One of the great irritations of German, apart from having genders and weird pluralising and everything else that goes on… is formal speech. You could say it is a little similar to English… but only in a very subtle way. In English, it’s normal to refer to someone older than you as Mrs or Mr so-and-so… until there comes a time where they tell you it’s fine to call them by their first name. But come on, that’s simple!
Month: July 2019
Austrians love salt… but not in butter
I am not a big salt eater. I grew up on less salt partly due to the fact that high blood pressure is in our family, and salt is one thing that exacerbates this. I remember cooking with my mum as a kid, and whenever I read out the salt requirements for a recipe, she would wave it away and tell me it wasn’t necessary. Hence, my taste buds have been conditioned to not require as much salt as the average person. And I was fine with that.
And then I came to Austria.
And I was as-salted (pun intended).
Short trips – Rovinj, Croatia – when colleagues become friends
Following last year’s successful but cosy trip to Grado for our work team event, us girls this year planned a weekend away to Rovinj, Croatia, in early May. Each year the company allocates a budget to each team for a social event, but since us three girls actually like each other, we again decided to throw some extra money in the kitty and make a weekend of it.
Like last year we weren’t alone. We took three of our marketing mascots in our growing family of team members – TMF Bear, Gartner Giraffe and a new addition – Bonnie Jovi – the beautiful white horse.
Turning back time – coming home from a night out smelling of cigarettes
There is one difference between Austria and Australia I haven’t mentioned yet, and while it’s certainly becoming less and less noticeable… noticeable it still is. In Australia, after years of campaigning, hiking up cigarette prices and banning of smoking pretty much everywhere, it seems these days that barely anyone smokes. But in Austria, it is much more widespread – you can smoke almost everywhere and cigarettes are cheap (and if you want cheaper ones just cross the border to Slovenia).
an aussie in austria 