Dialect and Dinner Rolls

There are two things in Austria that one should NEVER, under any circumstances, take for granted: the thick, quirky dialect and the delicious seeming array of dinner rolls offered at any Austrian pub-restaurant.

Austrian dialect is insane, crazy, and above all frustrating. Even if you've spent 6-8 years studying German, you have little to no chance of getting by with any local. If you manage to convince someone to slip out of dialect and into the accepted norm of 'high German', you still face the bobbing, Scandinavian-like accent. Which, to be quite honest, is beautiful and not impossible to understand. The trick to the accent is that every 'a' turns into a Swedish 'å' (if you can't see that, it's an 'a' with a halo above it). Do not be fooled by its angelic appearance, however. It's an unforgiving character, making simple sentences like: "Was hast du gesagt" (What did you say?) sound almost Russian: "Wå' håst d' gesågt".

Dialect is still a tricky beast that has seen much mutation in the hills of Austria. Certain phrases have become nigh unrecognizable from their original German. Take, for example, the simple phrase "God be with you" or "Gott behütet dich". In Austria, it has turned into something resembling "Be-ith ewe" or "Füit dey", a queer coding of the language that even the young'uns can't trace.

So, you've managed to muddle through an Austrian's dialectical directions to the nearest pub-restaurant. You sit down, order the local white beer, show the waiter with your finger what you would like to order (there's little chance he would understand your attempts at dialect pronunciation) and you wait comfortably in the smoke hazy interior.

Pretty soon, the waiter is going to return with a yummy basket of freshly baked bread sticks and pretzels. How kind, thinks the average American, he anticipated my raging hunger with a welcoming appetizer! Ah, but be wary, naive American. Being hungry, you snack on one, two, possibly three of the delicious breads before your meal comes. And why not? The salt goes wonderfully with your beer! The meal comes, it's more than you anticipated, but extremely delicious. You finish, flag down the waiter to pay and stare aghast at a bill possibly 4-5 Euros more than you expected.

I have dubbed this the "Dinner Roll Trap." Coupled with dialect, you're bound to have an adventurous evening wherever you are in Austria! Hopefully, you now feel better equipped to face the dangerous, delicious, and dialectical pitfalls ahead of you on your next trip to Austria!

*I've exaggerated. Dialect is very difficult but never impossible if someone is there willing to explain it. I look forward to learning more as the months go by. The Dinner Roll Trap, however, is based on a true story that I have so recently experienced.

"Füit dey"!