse yet. Until now the Toulouse crowd had seen us only on their own trip to Montpellier, at the two-city Mafia in August; this time the community is coming to them.

The special menu

Bistrô XIII is cooking a menu just for our evening: a starter, a main and a dessert of your choice, and a drink.

• Main course, choose one: duck leg confit, grilled Toulouse sausage, fish & chips or a Caesar salad.
• Dessert, choose one: panna cotta with red berries or crème brûlée.

You choose your main and dessert when you book, which gives the kitchen time to get ready for a hundred people. Toulouse sausage on a night of Slavic fairy tales is a pairing we’d never have come up with ourselves, but it works: Toulouse is the host, and we bring the stories.

The programme

• Costumes. It’s meant as a dress-up night: Baba Yaga, Koschei, forest spirits, water maidens, the witch-girl from Viy. A costume isn’t compulsory, but it’s more fun in one.
• Dinner. From 19:00 we take our seats and eat.
• Game and quizzes. After dinner, an interactive game and the music quizzes “Fairy Tales and a Little Bit of Viy”.
• Karaoke and disco. From 22:00 to 02:00 we sing and dance.

The whole evening runs in Russian; you won’t need any French.

Price and booking

€35 a head covers dinner with a drink and the full programme. Booking is required, in the community chat, under the Slavic Weekend announcement. Name your main course and dessert when you book.

You can come to this night on its own: each meetup of the weekend has its own booking and its own price. If you’re travelling from Montpellier or another city, the organisers are renting shared lodging for the whole weekend; the details are on the Slavic Weekend page.

All four meetups of the weekend

1. Friday 30 October - a Russian banya with a pool near Toulouse, 20 places.
2. Saturday 31 October - Anti-Halloween at Bistrô XIII, the page you’re reading.
3. Sunday 1 November, afternoon - a hike to a lake for crayfish, then dinner with the catch at a villa.
4. Sunday 1 November, evening - Mafia at the villa with Katerina.

For churches, shops and schools in Russian-speaking Toulouse, we have a separate guide.