Everyone who has ever lived abroad will tell you that culture shock is real--that no matter how fabulous your location, your new neighbors, or the local cuisine, at some point you will break down and absolutely loathe your new culture. I totally agree--and maybe it'll only be for half an hour and I'll move on, or I could spend months despising every person I see on the street...and their snooty dog too. We haven't spent winter in Vienna yet, so I'm not even going to try to predict my inevitable fate with culture shock, but let me tell you--it'll probably have something to do with grocery shopping.
This topic is a well-worn path in my mind. I think about how we are going to get food into the house (or keep too much food from getting in the house) WAY too much. Back in the states I shopped for weeks (and sometimes months) at a time...I bought everything I could in bulk...and then passionately started buying exclusively local. I was all over the place! And my cooking was too: everything from the artery-clogging Pioneer Woman diet to John's rice-and-veggies gallbladder diet...and let's not forget the smoothie-filled cleanses sprinkled in there. I believe erratic is the word you're searching for. But one thing is certain: food is an obsession of mine, whether its creating a culinary piece of art, a heaping plate of soul food, or ensuring my body is fueled at it's optimal level.
At the moment, we're focusing a lot more on the health aspects of our diet than we are taste (not that I would ever admit to making something unpalatable.) This means there are a LOT of fruits and veggies cycling through our kitchen. And the good news is that this is something I feel the Austrians support: consuming large amounts of produce, particularly in the form of snack foods is the norm here. Buy a bucket of apricots to sustain you between meals for the next two days, but don't expect them to last longer than that. Produce here only lasts a few days, tops, before it starts to turn. I'm assuming this is because it's being picked a lot closer to full ripeness, so I'm not going to complain.
Except (oh, you so knew it was coming anyway) this means: frequent trips to the grocery store. *insert horror film shrieking here* For a while I was actually trying to be organized--to make only a few trips to the store in a week...but I got tired of finding fruit flies in my kitchen, so we've begun a new process that is, surprisingly, working very well.
Enter: ten minute grocery trips. Please note, this would NEVER work in the states, but I like it well enough that I'm going to make you all jealous anyway. To begin with, the closest grocery store to our apartment is tiny--smaller than most small convenience stores that dot the red paved roads back home in Arkansas...see what I'm sayin'? If someone spent more than ten minutes in the place, they'd probably think you were casing the joint; there isn't ten minutes worth of product to look at. But I love it.
At our little Billa, the ladies know me...and they all like me (or at least don't openly despise me) which is an amazing feat for this city. They also like the girls and know their names (pick your jaw off the floor). So, here's the deal: every morning I decide what we're eating for dinner that night, after Bailey and are ready for the day and have read enough books together for the morning, we cross the street to go buy ingredients for dinner and extra produce for snacks. The ladies working there jibber jabber with Bailey in German...she replies in English...I grab my 2-10 items, check out and leave. Done. Check. Move on with the day...preferably to a playground where The Bear can run wild.
Some days it still feels like a chore, but for the most part, this has simplified our lives incredibly. And I think it's also noteworthy to point out that I'm spending less money at the grocery store this way: I'm motivated to buy as little as possible on each trip because I don't want to be in
the store any longer than I have to...I'm not casually stopping for
impulse purchases. At home, I'm not wasting rotted produce or buying ingredients in advance that go to waste when I end up changing my menu plan. I also haven't seen sight of a delivery guy in a long time--since it's a daily habit to go to the store, I'm never stuck at 6pm with two crabby kids wondering what's for dinner.
But I'll go ahead and repeat: we haven't made it through a Viennese winter yet. We'll see if spending the mornings binge-eating baked goods and plotting delivery pizza dinners are more appealing when I'm in the throes of seasonal depression. But for the moment, I'll give up what I was sure would be my Culture Shock breaking point...High five, Austrians. You win this one.
But, don't think it means I've given up trying to make you smile.
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