A hoibi kriag i' !

Yes, this is German or at least a kind of German. It’s Bavarian/Austrian dialect for: “Eine halbe Mass Bier, bitte” or a half-liter of beer, the standard serving measure in a restaurant.

Courses are taught on it, books have been written about it, north Germans make fun of it, but one thing’s for sure: there is a dialect of German called Bairisch-österreichisch that stretches from around mid-Bavaria well into central, southern, and western Austria that was once just considered the way that people from this area spoke.

If the Bible had been translated into Bairisch-österreichish instead of Martin Luther’s dialect, the former might have become the official or standard dialect of German. It has it’s own grammar, pronunciation, and word order.

Although there is correlation between level of education and propensity to speak this dialect, you can still find well-educated people in a café who are slinging Bairisch-österreichisch back and forth. There are levels of dialect. Referred to as Soziolekt, there is a level of dialect spoken with like speakers that conveys a comfortability. Friends will often fall into dialect rather than speak standard German. But typically when meeting people for the first time in a professional or even social situation, people try to maintain a standard language without trying to disguise themselves as northern Germans.

For the most part, when Americans speak German to Austrians, the natives will usually try to keep their language in a standard form so that Americans can follow along. Otherwise, deciphering Bairisch-österreichisch can be a frustrating experience.

“Luckily,” my family from Regensburg all spoke and speak today Bairisch. Regensburg and Salzburg dialects aren’t carbon copies of one another, but they’re close enough to make understanding Salzburgers easier.

Still, there are, just like with American and British English (truck=lorry), differences in terminology. A Kartoffel (potato) is an Erdapfel in Austria. Hausschuhe (slippers) are Pantoffeln. Hefe (yeast) is Germ. Kasse (check-out counter) is Kassa.

There are major differences in pronunciation between standard German and Bairisch-österreichisch. Here’s a list of words and phrases and their differences with standard German on the left and Bairisch-österreichisch on the right:

Stein (stone): schtine vs. schto-ah
gut (good): goot vs. guat
fahren (to travel): fah-ren vs. foo-ahn
Salzburg: Salts-boorg vs. Soyts-buag
Regensburg: Ray-gens-boorg vs. Rayng-schpuag

As the name suggests, the Bairisch-österreichisch dialect crosses borders. Bavaria, the southeastern most German state, and Upper Austria and Salzburg District have, over the centuries, belonged to one another so that the people come from one major language stem.

So the next time you’re speaking to a dialect speaker and you don’t follow what they’re saying, just say, “Eee vah-schtay dee nate!”

Depending on how well you speak dialect, they may say back to you in standard German: Ich verstehe dich nicht!

In both cases, they mean, “I don’t understand you!"

Das Recycling

Those who know me know I like to recycle. I started recycling in our dorm (Becher) some years ago—paper, plastic, glass, cans, cartons. Every two weeks, it goes out to the curb for collecting.

Luckily, Austria loves to recycle. They used to call it "Wiederverwertung" but "Recycling" must be more German... Papier and Plastik were very easy to spot. We finally found the neighborhood glass collection center. Since there is a deposit on most bottles (like in Maine), most people return their bottles to the store. But there is the occasional jar of Marmalade or bottle of Kaffeesahne. (Cans are still a mystery. It seems they give up on aluminum for whatever reason.)

Most interesting is Biomüll (“compostable” garbage). Into one bin in the kitchen goes every leftover piece of food, every grape stem, toast crusts that Nikolas doesn’t eat, random peas that fell on the floor, two-day old Semmeln (check a future post on Semmeln!). They even sell bio-degradable baggies to collect the stuff.

When I take out garbage (there’s never that much because the food garbage is in the bio-baggy!), the Biomüll goes into a separate bin. No, the bin doesn’t smell good, but I don’t spend a lot of time inspecting the contents. Our building landscaper also puts cut grass and tree clippings into the container, so it’s not just food. Our neighbors have yelled at him for doing this actually because he’s taking away space for our Biomüll. But I guess he figures it’s not really garbage. It certainly shouldn’t go into paper recycling even though, I know, paper comes from trees.

It really has helped us take into consideration our food waste. I think having lived at boarding schools the past 13 of 16 years has made us a bit careless in the area of food waste. So now, when Nikolas leaves a bite of banana cake on his plate, I eat it up. It just seems like I’m more aware that it’s food because it’s going somewhere different. Will this mean I’ll gain more weight? I don’t know. If we have a meal together someday, beware if you leave any random bits of food on your plate.

Salzburg und die Inflation

Inflation—we can’t run away from it, but at times we can outpace it. Things are more expensive in 2008 than they were when I last lived here in 1994. And even more expensive than in 1991 when I last had to buy food in Salzburg. From 1992-1994 I lived at a boarding school where meals were provided.

If it weren’t for the weak dollar, goods wouldn’t seem that expensive. In 2003, the dollar and euro were about 1 = 1. At present, €1.00 equals about $1.41. For example, a kilogram of apples (2.2 lbs.) costs €1.00, so instead of 2.2 lbs costing only a $1, it costs closer to $1.41.

Luckily, we have a variety of places where we can shop. We live around the corner from Hofer, the German version of Aldi which you can even find on Olden Avenue in Trenton! I used to shop at Hofer as a student in 1990-1991. Only today, instead of being a stand-alone store, it’s part of a huge shopping center which houses a Sparmarkt, another grocery store, as well as countless other shops.

Hofer is not quite like Sam’s Club where you have to buy things in bulk. But it’s very plain—items are found in aisles in their original cartons. Very little time is spent putting things on shelves. Although there are three check-out aisles, only one is ever open. Sometimes the stocking person is the same person who checks you out. He or she runs to the cash register if they see you standing in line. These are ways they’re able to keep the costs low.

Although it’s a grocery store, they surprise almost daily with the things they have for sale. One day they were selling a small refrigerator, just ONE. So I bought it. We had a SMALL refrigerator in the apartment, so I thought we could use another.

Spar is more attractive to the eye and consequently, it’s more expensive. They have a wider selection, though. They even carry Canadian maple syrup!

Those kids who’ve taken economics with me learn that inflation has risen 3.1% annually for the past 80 years. That means that an item that cost $1.00 in 1991 should cost $1.68. Interestingly, cucumbers used to cost about $1.00 in 1991. Today, they cost €1.00 or $1.41. So I happily eat cucumbers because I'm outpacing inflation by 27 cents!

Fahrräder—Radl—Bikes!

Yes, all three words are considered German, or some kind of German. The first is normal German, the second Bavarian/Austrian dialect (see future blog), and the third, believe it or not, is also German (check a future post on English in the German language!).

Although I had a bike in England my three years there (1995-1998), I didn’t ride it nearly as much as I did when I lived in Salzburg. And since 1998, I can count the number of times I’ve ridden a bike on two hands (none in Venezuela, none in Pennington, only a bit this summer once Nikolas learned how to ride a bike).




The truth is, though, I LOVE riding my bike in Salzburg. I loved it as a student when I owned a “Waffenrad,” literally a bike from WWII. Its front brake pad pushed DOWN on the front tire, not on the rim, but ON the actual tire. Yes, there were some accidents. When I worked at the international school, I bought a City-Bike, a five-speed bike that was lime green with a streak of purple. I got new for 990 Schilling or about $99.

Salzburg is a great city for biking. Whether minutes out of the city center or in the Altstadt, it’s so easy and quick to bust in and out of places. As a student, I’d cross the field on a path across the Moos, a wide field south of the city, and just stop for a while to look at the Untersberg or at the Festung. Now Jenny and Nikolas are hooked, I think. Jenny has a bike she likes, Nikolas has his little bike, too. Also, we now have a bike seat for Nikolas (thanks, Uncle Amazon.de) and he totally digs the scene and the scenery!

As proof to myself that I’ve become more responsible, I have to get a headlight for my bike. It’s actually the law in Austria, but many times, people prefer not to ride with the light on because the generator, which rests on a wheel, slows the bike down due to the friction. I used to switch the generator off any chance I got, but now I find myself missing the ability to see in front of me. Of course, I don’t ride with Nikolas at night, so it’s only my head and skin that I’m worried about.

Our storage space in the basement is full of bikes, left over from the students in the program last year. This may be a tradition I started actually in 1991 when my exchange year came to an end. I suggested to my resident director that my landlady probably wouldn’t mind our program kids stashing their bikes behind her barn. It had never happened before. Kids either sold their bikes or abandoned them. These past two weeks, I’ve been trying to tighten up bolts here, change seats there.

We had Sperrmülltag (big garbage day) on September 1 when people are allowed to throw away huge pieces of garbage like couches and desks and bikes. So I snagged a couple of bikes in the throw-away piles in our neighborhood and have been harvesting parts in order to improve the bikes we have. It’s more of a project than I thought it would be, but I’ve learned or relearned a lot, too. Eighteen years ago I actually knew how to change tires, patch tires, and fix brakes!