It's the little things...

While living in a foreign country, we've noticed many small differences between here and back home:

Obviously the language is different. A particular thing English-speakers have difficulty with in German is when they squish several words together to make one long word. For example, the sign on this building means "Pension Insurance Institute" A unique Austrian beverage is "Almdudler." (Austria is the only place you can get this, like champagne only comes from France) The closest thing we have is gingerale, but not exactly. "Alm" is a mountain meadow, and the verb "dudeln" means to tootle. So, I guess an Almdudler is a person tootling in a meadow on a mountain. On the street trams it's all the honor system. You punch your ticket every time you ride (or you don't and risk getting caught). They have secret ticket-checkers, and if you get caught without a valid ticket it's a hefty fine. David got checked the other day by a guy in a Mets hat! The money is different
The cars are smaller.
I nervously watched this bag just sit here, unattended, for quite a while. I finally got bored and left it. These days in NYC someone would have said something and the bag would have been carefully removed.
After a big snow, they lean these sticks along the buildings to warn you that any minute you could be covered by an avalanche of snow falling off the roof (not that they'll protect you or anything).
This is getting a bit personal, but it's a difference. We're all familiar with the function of a bowl of water in a toilet... well, how about a shelf instead!

What Americans commonly think of as over-the-counter medicine, is stocked in the aisles of every Duane Reade, CVS, or Walgreens in the USA. In Austria it really is "over-the-counter." One must go to the Apotheke and order what you want (vitamins, aspirin, dandruf shampoo) from a person in a white lab coat on the other side of the counter. We had a laugh the other day when we went to get more ibuprofen and discovered it's only sold in packs of 50 tablets!!! (we brought with us a jumbo generic brand jar of 500 tablets, which is depleting quickly due to David's obsession with freestyle-footbag and his bum knee). The interaction went something like this:

• Woman behind the counter: How many would you like? They come in boxes of up to 50 tablets.
• David: Really?!?!?
• Woman behind the counter: Really.
• David: Really?!?!?
• Woman behind the counter: Really.
• David: Really?!?!?
• Woman behind the counter: Yes, but you can get 2 boxes.

Woah! culture shock. And, the tablets are not loose, they're packaged more like cold medicine.

The church bells ring quite frequently here. At the top of the hour they ring 4 times plus the number for whichever hour it is. At quarter past the hour they ring once, twice at half past, and three times at 45 minutes past the hour. Who needs a watch!? Noon and 6pm are when they ring them like crazy, and also 10am on Sundays.

Stores are closed here more than they're open. Some restaurants are open on Sundays, but it's a pretty quiet day around here. We sure are spoiled in New York City where we can get anything, anytime, and delivered.

The sign on this door says 'Open: M-F 9am-6pm, Sa 9am-noon' which means that you can't really go shopping before or after work, you have to take time off in the middle of the day, or get up early on Saturday and rush. Hey, it's a good thing Robin's not working! Teenagers rejoice! You can legally drink here before you can legally drive (18 is the legal driving age here).
Another difference involving alcohol is all the old-heads casually drinking a beer at 9am. Nobody thinks anything of it, they're just retired and instead of a morning coffee they have a morning beer. People also commonly have a beer with lunch, something that is totally taboo with corporate America. People just seem more relaxed here, and there's no social stigma around beer drinking before 5pm.

And finally... THERE ARE NO ICE CUBES... anywhere!!!
Anyone for a nice "refreshing" glass of warm Coke?