Spending money the old fashioned way--actually having it!

We recently booked our February trip (vacations from school for all of us) at the travel agency--7 days in Antalya, Turkey. When Frau Fiebrisch was finally finished typing in all of our details, she gave me the final price. I took out our Visa card and handed it to her. She looked at the card, then looked up at me, and I just knew there was an issue.

"We don't accept credit cards, only cash."

When booking a family weekend for March, the answer was the same. Luckily, we've saved for vacations this year, so it's not much of an issue.

I think if an established business in the U.S. tells us that they can't take credit cards, we wonder right away if they're legit. At least in Germany and Europe, taking cash only is still quite common.

Now when people say "only cash," they're not assuming that you're willing to carry hundreds or thousands of Euros on your person. Debit cards are the rage here. Regardless, one thing is for certain: you need to actually have the money in order to buy many things. Not really a bad way to go when you think about it.

I've seen a couple of articles in the paper in Salzburg about people getting into credit card debt troubles, but compared to what we read about in the States, it's almost laughable. In Austria, if you're carrying $2,500 in debt, you're considered to be on the brink of financial collapse.

Salzburg is actually not the norm when it comes to credit card acceptance. Most restaurants here do take cards but it's mostly because of the number of tourists that come through the city. In a city like Regensburg in Southern Germany, for example, you can really be hard pressed to use plastic.

Perhaps they have something here, though. It's not a bad idea to save up for something like a vacation. I used to read Mutual Funds Magazine. They always published financial advice, and when they'd run out of things to say, it seems like they always returned to the axiom, "Never borrow to take a vacation, save up for it instead."

Companies here who don't take cards will tell you why they don't take cards. It's not because they want us to be better with our money. It's because they don't want to pay the credit card companies up to 6% in fees for allowing you to use a card.

When you think about it, not using credit cards can only mean more money for us, the consumer. First, we don't have to pay finance charges for carrying a balance on the card. Second, business may not feel the need to raise prices to compensate for the 6% in credit card charges. Third, if it's a vacation you're talking about, what better feeling is there than coming back from a vacation not worrying about how you're going to now pay for it. At what point, in the USA, did we lose sight of that concept?

Frau Ballwein

In 1990, I moved to Salzburg to study for the year as a participant in the same program I'm leading for the year. Back in the day, we showed up without a place to stay and simply starting knocking on the doors of houses with private rooms where former participants had lived before us. Today, this is almost unheard of. Students live in dorms and thanks to the Internet, they can apply and be accepted months before they even start to think about packing their bags.

Anyway, I spent my first day in Salzburg calling places on my list only to be told that I was out of luck. I'd plotted the streets out on my Salzburg city map and was calling all the centrally-located places first. After a number of calls and visits, I was now looking at Frau Ballwein's telephone number. She lived out on the Moosstrasse, a five-kilometer-long street. I wasn't sure where number 63 was, but it probably wasn't at the start of Moosstrasse, which is very close to the city center, and it probably wasn't out in Glanegg, the very next town outside Salzburg.

As it turns out, it's about three kilometers down the street, and I ended up walking the entire thing that day. I mistakenly got out of the bus at the start of the street because the busstop announced was "Moosstrasse." As soon as I got of bus, what did it do? It turned down Moosstrasse and kept on going.

I'd called Frau Ballwein on the phone and she told me to come by at 5 p.m. So at about 5:20 I showed up hot and sweaty, hoping I wasn't late. She was in the driveway ironing some clothes, electrical cord strung out of her kitchen window. We spoke for awhile about the room she had but I couldn't see it because someone was living in there until the end of the month. It was the equivalent of $250 (2,500 Austrian Schillings). I said "Yes!" because I didn't want to go back to the hostel that night worried that I had no place to stay for the year. Two other American guys were already living in the house. So I was already breaking one of my pre-Salzburg rules--that I'd live alone or with Austrians only. Again, I just wanted a place to live.

Frau Ballwein was 67 years old but she was tough! She could carry wood, mow grass with a sickle (if you've every tried, it's HARD!), milk cows, cook like a madwoman, tow a wagon full of hay, and build things with wood, hammer, and nails. "Old school" doesn't describe Frau Ballwein. She built the school.

The three guys lived in one part of the house with our own entrance. There was a door to her part of the house in our kitchen, but it was understood that she could use it to get through our part to go to go behind the house. But we weren't to go into her part of the house.

But after a short time there, Frau Ballwein started inviting us in for a meal here or there. The first time it was to make us American french toast. Some girls who'd lived with her before us had taught her how to make it. Frau Ballwein was blunt, though, and as we sat down to our perfectly made french toast, she told us that her cat had been squashed the night before by a truck. Flat as a pancake, it was.

Then the first Gulf War began. Frau Ballwein invited us in nightly to watch the news and we welcomed it. There was no central heat in that house. We each had a space heater in our rooms, but it was common for us to pop fuses because we were all trying to stay warm. Her living room was nice and toasty though because the kitchen and living room shared a Kachelofen. Unlucky for us, American involvement in the first Gulf War only lasted about a month or so, so we thought we'd been relegated back to the our much cooler rooms. Nope, Frau Ballwein told us that if we wanted to watch TV with her, we could just knock on her door.

Frau Ballwein told us one day in passing that in her 67 year on the planet, she'd never taken a vacation. We practically fell out of our chairs. As a farmer, she saw herself on duty seven days a week. She said, "Cows don't take a break from eating and milking and going to the bathroom." We pleaded with her to consider taking a vacation--she certainly deserved one! After several weeks of planning, Frau Ballwein went with two of her cousins on a four-week Kur, basically a rest and relaxation spa that is covered by insurance. Technically, it wasn't a vacation in the strictest sense, but good enough. We missed Frau Ballwein and we missed watching TV in her part of the house. However, in exchange for feeding her chickens our leftover scraps from our meals, we were allowed to go into the hen house and keep the eggs. One night we were starving, so we took our flashlights into the hen house to see if any hens had laid some late-night eggs. No luck, and the hens were furious that we'd even try this.

The day I left Salzburg that year, I was a nervous wreck. I knew I was leaving a place I didn't want to leave. And I had to say "good-bye" to Frau Ballwein. My other two housemates were gone. Geoff had left a week early and Jim was in the hospital over an hour away with serious tetanus (the last I saw of Jim was at a Sting concert in Linz--he told me he had to go sit down and I never saw him again...that year--I've seen him since). Frau Ballwein made me a cup of coffee and set out some bread and jam. She knew that my place was cleaned out including the refrigerator. I couldn't control my hands--I was shaking like a clown. She noticed and just said, "It's not like you're never coming back."

When the bus came, I gave her a hug and she reciprocated with one of those, ok-get-on-the-bus hugs. My ride down the Moosstrasse was embarrassing. I sat among a group of senior citizens who were also riding into town. I was crying like child, and soon the old ladies around me were all teary-eyed.

But Frau Ballwein was right. I did go back. I went back for two more years and worked right down the street from where Frau Ballwein lived. Without Frau Ballwein, there wouldn't be the OTHER cat story which I'll save for another blog, even though this one is short. I saw Frau Ballwein years later well into the 2000s. Even two of my Pennington School groups got to meet her when we stayed at her son's bed & breakfast.

The last time I saw her was in March of 2006 and like every year, I sent her a Christmas card at the end of the year. Her youngest son wrote me back at the beginning of 2007 with a nice note and Frau Ballwein's death notice. I'd known she'd been battling cancer for close to three years, but she was tough. But at 82, the cancer was tougher and she died peacefully with her family around her: sons and their wives, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

Today, I visited Frau Ballwein for probably the last time. She's located in the small cemetery behind the church on the Moosstrasse. Her son's farmhouse and bed & breakfast is a short distance across the field. She's lying with her husband who she survived by almost 20 years! To be honest, I didn't get choked up--she wouldn't have wanted that anyway.

Trinkgeld--Tipping in Germany and Austria

Tipping is a cultural thing that can either get you into trouble or make you a waiter's best friend forever.

Austrian/German waitstaff loves to see Americans come into their restaurants, especially those who haven't read up on their tipping etiquette. Whereas tipping between 15-20% in the States is standard, a 20% tip in Austria might get you a tap on the back or a handshake here.

Each state is different, but generally wait staff can expect to be paid about $3 an hour whereas standard minimum wage is in most cases in the 6-dollar-range. One can only hope that a waiter/waitress makes more than that. As I tell my economics students, $10 an hour is about $20,000 per year.

In Germany and Austria, wait staff earn about 15% of what their customers order. A meal out can typically cost €30-35, so a person earns about between €4.50 and €5.25 from our meal. When you pay, you typically round up to the next euro or the one after that. If the meal costs €30.25, you may hand over €32. Yes, that's not even 6% but people here consider that a good tip. Afterall, "Trinkgeld" means "drinking money," enough to buy themselves a drink later.

Granted, this doesn't sound like a lot of money. At most a person is earning €7 from our meal. In Salzburg, though, wait staff are happy because they're busy. Restaurants are often packed out and if you're responsible for 8-12 tables, you're bringing in €50-85 an hour during meal times.

Waterless urinals--is it enough that they save water?

Urinals are an odd topic maybe at first glance, but water conservation isn't. Ever since I was a kid, European bathrooms have been interesting to me. It was the early 80s when I saw the laser beam flush system that has made its way slowly to the States. Now waterless toilets are slowly overtaking the old-fashioned kind.

There's no water which is what a waterless toilet shouldn't have. In the drain sits a cartridge with a lighter-than-water sealant that keeps the oder in the pipes. The cartridge needs to be changed periodically and, yes, the urinal itself needs to be cleaned daily, but it's estimated that a waterless toilet can conserve between 15,000 and 45,000 gallons of water per year! That's as many as 670 bathtubs full of water!

To talk to people who've thought about installing them, though, you get a different picture. It seems that the cartridges and sealant are not cheap. Also, if they're not changed soon enough, sealant can leak and the odors are released--not pleasant. The sealant is supposed to be bio-degradable, but who knows? The plastic cartridge is supposed to be recyclable but where do you put it? It's not like you can chuck it into the soda bottle bin.

Time will tell if the U.S. opens its arms to the waterless urinals!

Heilige Drei Könige / The 12th Day of Christmas

Ever wonder why we sing about 12 days of Christmas when, as a kid, we only ever had one day of Christmas to open presents on? Well, in Austria there's no need to wonder because the 12th day of Christmas is a holiday.

The Christmastide (-tide coming from the German word "Zeit" or "time") stretches from Christmas day to the night of January 5/6 and signals the time when the "kings" or astrologers or magi or wise men came to visit the baby Jesus. It seems that popular culture has the wise men showing up minutes after the baby Jesus was born, but according to the story, it took the men (whether it was two or three or four, experts don't seem to know) 12 days to get to Bethlehem.

In German, the men are referred to as Könige or kings, but the term "king" was loosely used by the Romans in those times to denote any man of knowledge. Since the men used the position of a star in order to find Jesus, they were most likely astrologers, so the term "wise men" seems more fitting.

Scholars have argued about the number of wise men--in fact, there are some pieces of art in Europe that depict four wise men in the manger scene. The number three, though, appears in a lot of tales as a good number. There's the German saying, "Alle guten Dinge sind drei" or "All good things come in threes." So the wise men brought three gifts (gold befitting a king, frankincense befitting a priest, and myrrh befitting a healer or, in German, a "Heiler" which is related to the word "Heiland" or "savior"). Although the wise men probably all came from Middle East, there was a belief that they represented the three continents that people were aware of (Europe, Asia, Africa).

In Salzburg State and southern Bavaria, a largely Catholic area, it's common especially among the farmers to welcome the three kings to one's door. Many times, children come dressed in priestly outfits, sing a song, and then offer to write in chalk on people's entrances the first letter of what is thought to be their names (Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar) along with the year (see photo). This is left there throughout the year until the chalk wears off!

England is old

In case you're interested in visiting somewhere old, England is it. Especially in Yorkshire. Not only is it beautiful country, but the architecture has been preserved so that you're not reminded that there's a modern world out there. I never asked a native to verify this, but there must be some building code in Yorkshire that forbids the building of homes with anything but brown stone or maybe brick. It's a nice look.

The churches are interesting; many interior walls are lined with placards explaining the history of the church. A couple had a listing of the church's pastors dating back to the 1100s!

When Jenny and I lived in England in the mid- to late-1990s, we made a trip to the Yorkshire dales as well as to York. I remember we were really impressed back then as well. The South has great cities, there's no doubt about it: Oxford, Bath, Winchester, and, oh, London's nice, too. BUT there are also many large towns and cities that are not nice, too built up with too much traffic to be able to enjoy them. We left England from Leeds/Bradford airport to fly to Prague, which is for the most part a return flight for Czechs who've traveled to England. At first, I thought to myself, "Why would Czechs bother to fly into an area SO far north of London?" But I get it now.