What's in a price?

If you think like I do sometimes, you've wondered why the cost of a meal out is so much. Regardless of where you are, though, prices of meals in Austria are not much different than they are in our area of New Jersey. The drinks here, if anything, are more expensive. Depending on where you are, a half liter of soft drink (about a quart) can run around $6.50--no joke! It's cheaper to drink wine or beer, and it's been that way since I started coming here as a kid.

But the back page of the menu at a restaurant we were at the other day really made me think about what goes into the price of a meal and a drink at a restaurant. The list was put together tongue-in-cheek, I'm pretty sure. Usually, like in the States, you'll see a message somewhere stating that prices don't include tip. This menu went a bit further, though. This is what it said, translated into English--

It's understood that our prices:

are in euros not including tip,
and include 10 to 20% value-added tax,
tourism tax,
salary tax,
church tax,
income tax,
sales tax,
business tax,
social security and health insurance,
fire and liability insurance,
life insurance and old age care insurance,
theft and broken glass insurance,
fire department contribution,
liquor license,
treasury contribution,
gas and heating costs,
warm and cold water costs,
sewage costs,
electricity costs,
chimney cleaner,
security technician,
leasing contracts,
garbage removal,
compost removal,
washing and cleaning detergents,
toilet paper,
paper towels and hand soap,
repairs,
maintenance contracts,
telephone costs,
decoration costs,
live music costs,
fees to AKM (royalties),
radio and TV fees.

(Interestingly, from a cultural standpoint, there are some costs here we do NOT have in the States: church tax, radio fees, old age care insurance).)

Our meal came to €19 (about $25), which for lunch, isn't something we'd want to spend everyday, but it wasn't the end of the world. And when you consider all the stuff you're getting (and you know what many paper towels some of you use in the bathroom!), then $25 isn't a bad price at all!

Arguments and Statements of a 4-year-old

Nikolas loves to learn--he really does. If I explain to him how soap works (no mention of ions, of course), he runs to his mother and tells her what he's learned.

But he reaches a point when he'd like to have something to add. It might mean changing the rules of a game (not to make it easier for him to win--if anything, his rule-changes make it difficult for anyone to win) or it might mean changing chemistry concepts. Or sometimes he says things to just be different or to get a rise out of us.

Today included some dingers.

When we got back from being away, we put a pot of coffee on to brew. After a few minutes, Nikolas called out, "Mommy, I smell coffee." Jenny replied, "That's because I put some coffee on." Nikolas whined, "But I don't want to smell coffee."

Okay.

Both Jenny and I took turns hitting the tennis ball with him. It was hot today and we practice on the tarred surface of the entrance to a church. I know. It sounds silly but it's a BIG entrance. Anyway, we were both exhausted from running around. Nikolas hits everything but it doesn't always go right to us (which it shouldn't in tennis). While we're both panting, desperate for shade and water, Nikolas says, "Ok, this is the game--I run around this area and you two try to catch me."

Uh, no.

As Nikolas watched an ice cube melt into water, I explained that water can exist in three states (I don't know why my high school chemistry is coming out lately--it was 20 years ago!): solid or ice, liquid or water, and gas or steam. "No," Nikolas said in German, "there are four states: ice, water, steam and noodles."

Okay.

Later, Nikolas said, "You know that show that has a character in it that wears a white shirt and has hair like me?" We didn't know what show he meant. "They found dog bones on that show. I eat dog bones, you know."

Okay.

My favorite snack (right now, anyway)

Austria is a land of the most delicious desserts on earth. Seriously, Salzburg has countless cafés and Konditoreien (a confectioner--they just bake goodies!), and the assortment of Kuchen, Torte, and other inventions can make your mouth water as you speed by a showcase on your bike.

But right now there's no other snack for me than the one you can only get at Hofer right now. That's the discount grocery store that we go to almost daily. The name of this snack has a very German name, so please don't despair if you cannot pronounce it. The name:

Chocolate Chip Cookies

They're chocolatey, they're good. I want to drink a liter (about a quart) of milk with each cookie. I want to eat a whole pack of cookies in one sitting (12), but I stop myself at three.

I should be craving Apfelstrudel or Sachertorte, but instead I can't get these Chocolate Chip Cookies off my brain. Tell me it's not bad. I mean how could something that tastes so good be so bad?

Antauchen, Part 2!

There's an update in the "Antauchen" saga! I know you've been hoping there would be. (Please read previous post first if you haven't already)

Gabriella, next year's Resident Director, is in town for three days to learn the ropes. I've been taking her around to meet the people and see the places she'll need to know about next year. While viewing one of my student's CLEAN dorm rooms, I started telling my "antauchen" story.

Gabriella, whose father is from Salzburg, actually lived here as a 6-8 and 14-15 year old back in the 80s and 90s. She remembered the word, again really just an Austrian word, and she remembered it meaning not only to push someone on a swing, BUT also to "push" yourself or to pump your legs so that you swing on your own! So you can "antauchen" someone else and you can "antauchen" yourself.

Mystery solved. Nikolas was right, which means that he DID teach me a word I didn't know!

Antauchen

I predicted that it would someday happen, as long as Nikolas continued to learn German. That someday was today. Sort of.

I remember a professor at UMaine once telling us that if we kept up with German, it wouldn't be long before we learned words that HE didn't know. How could that be? we wondered. He was a native speaker, for goodness sake. He went on to explain that we all have our own interests and if you pursue those in a foreign language, there are terms that not everyone is familiar with. He used pottery as an example. If you're involved in making pottery with a wheel and using techniques that don't involve everyday words, well, you're learning vocabulary that not everyone knows.

So Nikolas was swinging today and very proud to show me that he can now pump with his feet to make himself swing. Interestingly, Jenny and I have both, throughout the year, tried to explain this to Nikolas, but he either didn't get it or he secretly didn't want Mama or Papa to stop pushing him on the swing!

I asked him how he learned this. I often ask him this question when he talks about things he knows, and he always says, "In der Schule" (in school). But when he said that what he was doing involved "Antauchen," I really wanted to know where he's learned that word.

Because I didn't know it.

Now I knew "tauchen" and "untertauchen" mean 'to dive' and 'to dive under' or 'disappear,' but I'd never heard it with the "an" prefix. He said that his friend Cornelia (next to Nikolas, she dressed like a zebra, he dressed like a monkey for Sommerfest at Kindergarten) had used the word. He's understood it to mean "kick with your legs."

So after he went to bed, I looked it up. It wasn't in my dictionary. So I looked it up online, and it wasn't in my favorite online dictionary (LEO). Then I went to Beolingus, which I don't use that often, and there it was. It's an Austrian German word. Much like British and American English, there are many differences in vocabulary between German in Germany and German in Austria. The same goes for Switzerland.

Interestingly, "antauchen" doesn't mean to kick with your legs after all, but instead it's the Austrian term for "anstossen" or 'to push someone on a swing.' My only guess is that Cornelia was telling Nikolas that if he pumped with his feet, he wouldn't need someone to provide "antauchen."

So although it wasn't quite the scenario I predicted, Nikolas' German-learning did lead me to expand my own vocabulary, even if it is Austrian German. Will I tell him what "antauchen" really means? Yes and no. The next time we're swinging, I'll ask him, "Kann Papa dich antauchen?" His mind might puzzle over it for a bit, but he'll learn it if we keep it in context, the way he's learned so much this year.

Things you don't see in an American newspaper

Aside from the fact that you hear German on the street and most everything else is in German, you can sometimes forget that you're somewhere other than home.

An average reading of the The Salzburger Nachrichten, the city's major newspaper, reminds me that we're not in the U.S. (not the fact that this, too, is in German!). Here's a sample of "different" things from this week:

* a job ad for a handyman who will live in the apartment complex he'll take care of asks that the man (women need not apply) be of Christian upbringing. This is short for Don't be Turkish (Muslim) or Bosnian (Muslim) or Christian-god-forbid from some Middle Eastern country (Muslim).

* most job ads ask for a photo to be included with the résumé. This is short for Don't apply if you look like a foreigner (Muslim) or are Christian-god-forbid unattractive.

* A Salzburg brothel is having its license revoked because two of its 12 prostitutes were not officially registered. That means the number of legal brothels in Salzburg is down to 14.

* a 15-year-old Salzburg girl was fined € 80 ($110) for underage drinking (she had a can of beer in her hand). She cried bitterly because she was about to turn 16 in a couple of days, which is the legal public drinking age.

* Salzburg police ushered Mexican tourists off a plane arriving from Frankfurt this past weekend and banged them into quarantine until it was determined that they didn't have swine flu.

Welcome to Austria!

Sonntag Ruhetag

Sundays in Austria are deader than a doornail as we say up in Maine. If you haven't shopped for Sunday, you're out of luck. There's nothing open aside from gas stations and their little shops, but you have to be mighty hungry to buy anything there since the prices are outrageous. In the time we've been here, we've only ever bought coffee cream at a gas station on a Sunday, and it wasn't even good.

I appreciate that stores are closed on Sunday, that a country as a whole considers it important enough to mandate a break for everyone. I appreciate it, but I don't like it.

If you go away for the weekend and don't plan for your Sunday return, you're not happy. If you like to have fresh rolls daily, you're not happy. Yes, open restaurants can be found seven days a week, but that's not an option for every meal!

I should consider myself lucky. When I was a kid and traveling with my mother to Germany, it was much worse. During the week, stores, the post office, you-name-it closed daily from 12:00 to 2:00 p.m. Supermarkets were not a thing 25 years ago. Instead, there were mom-and-pop groceries and they closed. Then everything closed again at 6:00 p.m.

Originally, everything was closed on Saturday as well just as it is today on Sunday. Then the change-over began. They introduced Saturday mornings. You could shop until noon now on Saturday. Yipee! The entire weekend wasn't shot after all. Jobless teens like me could shop (although we didn't have money). People who had to work no longer necessarily had an entire weekend off.

Then German state after state introduced "langer Samstag." The first Saturday of the month would be like a "normal" work day. People could shop longer...unless they had to work.

Then the work week was affected. "Langer Donnerstag" was introduced. Each Thursday, stores would stay open until 8:00 p.m. Now people who worked all day could shop after work on the weekday...unless they had store jobs and had to work the later hours.

Then state after state said the heck with half-day Saturdays. "Langer Samstag" became every Saturday. For the first time, schedules were introduced where people no longer had two consecutive days off a week.

Then it went back to the work week. "Langer Donnerstag" wasn't enough. Soon Thursday turned to two days a week, then eventually five days a work week. Germans and Austrians could shop, shop, shop...unless they had to work later shifts.

Every year, many states vote on the right to decide whether they can have stores open on Sunday. It's still a nation-wide mandate in Germany and Austria that Sonnday remain a "Ruhetag" or a day of rest. The idea is that there should be one day guaranteed for most people that they have a day off from work and school so that the family can be, well, a family.

Many believe it's a matter of time before Sonntag Ruhetag goes the way of the other supposedly sacred days off. While I don't like not being able to buy fresh bread on Sundays, I do like the fact that retail workers aren't being forced to work on a day when the kids are home from school. Germans have a 37 1/2 work week the last I checked, and they're one of the least likely Europeans to say "yes" to the option of working overtime hours. The reason they give most always has to do with the family.

If these countries do decide to do away with Sonntag Ruhetag, I think it'll be a sad day. Because there's no turning back. If you mention the term "Langer Samstag" to a German or Austrian college student, you might as well be talking about the ancient Greeks!