Stadtlaufen

 Saturday was the 27th International Waidhofner Stadtlauf Footrace and, despite a fairly steep registration fee to pay just for the right to run in a big circle four times, it was a real blast.



The weather was fantastic and I'd never seen so many people out on the streets.  What's more, all of the runners earned free sausage and rolls at the finish line, which I thought was much cooler than the bananas and Kool-Aid you get at the end of an American race.*  We also got a sweet bag full of snacks, toothpaste, and a lighter (not sure what message that combination of goodies was trying to communicate).

Me, castle door in background



The course itself was 6.1km and consisted of four laps around the city, during which you cross the Ybbs River twice and climb the so-called Badberg once (the "Berg" does not live up to its name and reputation and, in fact, barely qualifies as a hill).



The children featured on the event's
poster do not reflect the actual
ferocity of the competition.



Despite the multicultural sounding title of the event, I'm pretty sure that my friend Luke and I were the only foreigners in attendance.  In fact, we were disappointed that "Fastest Foreigners" wasn't a category, since we certainly would have taken first and second.  I also thought that special prizes should have been given out to anyone brave enough to hit up the castle/nightclub event the night before and still race despite the hangover. Massive shiny trophies would have made a nice, if difficult to bring home, souvenirs. 

After the run and the sausages came the Siegerehrung, or awards ceremony, which you had to sit through to reach the Tombola, or raffle, which was clearly rigged to favor the Austrians in attendance.

*Interestingly, I also found out recently that Austrians get red wine instead of cranberry juice after giving blood.  Typisch.

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."