Around Austria (Österreich)
These are several members of the family we are staying with. The mom is on the left, Katerinia, 14, next, and Rebecca, 16 is next. Missing is Magdelena also Micheal, the dad, Claudiia age 19 both in the US where they will visit us on Cape Cod the day after we get back. We are eating lunch that the mom comes home to cook daily.
This is their "dump", where you must separate the garbage out into recycled categories.
This is town hall in the center of Baden (Baden means bath because Baden is known for its sulpher springs). I will take this opportunity to tell you more what I learned about Austria as I attended a Barbeque where there were three teachers. School runs a similar length to ours but it is six days a week. Each teacher will teach 5 days though. Lunch is NOT served. Pay is about 300,000 shillings ($21,000 )a year, after taxes for an experienced teacher. The tax rate is nearly 50% but there is no marriage penalty. College is nearly free, welfare far more common then USA. Incidently the use of commas and periods is reversed in numbers. So 30,919.5 would be written as 30.919,5. The main problem with students is "chatting." Teachers are required to teach two subjects such as French and German. Smoking in the bathrooms is not a problem as smoking is allowed outside. Religion is taught in the public schools in a mostly Catholic country. Six years of English is required. The driving age is 18 and the legal alcohol limit for first year drivers is 0.0% For others it is .05%. They could not understand why we gave out so many details on the Monica-Clinton matter. Capital punishment has no acceptance here whatsoever. Murder is very rare, rape a bit less so. I have only seen two black people in 20 days. Turks are the minority here. Austria is the size of South Carolina and has 8,000,000 people. They do not celebrate Veterans Day as they lost both WWI and WWII.
The Baden version of a rotary (round-about). Drivers here are generally worse than USA as they love to tailgate. Police do use radar but tickets are not cumulative. Green lights blink before they turn red, red lights add yellow as they are about to turn green. No one ever walks against a red light, they will stand there for minutes with no traffic if the Don't Walk man is lit.
You better be quiet here.
Vineyards are all over, the peace and quiet here is hard to describe. It seems like most of the land here has either, grapes, corn or sunflowers planted on it. There are also small castles all over the place to guard the approaches to the area. Most traffic signs have pictures so even I know what they mean.
Send mail to burt@broadcast.net