Submitted by Kimberly Macort on the 2017 winter session program in Austria and Hungary sponsored by the College of Education and Human Development…
During the first week of my study abroad program with the School of Education, we spent our time exploring Vienna, Austria. I knew that I would experience many different things here, but one thing I was not expecting to be different was the dining. In Vienna, I quickly learned that dinner is an “event”, and it can be very hard to find a table at a restaurant if you do not have reservations. My friends and I had to walk around for an hour to find a restaurant with a menu which we could read and that had space available. Many times at restaurants here there will be tables open, but if it is reserved, that is the only group that will dine at that table that night. Another thing that is very different is the water. In Austria, water is not considered a staple for dinner and you have to pay for water. Normally, this costs about three or four euros which gets expensive. It was very hard when eating out because I was so used to free water, but having to pay for water made the bills much more expensive. After a few days, my friends and I were able to figure out proper dining and restaurant etiquette, which made our experiences run much smoother. As we move onto our next part of our program in Budapest, Hungary, I am excited to see how their dining is similar or different to Vienna’s.