Shopping for Pesach in Vienna's Second Quarter
Originally, I was dismayed to discover that the grocery stores in Salzburg—my beloved Spars and Billas—didn’t have kosher sections. Even the worst grocery store in our Tennessee neighborhood, a place we call The Food City of Despair and which is the kind of place where you might stop off to grab a cheap bottle of wine or a few staples between trips to better stocked stores, has a small kosher section and seasonal end-cap of kosher-for-Passover foods. And there is something lovely and important about that level of inclusion. I doubt there are many Jews in our part of East Ridge, and yet the basic necessities for the holiday are easy to come by.
Part of how we decided when to come to Vienna, then, was planning so that we’d be in the only city in Austria with a thriving Jewish community in the few days before the holiday so I could shop for our seder.
So, this morning, we headed out to Vienna’s Second Quarter, where most of the Jewish community lives. On our way from the subway station, we saw kosher bakeries, a kosher pizzeria, and then LaMehadrin Kosher Grocery, the store we’d set out to find. It was small, but well-stocked, and I’d set out to do a big shopping… but about two minutes into our visit, I got hit with the first symptoms of some kind of stomach bug, so we had to grab essentials and head back to the AirBnB, where I remain trapped by “travelshmerz.”
Still, it was a special joy to be shopping for the seder alongside other people who were also shopping for theirs, to have the cashier offer a cheerful “chag sameach!” as we left, and do it all in a neighborhood that very obviously had a diverse and active Jewish community living what one hopes are joyful, productive lives in a country where, until now, we’ve mostly only found the remains of communities that no longer exist. With any luck, I’ll be feeling entirely better tomorrow, and we’ll return to pick up a few more supplies and eat a little last minute chametz at that pizzeria, which looked pretty good.