As stated in previous the previous post, this post will be about some of my frustrations with my living situation in Austria. My first frustration is given away by the title.
They only sell milk 1L at a time.
A gallon of milk has 3.79 liters in it. So basically a forth of a gallon is what I can pick up every single time I go to the grocery store. I therefore go to the supermarket every two days, often my trip is just for milk. Now you might be thinking, Alexis just buy more than 1 at once. However, this presents the problem of having one mini fridge for three girls who all cook. If I have two milks in the fridge at once, one of them should normally be finished within 24 hours of putting the second one in out of courtesy to the other girls.
So with the lack of space in the fridge, I basically get to the grocery store every day, definitely every other day. Now if most people have to do this, you think the stores would have good hours. However, they have really terrible hours in my opinion.
The average store has the following hours
Monday through Friday: 8 am to 7 pm
Saturday:8 am to 6 pm
Sunday: Closed
This is really frustrating to me, and it bothers me all the time. First off I always seem to have to skimp on my milk usage on the weekend knowing I want milk for Monday morning and won’t be able to go to the store on Sunday. Second, it seems like I can never get things on a whim. For example, the other day I got off the tram (coming back from a late course) at 7:42 pm. I quickly rushed over to the supermarket that has a little better hours than the rest to see if I could just get a snack to help my late night studying. No, it had closed at 7:30 pm. In Charleston, I would often not get to go to the grocery store until 8pm after I had completed my work for the day and created a grocery list, but here putting off grocery shopping until the end of the day can never happen.
These hours are not the only thing that I dislike about the grocery stores. I also really dislike the lines. First, you must bag your own groceries (now I have way more respect for baggers at my home store), and second you are constantly getting glared at while doing it. If you are not finished packing your groceries within 10 seconds of the cashier telling you how much you owe, people start tapping their feet. Ok, I am overdramatizing it a little, however, it is true you do get glares and in general I am super stressed out in the grocery line. It makes me wish for when you get the really really slow lines in America and get frustrated because it is so slow. Also you have to pay for your grocery bags, but they are much sturdier than ours and you can always bring your own.
Back to the store hours topic, hours in general for businesses and shops in Austria are this way. The college offices are all only opened from 8am to 12 pm Monday through Friday, and the gym I can go to also closes really early Mondays and Fridays it closes by 3 and it isn’t open on the weekends. It is open later Tuesday through Thursday, but it still makes it hard to go to the gym or to get into any of the campus offices if you have classes in the morning during the week.
My next complaint has to be with the laundry. I hate that I pay a full two euros every time I do laundry. The machines are all pretty old, and you always have to complain your dryer didn’t work and get refunded to try again and again until you have dry clothes. It is nice they refund you, but it is also a pain because doing a load of laundry can take up to 4 or 5 hours.
Those are the biggest complaints that come to mind at the moment, however, I am missing a decent amount of things at this point. I am missing my car (I don’t really need it here) I just travel a half hour to go to a bible study every week and then a half hour back. In a car it would take like 8 minutes, but the public transit is much slower than that. I also think the prices of the trains here are not comparable to using a car sometimes. From linz to munich a one way discounted ticket ( as a student) costs 42 euros, it would take a little less time driving (2.5 hours) which in terms of american gas prices would mean $25 (18 euros) for gas. It might be comparable with the gas prices here, but in my mind it is practically double the cost and longer to travel the same distance with the train instead of a car. Other things I miss are silly like cheez its or the fact when you buy a pack of cookies you get at least 24 (unless there milano’s). Here when you buy a pack of cookies you always get around 12. The packaging is the same size, but they lay them on their backs instead of their sides. My first time opening a pack I felt ripped off. I also hate the fact that ziplocs are impossible to find here, and everything that comes in a handy resealable package in the U.S. doesn’t come in one here. I have come up with some very interesting ways of trying to keep things like cheese for my sandwiches and meat for my sandwiches from drying out.
I know that isn’t a very varied list, however, it is all I can think of at the moment. As I encounter more annoyances (that I wasn’t expecting, there were certain things I was expecting like tiny drinks with no ice and no refills) I will try and disperse them throughout my posts.
Here’s to cultural differences 🙂 Until next time, I should be going somewhere in Czech on Sunday with my roommate’s and one of my roommate’s boyfriend. If I have time to write about it before I leave for Italy Thursday night I will.
Thanks for keeping me in your thoughts and prayers.
Abroad in Austria 