In one picture, you know you’re in Austria and not Australia when… Someone perfectly cuts a very thin bread roll in half

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Semmel

What I might at home refer to as a ‘standard white bread roll’ is called a Semmel in Austria. There are different types/shapes depending on what state you live in. In our state, a Semmel is a round, thin roll, crunchy on the outside and soft in the middle. It’s what you put ham and cheese or marmalade on for breakfast, it’s what the Leberkäse sits between in a Leberkäse Semmel, and it’s what you get to eat alongside your Wurst. It’s really standard, everyday fare – much like the humble white bread roll.

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My Classy Dance Mix

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ipod classic

I have a lot of mixes on my dinosaur iPod, known as the iPod Classic. Still in daily use, with a battery change to boot, I have spent a lot of hours burning CDs (yes, kids, that’s what we did back then) and creating playlists.

Recently I was listening to my Classy Dance mix. Cause I was home alone with toddler one afternoon and it was time to get down! So… on went Classy Dance, with its 124 songs and more than 8 hours of goodness… yeah… some of that stuff ain’t that classy!

Here’s why:

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Australia… on my own

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Australia alone

It was only going to be a quick trip… it was! Three weeks from start to finish which amounts to 2.5 when you take out the flight times. We didn’t want to put Sam through another long flight and jet lag, so the decision was made that I would go on my own.

I was excited. This was going to be my trip. This was going to cancel out all the disasters from last year’s trip – the snow, the Covid, the everything. I was organised, my excel sheet was planned out and it was going to be great!

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With one picture… you know you’re in Austria and not Australia when… you have to sign this permission slip at daycare

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permission slip nuclear

What is it, you ask? It’s a daycare approval form. But not any kind of approval form that you’d see in Australia.

It’s asking for approval from us, as parents, that in the event of a nuclear accident (yes, like Chernobyl), daycare is allowed to administer iodine tablets, which apparently prevent radioactive iodine from being absorbed by the thyroid gland which leads to thyroid cancer.

So… sure! Yes please, I will sign said form. Because as much as it seems ridiculous to me coming from Australia, I guess better safe than sorry! And let’s hope we never have to worry about it.

With one picture… you know you’re in Austria and not Australia when… you can drive to Europe’s No. 1 Bordershop in half an hour

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bordershop

Since I’ve been driving every week to swim in Slovenia (which is another key way I know I’m in Austria and not Australia), I’ve been regularly going back and forth across the border. And the slogan of the shop next to the border caught my eye. Not just any old Bordershop… but Europe’s NUMBER 1!

So what did I do? I stopped and went in. And I took a photo… which the random people in the car park thought I was mad for doing but I did it anyway. I wanted to see what was inside. And what did I find? Well… embarrassingly, exactly what I should have assumed. It’s simply a smaller duty-free section of the airport… just not in the airport.

Turns out it’s not trying to claim to be the single number one shop in Europe, but is simply using the slogan of the chain of bordershops. Which are, apparently, the number one in Europe. So, I guess the marketing got me on this one. But hey, all I can say is, I’ve been there… have you?

Emergency pack in my car – what’s in it

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Survival pack for overnight in car

The other day when I was trying to fit everything in the boot of my car I came across my emergency kit. And it made me laugh. Because in retrospect it seems stupid that I thought I’d need it. But back then, the panic was real.

Driving to work takes me about 50 minutes, over a mountain range that is notorious for heavy snow in the winter. And when I first moved to Austria I had no idea what that meant. I was sure I’d heard stories of people being trapped on Autobahns overnight during particularly bad weather, and I was sure it would happen to poor, inexperienced, always-cold Debbie.

So, I created my own emergency pack. Here’s what’s in it:

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Gravy Day

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Roast lamb

“It’s the 21st of December… and now they’re ringing the last bells.”

This is a quote from iconic Aussie singer, Paul Kelly, whose song ‘How to make gravy’ has become an iconic Aussie Christmas song.

Interestingly, when my brother and I first heard the song, we found part of it humorous (‘…remember the last one, what was his name again…’ damn I can hear my bro laughing from here), and that’s how this song ended up in the ‘Funnies’ category on my iPod.

In actual fact, the song is quite sad, told from the point of view of a guy in prison on the 21st of December, thinking about his family and the Christmas celebrations he’ll miss. But where does the gravy come in, you ask? Well, he’s the guy that always made the gravy for the Christmas Day roast, hence the lyrics: Who’s gonna make the gravy… bet it won’t taste the same.

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