Adventures in Wien (Vienna), Part 1

A street in downtown Vienna

Weather
It feels like autumn here already. We had a week of hot (in the low 80s Fahrenheit) and humid (one day it was 97% humidity!), and now we're having a stretch of cold, cloudy and sometimes rainy days. Today, for example, it was 61 degree Fahrenheit at noon, and the breeze is chilly.

Culture of tipping

Simple breakfast

Unlike in Spain and Paris, where tipping is completely voluntary & there are no hard feelings if you don't, tipping in Vienna is the norm, and if you don't tip it's an insult. I haven't asked anyone yet what the usual amount is, but based on experience it seems that 10% is completely satisfactory, and if you leave 20% they act like you've just given them a huge present. The tricky part - which luckily I learned during my first week from Georg, my housemate's brother - is that (unlike in the U.S., Spain & France) you're not supposed to wait until they've already given you change and walked away. Instead, when the server tells you the total, you should immediately say back to them a new total that includes tip. For example, if the server says that the bill for my coffee is €3,20, then I might tell her €3,50. That way she knows I intend to leave a tip and she might actually smile at me. Or at least let one corner of her mouth lift a centimeter for a split-second. It also saves her the trouble of trying to find the right amount of change when I only intend to give part of it back to her anyway. So I tell her the new total, she immediately says, "Danke," and then gives me the correct change minus tip.

Language
I've had a little success practicing the bisschen German I know when I'm out and about. Although at a proper cafe or restaurant they'll usually start speaking English to me once they figure out I don't really speak German (doesn't take long), a vendor at the market usually just keeps repeating the same German words or starts using gestures until I get it. Last Sunday I went into the cafe-bar next door and had a conversation of sorts with the server and the one other customer in there, neither of whom spoke more than a few words English. They were very tolerant of the fact that I only knew, like, five verbs and only in the present tense. (Now I know more like 10 verbs.)

Other language observations:

Ferris wheel at the Prater

Genau means exactly, but they use it the way I'd use the words yep or right to affirm something, which is to say they use it all the time.

It seems to me at this point in my language-learning that the vast majority of German nouns and verbs begin with Sch- Sp- and St-, and therefore it's super difficult to keep words straight in my head.

Achtung! (Attention!):
Ich habe eine Spitze = I'm tipsy
Ich bin spitz = I'm horny 

Food
I've noticed a lot of bottled beer. There's also wine - both red and white - though often the white wine has seltzer water in it. Not my favorite. A classmate of mine observed the other day that it's nearly impossible to find a bottle of straight-up juice here; they're all juice mixed with sparkling water. It seems the Viennese like their sparkling water.

Pastries for breakfast

 There are a ton of cafes here, and as in other parts of Europe, the cafes also serve alcohol. The Viennese version of a cafe con leche or café créme is a melange, pronounced just like in French. There are several different versions of the coffee-with-milk drink here, but if you don't want an inch of foam on top, it's a melange. It's even more expensive here than in Paris, and as in Paris, there's no consistency across the city. (It had never even really occurred to me how odd it is that you can order a coffee in Spain in pretty much any city and any cafe/bar/restaurant and count on the price of that cup of coffee being fairly consistent - somewhere between €1,10-1,40.) Anyway, the cheapest melange I've found here in an actual cafe is €2,50 at the cafe-bar next door, and the most I've paid so far is €3,80. Luckily, my language school has a kaffeeautomat (coffee vending machine) where I can get a decent latte macchiato for only €1.

Handle of pork, fried chicken

As for food, they seem to eat a lot of cheese, bread and meat here. Pork especially, but also chicken and beef. Much of what's advertised on picture menus at restaurants is meat pounded into a flat disc and fried, then served with what they call pommes frites, a term they took from French. In contrast, you can order a Frankfurter or other type of sausage, which they'll serve grilled and sliced into bite-size pieces along with whatever sauce you ask for (e.g. some kind of mustard, ketchup, mayo, etc.). They also have loaves of meat and handles of meat. And they like their meat with cheese injected into it. I've seen sausages with cheese in them and loaves with cheese in them. There's also a vendor of meat products that has an entire section of sausages made out of horse meat.