Back in the Sattel

You may be confused by what you see before you.  Maybe because you're looking for a blog about funny things that happen in Austria and this looks to be a blog about a cycling trip.  Maybe because you're looking for a blog about cycling and this blog is littered with comical umlaut words.  Maybe because you never understood those silly bikes with one big wheel in the front and one tiny wheel in the back.

On a bike, in Austria

To address these questions: this blog was originally intended to keep my friends and family apprised of my life as an English teacher in Austria and to offer unsolicited lessons in German vocabulary.  It was called "Scott's Fingerspitzengefuhl" - a pun that was amusing to German-speakers with low standards of amusement.  It has since been renamed "Scott's Sattelsitzengefuhl" - a made-up riff on the original title that translates to  "the feeling of sitting on bike seat."  As this is a feeling that will be setting the tone of my summer, I thought it would make an excellent title.

Beginning on June 19th, I will set off with 30 other young adults from Portland, Maine en route to Santa Barbara, California as a Trip Leader with the group Bike & Build, which organizes these rides as fundraisers for affordable housing groups across the U.S.  I'll post info about my trip up here as often as I can this summer, but for all you impatient information junkies, here is a barrage of links:

-You can find more info about my route, Maine to Santa Barbara, here
-You can read my official Bike & Build Biography here
-You can make a small, but significant donation to the cause here
-You can watch a GIF of a dog wrapping himself in a blanket here

Thanks for checking out the new blog and I hope that you will stop by again soon!

Austria: A Year by the Numbers

Number of cows I've been chased
by on a bike: 2

A numerical summary of 243 days in Europe. 

Countries visited: 12 (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Italy, Germany, Hungary, Greece, Slovenia, Croatia, England, Liechtenstein) 

Bordering countries visited: 7/8 (damn Switzerland!)

Austrian provinces visited: 8/9 (damn Carinthia!)

Degrees Celsius when I went swimming in the Danube: 5

Liters of beer consumed (est.): 170 (based on national average of 108.3)

Average number of ice cream cones per week: 3

Bikes ridden: 7

Reflective moments spent
overlooking Innsbruck: 1

  Metro systems used: 9

  Airplane trips: 2

  Train trips (est.): 86

  Trips to Vienna: 20

  Balls attended: 4

  Public restrooms begrudgingly paid  for: 1

  Number of hostels visited: 10

Number of nights spent in a hospital: 1

Number of nights not spent in a hospital: 242

Classes visited: 28

Lesson plans created: 90.4 MB

Students murdered: 0

Number of blog posts: 64

Books read: 11 German, 10 English

Free time during the week: lots

Number of chickens in my backyard: 3

Kilograms of stuff I'm allowed to bring back: 46

America vs. Europe - Grocery Store Edition

Dogs are theoretically forbidden
from Austrian grocery stores.

A recent trip inspired me to point out some of the more comical differences:

-Whereas American supermarkets are known for hiding the milk in the back of the store to make you walk past all of their other offerings, Austrian grocery stores are more likely to apply this principle to beer and wine.

-American grocery stores usually provide free and limitless shopping carts, while Austrian stores usually require a small deposit for each cart, presumably to discourage theft, although I think that anyone who really wants a shopping cart is willing to pay €.50 for it.  (Tip: Austrian shopping cart dispensers also take American coins!)

-America: 168 open hours per week. Austria: 72.  See: Gemütlichkeit.

-Produce in Austrian grocery stores often needs to weighed and labelled by the customer - a task that I think many Americans would be incapable of.  I myself have gotten majorly scolded for forgetting.

-Supermarkets in America often provide customers with free bagging service.  The lack of such a service in Austria has surely destroyed a potential job market for teenagers, ex-cons, retirees and other qualification-impaired individuals.

-Peanut butter here is 100% more expensive and you get weird looks for buying it.

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And for today's German lesson, I'd like to point out how amusing it is that the names of German meals can also be used as verbs, which is certainly not the case in English.  Thus, das Frühstück is "breakfast" and frühstücken is "to breakfast."

Sample Dialogue #8

In English class, during a presentation on fantasy vacations.

Student: I don't think we will have any problems in the Bahamas.
Scott: Do you think you will have any language problems?
Student: No, we can speak English really good.
Another student: Well!

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And in honor of the animal stickers from the grocery store that I've started collecting (yes, they are meant for kids), today's words of the day are some of my favorite animal names in German.  Das Stinktier is a skunk (literally, stink animal), das Faultier is a sloth (literally, lazy animal), and der Hundertfüßer is a centipede (literally, hundred legger).