Vienna is covered in thick white snow everywhere right now. It reminds me of my first winter here three years ago. Of course I blogged about it. Not to be arrogant, but I think this is one of the funniest posts every.
http://op-expat.com/2007/12/a-california-girls-first-real-christmas/
It’s interesting to observe the different relationship an American and Austrian employee has to his/her company.
Americans are very involved in their career. Moving around to different companies or even moving to different cities to further their career is very acceptable. Americans are loyal to their career, not to their company or co-workers. I can understand this mentality because American companies are not loyal to their employees at all. It’s just understood that if your company needs to cut your throat to get ahead, your company will not hesitate.
Austrians on the other hand are very loyal to the people that make up their company. They build strong friendships within the company.
An Austrian will say something like, “I don’t want to disappoint my co-workers.” An American will say something like, “I can’t underperform or I’ll lose my job.” Co-workers are not thought about because in the end, a co-worker is a competitor.
The Austrian way makes the days-to-day job easier. I like coming into work and interacting with my co-workers. It’s not so cut-throat.
Going green has never been more popular. The Austrians are especially good about utilizing nature in its rawest form to stay healthy, beautiful, and eco-conscious.
Through a friend, www.sourcenaturelle.eu came to my attention. A woman who is currently living in Vienna started it. What the company does is sell organic and natural cosmetics from Austria and Germany. All beauty products in their shop consist of 100% natural ingredients.
Hey, I see your eye-roll of doubt. Believe me, when I was told 100% natural ingredients I thought, “Yeah right. This is just another scam.”
I actually spoke with the founder of Source Naturelle. She’s a medical doctor who carefully screens all products before she accepts them for her company. As she said in her own words, she understands what the ingredients mean when she reads them. At least someone does, because I sure don’t!
The founder of Source Naturelle started out because she herself wanted to use products that only had 100% natural ingredients. Friends and family would ask her for advice and she knew she was on to a business idea.
If you are interested in beauty products that use only 100% natural ingredients, this is the place to trust. You’re actually getting exactly what is being promised to you.
So what do we expats get out of being expats? Why do we torture ourselves by leaving all that we know and all that we have worked to build in our lives to go live somewhere else? Well here’s a short list of the benefits.
Fresh start
Though a fresh start is tough because you start at ground zero, there are benefits to it. It allows you to try out stuff that people from your hometown might have said, “Impossible!” or “That’s just not you.” No one knows in your new destination what “you” means so no one really labels you. Yeah, I get labeled “the American” but no one here knows me well enough to say, “You’d just never do something like that.” Example. I was invited to a hockey game last week. When I told my LA friends what I did, there was stunned silence, then, “I can’t image you ever going to a hockey game.” See, no one from LA would have invited me!
Toughen up
You toughen up when you leave your comfort zone and live in a different country. You are assaulted with one challenge after the other and you just have to take care of it. Wanna complain about calling the cable company or going to the DMV? Hard day at work? Do all that in another language with different cultural rule that you might not be aware of. Once you defeat the challenges that an expat life throws your way, a lot of stuff just got ridiculously easier to handle.
Lifted to a higher level
When you are forced to learn a new language and a new way of life while still defending your cultural roots, you’re lifted to a higher level. You realize that there is no 1 way to do something. Isn’t that a revelation? That means when a challenge comes your way, you’ve got a ton of different options on how to handle it. You realize problems are a jigsaw puzzle with pieces you just have to move around until you get the right fit. Never again can something cage you in. Never again can someone say, “You can’t do that.” Your response is “I might not be able to do it like this, but let’s see what the options are.”
Mellow
You become a lot mellower when you are an expat. There is so much that you just have to roll with. Something happens and you blink in surprise for a moment. Then if you have enough practice you realize that you just have to shrug your shoulders sometimes and say “Whatever, I can roll with that.”
Yes, you CAN live without that
Brace yourselves people. I have no clothes dryer at home. I don’t have a bathtub (only shower). I only drive my car once a week (big words being from Los Angeles). There is no ocean nearby. And yet I manage to be happy with life here. Who would have thought that?
Being an expat comes with a lot of challenges, but the benefits are far greater.
Even though I have been in Vienna for three years now, this is my first true autumn.
The first year it rained like hell. I was so caught off guard that I actually went out and bought a pair of rubber boots. Needless to say, I no longer own those boots.
The second year was a really long summer that extended into October. Then it went from 22C down to 0C in three days.
But this year things seem to be going exactly like how I’ve seen in the movies. The days are sunny. The air is cool and crisp. The leaves are changing a gorgeous red, yellow and orange.
Oh by the way. Happy Halloween. No matter where you are in the world, go carve a pumpkin just for fun. I did.
I just got back from five days in Rome. I like to compare where I am currently living to anywhere I go to visit. Examples Nice vs. Vienna or Frankfurt vs. Vienna
Rome
The architecture is amazing. The huge size of buildings, one right after the other, continues to awe you. The intense beauty of the churches just makes you want to weep in appreciation. The fact that precious artwork is everywhere is staggering.
The people are really friendly. For a big city like Rome, you anticipate that the people will be a little cold, a little hard around the edges. Not the Romans. People helped us find our way. The waiters were efficient and patient. The sales people at stores helpful.
There were three downsides however. The first was the trash everywhere. It seems that people don’t have much respect for the Eternal City. Also the crowds were near unbearable. Anywhere you went there was an insane mass of people. Want to see any important sight? Stand in line or pay to get around it.
The third is the high price of food. So as not to eat ourselves poor, we ate breakfast at the hotel, had panini sandwiches while sitting in a piazza for lunch, and then went out to eat in a restaurant for dinner. This made our food budget manageable.
The basic impression of Rome is: Big buildings, nice people, but dirty.
Vienna
Vienna cannot compare to Rome on the size of its architecture. You don’t see any building that overwhelms you. Also Vienna’s churches in no way display the wealth and power of those in Rome.
Vienna has many museums, but does not house the masters the way Rome does around every corner. Often the Viennese museums borrow great works for an exhibition but don’t own any big names.
Also the Viennese as a people have a reputation, like the Parisians, of being rude and unfriendly. I still struggle with this unnecessary attitude even though I’ve been living here for three years. Remember people, a smile and a small helpful gesture doesn’t cost anything.
However Vienna is very affordable. No gouging the tourists with crazy high prices for hotels, food, or sightseeing. Vienna is not as popular a tourist destination as Rome, so no crowds of people and waiting in line.
Though Vienna is smaller in scale to Rome and doesn’t have the churches like Rome does, it has its own staggering beauty. The Inner City is so clean and beautiful that you could spend all day just looking at the pretty buildings and feel happy.
Overall Rome was fun to visit, but once again, I am happy to be living in Vienna.
I’m finally settled in as an expat in Vienna. One of the things that really helped me was establishing a small group of friends.
One friend in particular has really helped me out. She’s a native of Vienna and in typical Austrian style, once she decided it was okay to become my friend, she did it 100%.
One of my greatest joys is getting together with her for our little ritual breakfast. We get together on a Sunday whenever we both have time and have breakfast at the Cafe Sacher Vienna. It’s super cheesy and there are always tourists but we don’t care. We talk about everything under the sun as we enjoy our Viennese breakfast (coffee, a roll, a croissant with butter and jam).
I find having a simple ritual with a dear friend is one of the things that really helped settle me in Vienna.
Zotter is an Austrian chocolate company. It’s a bit of a secret because the company does not advertise. I discovered it by accident. I was at a grocery store called Spar Gourmet in Vienna and saw this chocolate with funny, eye-catching packaging. I bought a bar and tried it. I’ve been hooked ever since.
First, the quality of Zotter chocolate makes you wonder what the hell this Godiva crap is all about. Godiva?!?! Ha! Go-diva off a cliff. Zotter chocolate has a texture to it that makes you swoon. So smooth. And a flavor that is so powerful. You just place it on your tongue and let it melt. Heaven!
Second, Zotter only deals with organic and fair trade chocolate. Also, the company tries to be as local as possible. When Zotter can buy ingredients from Austria, it will.
Third, Zotter comes up with the craziest flavors. Raspberry coconut chocolate is divine. Olive oil and lemon chocolate is, no joke, surprisingly good. Beer chocolate was not okay. When I tried it, my eyes started to water with the cruelty of the nasty flavor and though I desperately looked for a way to spit out the offensive taste, I had no chance. Oh well, there is a price to pay sometimes for being adventurous.
Now to my great joy and amazement, I discovered two weeks ago that you can take a tour of the Zotter Chocolate Factory in Styria, Austria. It’s a 1.5 hour drive away from Vienna. For the price of €10 you take a tour and try, taste, drink, and eat chocolate until you think you’re going to die.
The tour starts with a video. Then you go through the entire factory with an audio guide. I have to admit, I only listened to my audio guide for about seven minutes. The entire time I was distracted by the heady smell of chocolate and could only think, bring on the chocolate! And boy did they ever.
It was one chocolate fountain after the other. From white chocolate to milk, to semi-sweet, to dark. A single room with 15 different chocolate fountains. Then you go through a long hallway with every chocolate flavor that Zotter offers. Rose chocolate. Nut chocolate. Mint chocolate. Whatever. You try all of them.
Then you go to the drink chocolate. They call it Flying Chocolate because the chocolate is on a little conveyer belt that goes by and you pick your chocolate, drop it in hot milk, and enjoy.
But wait, there’s more! Then there is the chocolate covered fruit. But wait, there’s more! Then you go to the mixed flavors. Like the raspberry coconut chocolate. Or beer chocolate. It was to the point where my group of friends and I groaned in delicious agony because we just couldn’t see straight anymore. We just couldn’t taste any more chocolate.
Of course at the end of the tour there was a gift shop. We bought like crazy.
Overall the experience was amazing. I encourage any chocolate lover to go for a visit.
Zotter Chocolate
Today I went Galleria Eurovea in Slovakia. That’s right, in a normal country, the shops are open on Sundays dear Austria.
This is a new shopping center and very beautifully built. The stores are what you expect to find, nothing special. Note also that there aren’t any price differences at this shopping center than what you would find anywhere in Vienna. The only real advantage is that the place is open on Sundays. And when it’s a cold, dreary Sunday, this proves to be a major advantage.
I am feeling really mellow and content about being in Vienna right now.
This is an unusual phase for me to be in. I am not a mellow person. I climb the walls with boredom if there isn’t something changing, shifting, altering, challenging, or kick my butt. I usually push myself. I ask myself what scares me, and then dive in and do it. I love a good thrill.
I think this is the necessary make-up of an expat. You have to love pushing yourself. You have to love seeking out the challenge and conquering it. If you shy away from the difficult, you will be overwhelmed by being an expat, because at the beginning, everything is difficult.
After three years of difficult however, I think my challenge meter has filled, and I can finally settle down for a bit. Bask in the glory of this particular challenge being conquered. Enjoy feeling mellow and content.
To be honest though, I am wondering how long I will tolerate mellow and content before they turn into boredom.
I equate a challenge with a mental image. A pair if dice. I know when I am ready for a challenge when I mentally pick up those dice and start rattling them around in my hand. I feel my heart pound. I feel my fingers tingle with anticipation. I feel the smile creep over my face. Right now the dice are somewhere other than in my hand. I pick them up periodically. They don’t feel right. I put them away again. I am content.
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