It's yet another holiday in Austria: Christi HImmelfahrt, Ascension Day. It seems that every day important to the Catholic church is celebrated in this country as a legal, nationwide holiday. And the whole country shuts down -- all businesses except a handful of enterprising restaurants are closed. Since I had the day off, we planned to visit a pub-esque restaurant we've only been to once due to its rather inconvenient location at quite a distance from our apartment with no straightforward public transport linkages. We set out on our journey, and naturally, upon arrival half an hour later or so, found out the place was closed. Lesson learned: we were supposed to be in church, celebrating Christ's trip to heaven, rather than enjoying ourselves in a nice beer pub. We hit up a local pizza chain instead, which, as it caters to the student communtiy, is nearly always open during the uni semesters.
Then we had the bright idea of trying to acquire some alcoholic refreshement to take back home with us, our purpose being to hole up for the rest of the day as it was a particularly rainy and cold one. Considering the day's holiday status, this was easier said than done, as all grocery stores were closed, but we had hope that the branch of the local supermarket chain, Spar, located at the train station would be open. It is the only grocery store in the city that stays open until the ungodly hour of 9 p.m. and the only one that is open on Sundays (yep, all stores are closed on Sundays, too). So we bussed down to the train station and found that this Spar was indeed open, and also, of course, packed. Ridiculously so. It's not a large place to begin with, definitely not constructed to hold hundreds of people doing their desperate holiday shopping. It's also poorly laid out, with the cash registers off of a central aisle that accesses 5 aisles of merchandise, so tyring to wade through the crowds to first find one's purchases and then find a place in a line in the midst of people trying to find their purchases and find a line was nothing short of a disaster. A quick trip to pick up a couple drinks and some milk for next morning's coffee took at least 20 painful minutes of in-store time plus about 45 minutes of public transport travel.
I'm of two minds on this whole store closure business. After a year and a half of life in this country, I am more or less used to it -- you just learn to plan ahead and stock up on whatever you may find yourself needing on Sundays or holidays. Sometimes it is inconvenient, like when you have been too busy to get to the grocery store before a holiday, or somehow weren't aware a holiday was approaching (remarkably easy to do, trust me). What is more interesting to me are the opinions and reactions of the Austrians themselves. Whenever the issue comes up, they staunchly defend store closures on Sundays and holidays, because "everyone needs a day off," including cashiers and shop keepers. (incidentally, the restaurants that are open on Sundays and holidays make up for it by having their "Ruhetag" (day of rest) on some other normal weekday -- usually Monday or Tuesday). This is a political issue, because it is actually illegal for stores to be open on Sundays or holidays unless they somehow have special dispensation, like the train station Spar. Often there are governmental discussions about changing this law, or allowing stores to be open later -- most have to close by 7:30 at the latest -- but people always come back to their argument that it is important to have a day off. When I tell my students or colleagues about 24-hour stores in the U.S. they are often shocked, can't believe that anyone would want to shop late at night, much less work such hours. They express sympathies for such workers, victims of wanton American consumerism. And yet, when the opportunity is there, they are happy to take advantage of it, as evidenced by the crowd at the train station Spar yesterday. It's only a matter of time, really, before capitalism wins out and stores demand ot be able to stay open on Sundays and holidays to take advantage of the opportunity to earn more revenue. I'm sure that Spar did a week's worth of normal business, if not more, by being the only store in town open yesterday.
In a way, it's a shame -- I find the way things are now charming. There's something quaintly nice about the idea of everyone in the family having a holiday on the same random Thursday and being, in a way, forced to spend the day at a leisurely pace, together.
Freitag, 18. Mai 2007
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