Not a nice day
How are you? Can I help you? Have a nice day! While phrases like these are commonplace in the US, where the customer is king, they rarely fly in the face here.
Expats, i.e. foreigners living and working in Austria, usually experience their first red-white-red endurance test when shopping at the supermarket checkout. If the facial expressions of the staff scanning the barcode were to be transferred to food, there would be a risk that the milk would go sour in passing. Exceptions excepted.
We like to be cosmopolitan, but we prefer to close ourselves off to strangers like an oyster. Of course, this distance is not perceived as friendly.
audio and subtitles
As a vindobophobic Austrian, one could now say: No wonder. Most expats live in the federal capital. And how the people are there is what the Bavarian cabaret artist Michael Mittermeier summed up in a nutshell: “I thought the TV series about the real Viennese was a documentary.”
But it is more true that the Austrians, especially the Viennese, are the nicest people, but they try to hide it in their modesty. “Oida” is actually mostly used affectionately. And “Are you dope?!” is not a rhetorical question about sanity, it can be used admiringly. You just have to read the subtitles and we’re very nice.
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Source: Nachrichten
