What’s the difference between an Austrian and a German?

The German says: The situation is serious but not hopeless.

The Austrian says: The situation is hopeless but not serious.

 

Evviva, Italia!!!!

Vaaaaai, prenditi un esempio dalla signora Berlusconi, divorzati!!!!!

While I passed a lot of time with organisational administration stuff that is really boring the sun was coming out here in Vienna and has been staying with us for 3 weeks now… It is 2 weeks that I am able again to walk up and even down the stairs, something I had not done for more than two months now. I get ambitious and want to go back to my dancing training as soon as possible. Because of all the work I and my knee I was a very well-behaved girl, went never out and lived on a diet the last time. This weekend però…. I tell you… I recompensed everything. It was too awesome!!!! With strong italian reinforcement I made important further steps in conquering this city… and all its cafés….

 

see yourself:

 

it is forbidden to take photos of the paintings...

 

 

but you can take pictures of the mirrors in Schloss Belvedere!

 

 

 

white sounds

 

 

...and how to become part of it

 

 

 

fashion victim

 

 

 

window shopping perfection

 

 

red and green

 

No title (a fuzzy photo that means happiness to me)

 

happiness

Gruppenfoto

Nice perspective, he?

and they are all mine…

...aller guten dinge sind drei!

 

…and what should I do with it now? Any ideas?

 The one who gives me the best idea will win a postcard of Vienna and two apple-stickers!!!! Come on guys!!!!

talking about art…

 

...takes the whole body

Dear god, please give me an aura that protects me from pest, cholera,  jealousy and flatmates. And can’t we make an agreement? Like that having a spoon of the good tuscan olive oil from my friend Stefan makes this aura thicker? And that in moments when I cross my two biggest toes it gets a double layer? We can, can’t we? 

Thank you!

 

detail of the newly restored fresco of the Karlskirche in Vienna, constructed around 1730 as a prayer for help against pestilence

5 things I like about here

1. the austrian self-ironic humour

(in Italy “fare bella figura” is everything, so noone risks a joke that might make himself look ugly. This here is a refreshing difference!)

2. the good tap water

(a) you don’t have to carry heavy bottles at home, (b) it tastes that good that you can drink it in masses and (c) you even get it for free as much as you want in the coffee houses, so that you can choose your drink for pleasure and taste and get the additional water for the thirst.

3. Kaffeehäuser – coffee houses

(they are huuuuuge chambers, you can pass hours there, they are places for chilling, enjoying, having sacher cake and hot chocolate or for showing your new dress)

 

mmm, what should we go for today???

 

4. the special spirit – sometimes you might think someone just turned back the clocks and

I swear, I have the feeling Freud would just come around…

5. the smell of horse shit that sometimes comes to your nose when you pass by in city center…

p.s.

Yesterday I forgot to add some of my examples for my italian-austrian confusion:

I realize that I divide my meal into several dishes

Vienna, a street, no car in sight, red traffic lights for pedestrians: One is crossing the street, 30 people are waiting. Guess, who is that one.

I cross the streets also when there are no traffic lights and I get shocked about the cars that push on the gas instead of the break. In Italy they would break and shout out of the window that I was a “deficiente!” “stronza!” “biondina”, a blond stupid a…. I was already used to it. All of a sudden I get more fear over here than in the chaotic Florence!

I am not used to the hectic rush at the paying desks in the supermarket any more. You have to show how much you are organized, that you make it to let your bought disappear in your bag within seconds, so that you are ready to leave the space for the next customer immediately after you paid the bill. It totally stresses me.

About three times a week I end up in front of closed doors. Shops close at 6 p.m. (yes, seems like kinder garden, should I also go to bed at ninish?) supermarkets at 7 p.m….

 

I try to remember myself how often I found the shops closed in Italy. There at 1 p.m., because I always forgot that they have a lunch break-siesta.

transition 3

 

"Florentiner" meets "Sachertorte"... hard to digest!

 

So I am here. Vienna. Austria. It takes some time to fully get it.

I arrived and I admit it: When I entered my warmly heated apartment I breathed a sigh of relief:

I do not have to cook water to fill my hot water bag before going to bed. When I wake up I walk to the bath room in pyjamas without getting dirty or cold. I sleep with one simple cover like ever. I go out and feel the fresh cold air in my face that I like so much in the winter. I do not wear 3 layers of pants and long underwear that make me feel like being back in the times of pampers. I wear less and do not feel cold. I do not have these stressful shocks of cold and warmth that I always got in Italy because it was cold like hell inside and too warm outside…  the sticky sweat on my body or in my hair because I was wearing a lot of stuff to accumulate the heat of my body. Of course, this house is about 40 years old, and not 600… And I enjoy its comfort and the daylight that comes in by the big windows. I watch the skyline, the heaven over the city that I missed so much in Florence in the beginning.

I watch the telly – German news wow! – laying on a beanbag without any additional keep-me-warm-equipment. It’s been a year that I did not see a vacuum cleaner. You can walk around barefoot or in socks over here. In those times in Italy I nearly lost the feeling for my own body.

In Italy I once said the sentence: “The only moment when I really feel the most relaxed is when I am on my bike. What a pity that I cannot sleep riding on my bike!”

Here I feel relaxed. Too relaxed actually. All of a sudden I sleep up to 11 or 14 hours each night, for the first ten days. I have difficulties in waking up. I am used to an inside temperature of 16° C during day, 12°C in the night. Over here the heating system keeps the apartment continuously at 23,5° day and night and I feel close to a collapse.

Full of joy I put all the stuff I could not have in my supermarket trolley: marmalade, müsli.

Of course I gonna have breakfast now again. The marmalade is that tasty that I finish the whole glass of it within one week. Not that there is no marmalade in Italy: There is just no brown bread with caraway and aniseed to put it on.

But some things go wrong. Actually I do not feel hungry when I wake up in the morning. I feel unable to eat more than a cookie. So I eat my marmalade bread after dinner. You know when? Something like 9.30, 10 p.m. My mum calls me – yup, I do have a telephone in the house now… how luxurious that seems all of a sudden! – , telling me that they just got home from the birthday dinner of my uncle. “Mama? It is ten past nine and you come home from dinner? That’s the time you should start it!!!!”

I get crazy. In Italy I always had problems in adapting myself to the common rhythm. We were doing group projects in school, working in the evenings. Everyone got hungry at nine, just me between 7 and 8. I was invited for dinner and felt unable to eat. I was told that I was inapt for living a partnership because I could not share my meal at the right hour sometimes. Damn, I was just eating when I felt hungry, who can control the own body that much??? Over here, all of a sudden I realize, that I actually had adapted myself, step by step, during the whole last year. And now, that I feel the Italian eating schedule in my body, I have to change again.

My first day, when I sit in the hospital and people ask me quick questions, I just answer spontaneously with “si” “no” and “grazie”. The first days I sometimes hold on: They speak German around me! In the supermarket I smile when I see that I can get the same juice and I buy the same balsamico like in the Esselunga in Italy. And I even miss the bidet. But don’t worry I remember how to wash my best parts without it.

 

The first day, just after having arrived I watch in the mirror. All of a sudden I think that I am beautiful and I realize that this was also something that I had not felt for a whole year: I always felt ugly. Strangely when I look back at the photos of this year I do not know why because I look good, normal, like I am, happy, concentrated, tired, stressed, relaxed… and yes, also beautiful.

In Italy I got the wild-card of the exotic beauty, but I never was beautiful. The good thing was that I never had to look at myself and that I had a lot of beautiful people around to look at.

 

Vienna is a lot more diverse and I like that. I always feel better in places where there is a larger range of different kinds of people because it makes me think that there also must be a place for me. The fact that it is in the south of the German-speaking countries is an advantage to me. I can say “Grüß Gott” (“Greet God”) like I am used to as a Bavarian, something that I stopped saying when I lived in Stuttgart and Basel the last 10 years, where people are used to say “Guten Tag” (“Good day”). I can continue to say “ciao” and the Viennese people answer with “ba-ba” which is their beautifully austrianized variation of the English “bye-bye”.

 

In my first days at my new home, where I also have an internet connection – no 20-minutes ride on my bike any more only for a chat on skype – I read back all the articles about Berlusconi and Italy, this time in German and out of the perspective of the foreign press. What can I say? At least there are some voices that speak out what’s going on. But what it means for the 59 million people in that country… the question how it will go on… I do not have words.

 

I don’t want to forget my Italian

I want to import some Italian spirit in here

I miss you, my Italian friends

Italy, you were exhausting for my body but balm for my soul

I learned a lot this year and I will give me some time to digest it…

 

Now I am here. Vienna.