austrians and their trash

22. dezember          

           

               somehow…lost in translation…I guess I agreed to serve as the responsible for the konto (account). yes. that means bookkeeping, receipt tracking, banking, and the like. Tonight we decided there was no better time than now to do the accounting because it was almost to the end of two weeks and we wanted to do it before Christmas. well, lets just say its all much more complicated than I thought: two different people, different lengths of time in Vienna, with two different sources of money, and of course…missing receipts (it was really my fault…I completely forgot we had to keep every like train ticket we bought and remember who bought what).

            ok, I’m not sharing this with you to vent frustration…I’m getting to the point…which only some of you will get. If you have never lived in Austria, you will not understand this.

            For those of you who have lived in Austria…remember the garbage police? (yes, they really exist…in some towns worse than others…) Remember all the hassle you had to go through to make sure ALL of your trash was correctly separated between plastic, paper, metal, white glass, colored glass, restmüll, and bio and then collected in the right color plastic garbage bag and disposed of in the correctly colored and labeled garbage bin? And how if you got a little lax during the week and threw it all together, come garbage day you had to sort through all the slimy banana peels, used Kleenex, Milka wrappers, and coffee grinds, wasting an hour or so playing with your garbage. And sometimes you had to dismantle one empty yogurt container in order to appropriately separate the metal, plastic, and paper parts? And what about batteries or spent razor blades…are they metal? are they plastic? can you flush them down the toilette so you don’t get fined for putting them in the wrong trash bin? Yes, recycling is very good, but I’ve never experienced a garbage system quite like that found in Austria. Monika has been trying to help us adjust to this little factor of Austrian life but Alina and I have been having a horrible time. (I hope Monika doesn’t get any fines in the mail). Lets just say I’m not used to spending this much time thinking about what exactly a milch carton is made out of.          

            So what does this have to do with becoming a banker? Well, due to our inability to keep receipts, Alina and I spent most of the time doing the accounting on the floor by the garbage as we periodically rummaged through the paper bin. When we were all finished, cleaning up the mess of garbage on the floor I looked at the bin of bio-trash (banana peels, tea bags, rotten lemons, apple cores, coffee grinds, etc.) and breathed a sigh of relief that we only had to rummage through paper. Alina looked at me and said…”Now I completely understand Austrians.”

             on another note…we have spent yesterday and today baking…and probably will still be baking tomorrow. Desiring to show our gratitude and love to our friends here in Wien, especially those including us in their families for their Christmas traditions, we have embarked on an Austrian baking journey...

1. of course our first batch had to be MOHN cookies!

2. I put a block of butter in the microwave for one minute and it came out with a heart. I swear I didn't do this myself!

deutsch baking

3. the Austrian Christmas Cookie cookbook was a present from Alina when I first arrived in Vienna…so sweet right!! But here’s the catch—its all in German. So please note the kompaktworterbuch (a dictionary) right next to the cookbook. There’s a clue that this was no ordinary day in the kitchen. I don’t know how we survived, but with a dictionary, internet, and youtube we somehow managed. 

marshmallow holly

4. The green globs are my viennese attempt at an american christmas 'delicacy' always enjoyed by my family…Marshmallow Holly. (1 part marshmallow, 1 part butter, 1 part corn flakes, a lot of green food coloring, and three red hot candies) The Austrians loved them (which really surprised me!), but the marshmallows broke the bank, so even though I have gotten many requests for more, I have to wait for my mom to ship me marshmallows from the US before I can feed the hungry austrian masses.