Eating in Austria...

Mom, dad and I went in Melk for one day, and after our tour of the Abbey and walking around the town, we were a bit tired and looking for something to eat. We spotted a nice restaurant that looked like it had a pleasant atmosphere so we checked the menu and stepped in. I asked the waitress who was right inside the door if we could have lunch, and she told us that the non-smoking section was up the stairs in the back. That wasn't a problem since we are not smokers. So, we hoofed it up the stairs, past the reception area of the hotel that shared the building, past a kiddie play area, past the bathrooms, and on upwards to the "non-smoking" section. When we saw the wine glasses and cloth napkins, it had a decidedly different feel than what we spotted street side. We weren't exactly sure what to do, but we were seated and that was that. After looking at the menu and the prices, we decided that lunch wasn't something that we wanted to eat at this restaurant so we just ordered cakes and drinks.

We sat there for quite a while, with not many others in the restaurant, and wondered why on earth it could take that long for some cokes, deserts and coffee. We contemplated getting up and leaving since we really hadn't wanted to eat there in the first place. I'd never left a restaurant after ordering. I thought, "Could someone really do that? Would they see us? You can't do that... can you? I supposed since my mom and dad thought it was ok then it was an option right?" Wouldn't you know it, just as we were getting enough courage, the food came, so we were stuck. We ate quickly and left to head back through town and catch the train.

On the train on the way back we met a nice girl who was about my age - just a bit older - who was teaching in Vienna. She was with her mom, a Minnesota native who raised the daughter in Oregon. We chatted about teaching abroad, as she just came from teaching in Dubai and had attended a similar recruiting fair for international jobs. She is a runner and has competed in international marathon and half marathons. It was nice to talk with someone who felt many of the same frustrations that I do in teaching in a foreign country. Though, she pointed out that after experiencing what we do over here, it'd be even harder to return to the US to teach. Yikes... I guess mentally I've been preparing for the return for a while, but it will really be a different experience being back in the classrooms of the US.

After we got back to Vienna, we decided to head to a restaurant recommended to us that happened to be near our hotel. It was situated in a green house and was beautiful to walk into after a cold day out side. There were huge palm trees and other foliage that seemed out of place in December in Vienna. We were lucky to find a table as it was Saturday night, and quite busy for dinner time. After we sat down and got situated tucked in between two quite populated tables chock full of children, high chairs and winter coats piled up, we took a look at the menu. I had my backpack with me since we came from the train, and struggled to get comfortable with all my winter gear surrounding me. Once we had a minute to look at the menu we realized that there wasn't really any food there, it was mostly drinks and desserts... which incidentally is what we had already eaten for lunch. We looked at each other, I grabbed my coat and started re-assembling myself and as soon as we were collected, we scooched between the high chairs, winter coats and strangers and bolted for the door. Strike two on eating in Austria. We got a large bratwurst at the stand near out hotel and we called it a night.

The next day, we headed out to some of the Christmas markets, (pictures in the next post) and tried YET again to have a nice lunch after a cold morning of wandering around. We stopped at a bustling cafe near the main Rathaus Christmas Market. We had plenty of time to sit and enjoy a nice lunch so this seemed like the place to be. We asked for a table for three, and patiently waited for our turn. After about 5 minutes, the host said we should follow another man to our table. The second man told us to stop and check our coats, and wouldn't let us move to our table until we had. Um... ok. Never been FORCED to check my coat at a restaurant before (just at church on Christmas) but okay. We were seated and waited. And waited. I decided that I would get up and go get some menus because there was a lot going on, and we'd been skipped in terms of being "greeted" by our waiter. I grabbed the menus, and noticed immediately that they were in German. I must have missed the "English" menus, so when he stopped - ever so briefly- at our table I asked if he had the menus in English, and he pointed sharply to my menu and said "you have it." I looked and the English was at the back and I hadn't noticed it yet. After the waiting, coat check issue and our waiter, we AGAIN got up and left. I couldn't believe how we had such bad luck trying to just EAT in the country. Ugh. Thankfully we were only about 200 meters from a McDonalds - so Ronald saved the day.