Rules

Budapest, Hungary – Vienna, Austria; via Bratislava, Slovakia

First off, it was a great week with our girls. 

Above all else, I guess I would have to say that seeing the girls sparked some homesickness. Or, more accurately, seeing the girls leave sparked some homesickness. 

Which I guess is good timing – because we are kind of reaching the home stretch. Essentially three phases remaining: Vienna to Helsinki; British Isles; and then New York City to Minneapolis. But, of course, once we reach New York I think we’ll feel like we’re home again. 

And that probably brings me to today’s topic. Vienna and its rules. We’re going to skip the play-by-play from the last week – but here’s a quick summary:

The Danube bike path is nice for a while, but it gets kind of flat – and there aren’t that many towns along the way. But whatever. We were with the girls and had a lovely time together.

Bratislava was strangely great. And everything is perfect in Austria and Vienna, but boy does it feel like there are a lot of rules . . .

Vienna itself is amazing. I guess I knew that the Austrian empire was headquartered here. And I’ve always understood Vienna to be the capital of classic music in the world. But I had never really put together what that meant. 

Seeing it these past few days, I’ve been struck by the magnitude of the wealth that must have been focused in this place. Huge palaces.

Dramatic churches. They even dug a new channel for the Danube River after it flooded. 

But I can’t help feeling like it’s a weird place. 

You know those movies that show some dystopian type world where everything is perfect. Usually in some new subdivision in the suburbs. I never saw it – but my sense is Smile was kind of like that. Or 1984. Everything is great – as long as you don’t paint outside the lines.

That’s kind of how Vienna feels to me. There are bike lanes everywhere. There is no garbage anywhere. As far as I can tell, there are no poor people. Everything seems perfect. 

Except I kind of get the willies in Austria. It just feels like I’m going to violate some rule and get hauled off to an interrogation by some Fraulein. 

Diana and I always laugh about a Fraulein that we encountered years ago – on our Eurail Trip in college. We were taking an overnight train – I think from Italy to Germany or Austria. We had a little sleeper car and we were slumbering away pretty good. 

But then, out of nowhere we hear: 

“MORGEN!”

We look up, and this rather large Fraulein was scowling at us. 

I’m not sure we’ve ever been so scared . . .

Apparently we had overslept our welcome . . .

Our tour guide, Mario, kind of reinforced this line of thinking. He told us that there is a “complaining” app in Vienna. You register your complaint through the app, and then a little work order is created – along with a little red dot on the app’s map of the city. For instance, you might complain that there are a few bricks missing from the sidewalk, or that the swing set at the park is broken, or maybe that your neighbor is being loud. 

Once your complaint is registered, Austria’s army of efficiency goes to work. Usually the complaint is resolved within a few hours – and then the little dot turns green. Apparently there are hundreds of complaints every day . . . 

Then he related a little story that kind of brought it all home. A man with dementia drove off with the family car. He ended up calling his wife in a panic – asking where he was. The wife called the police. The police talked to the husband with dementia but couldn’t figure out where he was.

The solution? They told him to lay on the horn and keep honking. Within a minute they knew exactly where he was because all the neighbors had called in to complain. 

I think we almost generated a complaint ourselves. After a long day of roaming the city we arrived back at our Airbnb with the girls at about 10:30. We decided to watch a quick episode of The Office before going to bed. All good.

Except that about half way through we heard what sounded like a phone ringing. After a minute we realized that it was coming from within the apartment – some kind of doorbell. I run over and peer out. Another Fraulein. In her bathrobe.

“You are too loud!”

We turned it down, but I spent the rest of the show worried that the Austrian gendarmes were on their way . . .

In the end, we managed to escape without issue, but there’s just something that I don’t trust about all this perfection. 

Oh, here’s the other thing. The traffic lights. There are about a billion of them, which is fine, I guess. The problem is that the Austrians never go early. Even if there are no cars in sight anywhere they all just stand there and wait.

It’s disturbing.

Because they all do it. And when everyone does it, it makes it really hard to be the one to cross on red. Of course, Diana doesn’t care. Even if there were a hundred Austrians waiting at the light, Diana would cross anyway. Doesn’t bother her a bit. Which is hard for me, because she’s goading me on: “We can go . . .” – but I’m frozen in place because I don’t want to go against the grain . . . And I definitely don’t want to be on the complaint radar . . .

And then there was our shopping adventure.

We arrived in Vienna Sunday afternoon. We had an Airbnb with a kitchen so we thought we would cook dinner. But when we looked there were exactly two grocery stores open: an Arabic place, and Billa, a local chain store. No problem. We’ll just go to Billa because we figured it would be more likely to have what we needed…

We followed Google Maps. When we arrived at the location where Billa was supposed to be, we didn’t see a grocery store – only a big train station. After a few minutes of confusion we managed to find the store – inside the station. Kind of strange, but whatever.

Skipping ahead … Diana assigns me to find frozen peas – I guess because she thought this would be a task I could handle. I’m feeling good because this does, indeed, feel like something I can do. I run to the back of the store. I spot the frozen food case. I see the frozen peas. This is easy!

Then I notice the chain across the whole case. And the sign saying: “Not for Sale.”

Umm. This is a grocery store . . .

I see an employee and ask if he knows English. He doesn’t. Regardless, I start muttering about needing to buy peas. Another guy, a customer, hears me and says that the peas are not for sale because it’s Sunday.

What?!?

So somehow I failed to procure peas.

Later we discovered that Austria does not allow grocery stores to be open on Sundays, but there is a small exception for grocery stores in train stations. Thus the odd location.

I guess the idea is to protect employees from having to work on Sundays. Never mind that only 3.1% of Austrians attend church at all. And I guess Austria doesn’t care about the employees at the Arabic grocery stores.

Oh, and the frozen foods. What I understand is that Austria is willing to give the train station exception, but only for immediate needs. Frozen stuff needs to be purchased on Monday…

Another little point here… Apparently we weren’t the only ones wanting groceries on Sunday. Entering the store was like going into a concert or a play or something. There were literally about ten people per second coming through the door. It was crazy!

And then there is some actual bad stuff. Like the fact that Austria voted to join Nazi Germany and was a full-on partner in all the horror of the war. Different time. Different people. But it’s hard to get past the horror of it all. And for me it’s hard to divorce all this rule following from what happened back then – it seems to me that rule following led to some pretty awful things.

Enough complaining.

We ended up meeting my old high school friend Andreas, and his wife, Lena, last night, after the girls left. I have super good memories of our year together back then. We were on the ski team together. We were not good skiers, but somehow our team made it to the State competition – I think the first time South had made it to State – maybe ever. Moments of togetherness like that are irreplaceable.

But that was not the high point for Andreas. He is now the CEO of the East European region of the World Wildlife Fund. He’s doing some amazing work helping save the world and its wildlife.

It was great to catch up, meet his wife, get a tour of the city, and ride with him today.

I guess that’s today’s real theme. Our trip has been great, but in the end it’s relationships with friends and family that make our world go around.

Postscript.

We had another “rules” encounter this morning. We’re biking along when Diana sees a tree full of fruit in the right of way along the road. Turns out to be little yellow plums – perfectly ripe. We stop to pick a few. We put the bikes down, cross the street and …

“NYET!!!!!!!”

Much more fierce than the fräulein on the train.

And then a string of Czech. Very angry.

It’s a woman in a passing car. She’s yelling out the window and gesturing for us to go back to our bikes. She’s furious.

She finally drives off because cars are piling up behind her.

We pick a handful of plums and we’re heading back to our bikes – but before we can cross over the road she’s back again. Same thing. More gesturing. More anger. She finally leaves, but not before giving us a verbal onslaught like nothing we’ve seen on this whole trip.

The plums were good, but my goodness…

Turns out you are not allowed to pick fruit from the public right of way along roads in the Czech Republic.

Lesson learned. Another rule.

Love this area – but these are not my people…