It is 7.10 on a Sunday morning. Everyone else is asleep. The red cat is asleep on an afghan my mother crocheted in the living room. An afghan blanket, right, not an Afghan person or an Afghan hound. It is less interesting but quieter. And my mother crocheted it in her living room, not mine, but then she gave it to us and it has been in our living room since then. The grey cat I’m not sure about, it wanted back outside after I fed it. The turtle I sure hope is sleeping, haven’t seen it lately and it’s been cold. Sure hope it’s sleeping.
Tortoise.
The humans are all asleep.
They all expect me to go to the bakery this morning. There is one bakery in a nearby town that is open Sunday mornings. You can go there and buy goodies for Sunday morning breakfast, which is on the one hand nice, and on the other involves standing in front of the counter in a crowd of Austrians who have not internalized the Anglo-Saxon concept of “queuing” or “taking turns”.
One used to be able to sit down at a counter in the back of the store and order a coffee and give them your goodie order at the same time, and they’d bring your stuff while you sat there feeling like a Homo Sapiens watching Neanderthals at the watering hole, but the last time I tried that the clerk told me I had to “wait in line” and order at the counter first, so what’s the point?
Maybe I’ll try it again today and see if it works, but that will be difficult because I don’t know what I want this morning. I will probably have to stand there going, Hrm, one of these and seven of these and you have any more of these?
And then I will try to pay them with a hundred Euro bill, which is all I have – this is the next thing – I’ll try to pay them with that, which is not such a big bill – and they will say, I can’t change that.
Uh-oh. Someone is up, I hear noise upstairs. Gotta run.
Bakery
Posted in Metamorphosism
I got wonderful desserts in the bakery type shops in Vienna (not too sweet as these things tend to be here in the states), and I don’t remember people going out of turn, but I suppose these things vary.
On the subject of hundred Euro notes: I had two which somehow got caught in the zipper of my wallet, and were each torn into six pieces by the time I got them out. The clerk at the gift shop of the Art History Museum very kindly helped me scotch tape them back together, and then accepted one in payment for some things I was buying. The other one people looked askance at and told me to take to a bank, which I finally did. It was held up to the light, put through all sorts of tests, and ultimately replaced. I though the whole exerience was kinda funny;… (but nobody said they couldn’t change it).
Oh, and if one is to believe the guide books, Austrians are people who follow rules (?)
Smaller shops and cafes often can’t change a hundred Euro note for me.
Regarding rules, Austria strikes me as a country with often Kafkaesque bureaucracies at every level of life, so rules might be important in that way, but otherwise they seem to be bent quite often from what I can see.
Sometimes I wonder whether Austria’s geographical location between Germany, Italy and East Europe has anything to do with it. I usually wonder this while driving, when Austrians seem to combine qualities associated with those areas. (Germany: driving Mercedes fast; Italian disregard for rules and an Eastern European death wish.*)
*Some eastern european countries used to have a high suicide rate. I don’t know whether this is still true.
Austrians following rules? Yes, but only the ones they choose to. As a matter of fact, every Austrian I met has their own set of principles and rules they will follow. If those rules happen to match the ones set by a civilized society then it’s all good, if not…well…that’s too bad if you can’t handle it. I learned to be fast and cunning here, otherwise countless old ladies will still be shamelessly cutting in front of me at the bakery. Every time I am back in the US I have to learn to stand in line properly again. Yes, Austrians pride themselves in being different from Germans, and that includes the German sense for order and discipline. Austrians are rebels like Italians, but at the same time they have that ‘thing’ for workmanship that only Germans have. I had Germans figured out after one year, Austrians never fail to amaze me, over and over again. And though I am still frustrated at times, I learned from them to relax and take it all in with humor.
I find all of this fascinating. Thank you both.
Individual Austrians won’t follow any rules, but they will expect everybody else (including all other Austrians) to follow the rules.
that sounds accurate. it should go into guidebooks.
I’ll second the motion.