I said in the last entry that i wanted to include some interesting observations and so i though with nothing much else happening (school is good, i have the test for the german course tonight, shall be interesting, will really show how good i am, against how good i think i am!), why not start.
One seriously different aspect is meal time. Its not just that i am in a certain family and i can only reflect on their lives, this is common to the whole of �sterreich. Lunch is always together. In winter, lunch is the big meal. Everyone goes home and almost everything shuts down for lunch. Lunch is basically the Australian equivilant of dinner. There is always a soup to start off with. I have been told this isnt always the case in the Summer, but in Winter, definately. Soups vary, there is everything from a Gulachsuppe (Beef Goulash) to what is most common, which is a Kn�delsuppe. This is basically a beef broth with a type of kn�del in it, either semmel kn�dek (a bread dumpling) or leben kn�del (a liver dumpling) or the same beef broth with frittaten, which is my personal favourite, this is with chopped up pancakes, yum! This is followed by a salad. Sometimes the salad is served with the meal, sometimes by itself, it really depends. The salads vary as well. In Styria (or Stieirmark) in German, the region i am in, a very popular and common dressing is an oil made from sunflower seeds. this is quite commonly put on top of a sort of green small lettuce, not dissimilar from bunched english spinach, but i will find the name. Following that is a meal. There is usually meat, pork is very common, im not sure why exactly, put everywhere you go you find it. In some classy restaurants you can order wild animals, such as stag, moose, mountain goat, and even squirrel. These are always locally caught and very expensive, i ate elk at St Anton and it was seriously good! Potatoes (kartoffle) are usually served with other vegetables, but the food is very broad. Yes, it is true, kraut is served with almost everything. The two are rotkraut (red cabbage) and sauerkraut (sour cabbage). I still havent really got used to the amount of this that they eat! There are also many specialities such as Krapfen which is a donut like bun served only at the end of Karnival (on Faschings), and many different other things served at different times of the year. If there is one thing to notice about Austrian cooking, however, it is that you will not escape without having a serious amount of kn�del and kraut put into you. They seriously eat it by the bucketloads!
But some more interesting observations regarding food is that i rarely see a large person. In fact, hardly ever, im not sure exactly what it is, but they are not big people. I think the big meal in the middle of the day makes a lot more sense to start off with, but generally, Austrians are not as active as Australians (that said, the mercury doesnt really get high enough to bother in winter!), so im not really sure why that is. But one thing you must watch out for, is to always have your hand (the hand you arent eating with, visible. Like on the table and not behind your plate, it is so akward to eat like this, because it means you have to stoop over you food, but that is the tradition and it must be respected!
Paz