What do the "edelwisecrackers", supermarkets, and Batman have in common? Mr. Giggles, the American baseball coach trying to hit a home run with Viennese culture, and Dr. Schnitzel, your native guide to all things Austrian, invite you to join them on a whimsical romp through Vienna's charming alleyways.
[By the way, the Spar logo really is a fir, but without this tree inaccuracy, the punch line wouldn't have worked. Never let facts get in the way of a good joke. More on that in episode #4.]
What do the "edelwisecrackers", supermarkets, and Batman have in common? Mr. Giggles, the American baseball coach trying to hit a home run with Viennese culture, and Dr. Schnitzel, your native guide to all things Austrian, invite you to join them on a whimsical romp through Vienna's charming alleyways.
[By the way, the Spar logo really is a fir, but without this tree inaccuracy, the punch line wouldn't have worked. Never let facts get in the way of a good joke. More on that in episode #4.]
Good to know and welcome to the Schnitzel and Giggles podcast brought to you by the Alois crackers. I'm Michael, from here on out referred to as Mr Giggles.
Dr. Schnitzel:
My name is Lucas and some people who don't exist call me.
Mr. Giggles:
All of you will now refer to him as Dr Schnitzel. We're just a couple of friends that decided that we needed to get together to talk about life here in Vienna. I'm a baseball coach living here in Vienna for a few years trying to figure out life.
Dr. Schnitzel:
And I'm an Austrian, a Viennese, living my life, having lived my life, continuing, continuing my life here in Vienna, and I try to figure out how I can live with Americans and other internationals peacefully and maybe even be a little bit of help and assistance to them.
Mr. Giggles:
So, as you can see, my friend Dr Schnitzel has quite the task ahead of him, very much so. So we're here to do what seemed to need to be done and started a new podcast.
Dr. Schnitzel:
Yes, we were looking around and we found out there's a like 17 podcast about Austria, and so we were really determined to be sure we make make it 18 and at least place among the top 18 for Austrian podcast.
Mr. Giggles:
So welcome to the 18th best podcast in Austria that deals with Austria, but you think there'd be a few more podcasts about Austria.
Mr. Giggles:
It's a beautiful place and now there are and maybe we'll do a few more, just add to the list, but really our goal is to just have conversations about what it's like to live in the city of Vienna. The city of Vienna has been voted as like the best place to live in the world. We're going to do a whole episode on that. I think yeah, at least. Well, I think every episode will have to do with that, because we'll be sharing stories about at least our, our experience with why it's so great here and maybe maybe some experiences about, maybe, why it shouldn't be, but we're hoping to just bring you into our conversations and for those of you who might be interested in what it's like to live internationally.
Mr. Giggles:
Obviously, lucas is here from Vienna, but the rest of us myself and some of our other guests that we'll bring in from time to time are internationals, people who have left their home country and are now living here in Vienna, and so if you're thinking about doing such a thing, maybe we'll entice you to join or get a bonus scare you away. Yeah, maybe you'll just forget about it.
Dr. Schnitzel:
Yes, because my basically my daily business is working with internationals who have moved to Vienna and explaining to them what's so great about the city, or funny excuses why it's not so good.
Mr. Giggles:
Yeah, and the amount of times where we've been having conversations and Lucas will say something and I'll be like, what are you talking about? And the same is true when I will say something. Usually it's that way.
Dr. Schnitzel:
Yeah, we have encountered lots of American-Austrian conflicts in the past and we all resolve them.
Mr. Giggles:
Yeah, peacefully resolve conflicts, as is the goal. No baseball bats necessary so join us for this podcast as we find ways to share these stories. So we're calling ourselves the Ittle Vise Crackers, which is kind of a fun name. That's a bit of a pun, but I'll let my resident german teacher explain kind of where we were going with this.
Dr. Schnitzel:
All right. Number one rule of humor says like if you tell a joke or pun, don't explain it. So that's exactly what we're gonna do now we're gonna explain the pun.
Mr. Giggles:
Yeah, I've learned that it's much better to explain a joke in these situations makes it so much funnier Because we're here to break all the rules right.
Dr. Schnitzel:
So if the rules don't explain the pun. It's going to do that. Here comes the explanation. So the first part, of course, is Edel. Edel buys, that's two german words. Really buys, being white, and it'll be something precious or noble, or what are the words that are used just before?
Dr. Schnitzel:
Refined, refined refined, much like ourselves very refined impressions, so it means like refined precious white. And it's not just any kind of white, it's actually the name Of a flower and, again, not just any flower. Wait, there's more. It's the Austrian national flower. It's very special since it really only grows in on the mountains, like high altitude, and since Austria is about 70%, is covered in 70% of mountains and woods and forests. It's a very, very important flower that you can't get in Vienna, because Vienna is not in the mountains but somewhere else. And I don't know if I told you that, but it's the advice.
Dr. Schnitzel:
Flower is protected by, like what you call it, austrian law, like it's not called nature law, like it's what is it? Just like a protection law, whatever conservation law, conservation law yeah, great conversation about conservation, anyway. So this flower is also featured in a very famous movie that a lot of Americans still know to this day, although it's been I don't know how many 50 years first came out, still family favorite and I'm sure lots of internationalists know this called the sound of music, and there's a prominent song that deals with this flower. It's also titled Edel buys, and Michael's gonna sing that song for us now.
Dr. Schnitzel:
Edel buys and that's all you get, because we don't want to copyright it's just a teaser and when he had a full version. Our album will be coming out soon. Very soon.
Mr. Giggles:
Yeah, final mixing process right now.
Dr. Schnitzel:
And then, of course, we move on from this really really long explanation of upon. That's more or less two or three words, and only a third of our name. So, of course, vice, as it's pronounced in German, it means white. The word for wisdom in German is vice height. So vice the color, and vice height is sounded like two and Thomas, as if these two languages are related. I don't know, and you have more insights on that must be.
Mr. Giggles:
Well, obviously we're going with the wise crackers, because you crack wise is to make some jokes, and so we're gonna. We're gonna be refined and precious jokers, basically. So we hope that, like the long explanation to a simple, simple word, we hope that there will be some ways that through this podcast, we can kind of explain how our cultures can combine and also you might learn a little something about Austrian life.
Mr. Giggles:
And at some point we're hoping to offer crackers that are shaped like the Edelweiss flower Spring of twenty seven, I think, is our launch date for our, our idol, vice crackers. It's all planned out. Yeah, we're in conversation with Spar right now to get them on the shelves.
Dr. Schnitzel:
You have to explain first what is Spar, because most of our listeners might not know what.
Mr. Giggles:
Spar is.
Dr. Schnitzel:
Spar is a wonderful place, a happy place, a place where all your needs a place of milk and honey, basically, and bread and salami and some sandwiches, yeah and any other snack you want.
Dr. Schnitzel:
And here's the quiz question of the day. Oh boy, what does spa spelled SPAR mean, like savings or to save, yes, to save, like you just say you go there, you save money. And here is the question that's impossible to answer unless you speak Dutch. What does it mean? What does the word SPAR mean in Dutch that groceries? It's actually the name of a tree in Dutch A spruce Interesting.
Mr. Giggles:
I thought it was like a pine tree. What made you?
Dr. Schnitzel:
think that I don't know Well, but now it should click for anyone who's ever been to SPAR, who has seen the logo. Oh, that's great. The logo is a tree. Right next to it says SPAR, of course. So we have some partners in crime when it comes to naming a brand, naming it, labeling it with a pun. Yeah, so the SPAR guys seem to be very good with Dutch-German puns and seems all specialty is.
Mr. Giggles:
German. I'll tell you what. The cross-lingual pun content that we're bringing is top notch, you think it's going to help our podcast to come from the top 18?. We might get up to number 16 with this. I don't know.
Dr. Schnitzel:
I don't know it's going to take some work, but I think we're going to get a lot of downvotes for those puns Well, or for explaining the pun.
Mr. Giggles:
I don't know. I think the explanation is key. Well, great Well, because our international listeners might not understand why these are so funny.
Dr. Schnitzel:
Yes, and maybe people would just move to Austria just because of the SPAR supermarkets.
Mr. Giggles:
Right, I mean, if you want to come see this Bruce logo while you save, come on.
Dr. Schnitzel:
And we haven't even talked about Euro SPAR and Inter SPAR yet, but that's a wide variety of SPARs.
Mr. Giggles:
All under the same brand and umbrella is pretty incredible. Yeah, I think that's as much to cover in one episode. Way too much. That'll have to come later when we explain where to shop in Austria Exactly.
Dr. Schnitzel:
I mean coming soon, we'll hear again your grocery store tutorial, exactly Because SPAR is not the only supermarkets out there and they definitely have not sponsored this episode. They have not sponsored this episode yet, if there's any news.
Mr. Giggles:
You'll be the first to know.
Dr. Schnitzel:
So I'm not an expert in Dutch or on the Netherlands. Well, we can pretend to be.
Mr. Giggles:
We can pretend to be.
Dr. Schnitzel:
But I do know one thing, oh boy, you know that in the Netherlands there is also a Batman Like the superhero Batman. But they found out his real identity. Do you know what? What is called in real life, in real life. Like the final is Bruce Wayne. His name is actually Spruce Wayne oh boy.
Mr. Giggles:
Wow, this is. I think we dropped back to 18. I think we're going to make it to 20. I think we're going to fall back to 20. They're going to. They're going to just have some empty space in between 17 and 20. For us, that's all right. Yeah, but for now we'll leave it at that. It's fun to be able to talk and share some of these stories. Hopefully, hopefully, you'll come back, help us get into that top 15, or not. You know we can sit at 18 for the majority of our time. That's fine. I'm sure it's. Bruce Wayne likes our podcast, bruce Wayne. Good to bye, bye. Good to bye, bye.