Of brombeeren and other Viennese impressions...

We've been in Vienna for over 2 weeks now and seem to have settled in pretty well. A started working a week and a half ago so I've had to entertain all three boys by myself since then, which means I cannot explore Vienna a lot. We use the weekends to get to know Vienna and surroundings. During the week we do things mostly within walking distance. This involves grocery shopping a lot too because unfortunately our fridge here is pretty small so I can't really shop in bulk. Going grocery shopping with a baby carriage, a 4 year old and 2 year old is not a relaxing enterprise I can tell you ;) But hopefully in August this will change because it looks like we've found a house :))) It's not completely settled yet but the outlook is good.

So Vienna...things I've noticed:
Austrians are very proud of all the food they produce. And taking a look at these blackberries I see what they mean ;) I never buy them in the Netherlands because they are expensive but when I was a little girl I picked them in the wild in the Netherlands or in Croatia. My favourite ones are the tangy ones, I'm not too keen on the very sweet ones. Being familiar with the wild ones I was struck by the size of the blackberries they have here...huge! For strawberries that usually means less taste but these blackberries were full of flavour.
The boys and I bought these blackberries from a little fruit stall across the street from our appartment. Fruit stall sounds a lot more romantic than it actually is: a parked van with a stall in front of it with fruit, next to containers for recycling. But the fruit they sell is very good and cheaper than the supermarket.
What I've also noticed is the amount of organic food, there is a lot more in the supermarkets than you would find in the Netherlands, even in the budget supermarkets. Also lots of the food is locally produced.
Supermarkets close early (19:00-19:30) and are closed on Sundays.
Whole milk seems to be the norm instead of skimmed.
Ok, lots of food impressions (of course ;) but also some other impressions:
I can actually practice my Croatian here as there are a lot of immigrants from former Yugoslavia. My German isn't well (I understand more or less what people are talking about but I don't really speak it) and if someone doesn't speak English I just ask them if they speak Croatian and many do :)
What I've noticed is that Austrians break for pedestrian crossings, something that's not really “well established” in the Netherlands.

I'll leave you with these impressions, maybe next month I'll start baking again...depends on how fast the unpacking of the zillion boxes will go ;)
Will be posting something this weekend involving milk so stay tuned for that....