SALZBURG, Austria – Some days all I need is to feel like an American. I mean, I will always be an American, but when you live in Europe there are cultural norms you really should follow, like not talking loudly on public transportation or rushing through meals at restaurants. I had an American moment Wednesday at the Afro Cafe (wonderfully filled with 1970s hippie decor) when I ordered spare ribs and chicken wings with a baked potato. None of those foods are traditional Austrian cuisine. Baked potatoes were available at the Christmas market, but I haven’t seen them anywhere else. And if an Austrian ate spare ribs or chicken wings, he or she would definitely eat them with a fork, but I took the fantastic opportunity to eat something with my hands (French fries and pizza are fork-and-knife foods here). While at the restaurant, my friends and I discussed getting hamburgers in Berlin – we have a group trip to there at the end of May – at both the Hard Rock Cafe and at a local restaurant called The Bird, which is run by Americans. We hope to also have milkshakes that come from an establishment other than McDonald’s. This past weekend, I had a couple more American moments. Another group of friends and I traveled to Munich. We ate traditional Bavarian cuisine from one of the many beer halls for lunch and decided we wanted something cheaper for dinner. So we split a Pizza Hut pizza and had Starbucks for dessert. It was glorious. But there are things I do I don’t think are out of the norm until someone points them out. Some Austrian friends of mine in Vienna questioned why I was wearing my ‘ski jacket’ when I wasn’t skiing. I explained that we wear ‘winter jackets that can be used for skiing’ when it’s winter and no one thinks it’s weird. They wear coats of the pea-coat style and other jackets like that in the winter. I have a long, winter coat of the non-ski-coat variety, but at home I would wear it only for nice outings because it is really fancy to me. I forced myself to wear it here, because it’s what they do. And with it, I wore boots I purchased here to complete the outfit and not stick out so much in my sneakers. Another issue that has come up is that I wear my pajamas or athletic shorts into the kitchen all the time. Americans wear pajamas everywhere. Europeans don’t. But when I wake up at noon and know I’m not going outside for hours or maybe even at all that day, what reason is there to change out of comfortable, perfect-for-lounging clothing? I was approached about my shorts because it was early March and snowing. I explained that my room is really warm (it still is, and it’s still snowing, too), and because I have no control over my heat, wearing shorts was a simple solution. Making simple American foods like grilled cheese sandwiches brings stares and questions. Buying the bread and cheese for grilled cheese sandwiches is an experience, too. The bread here is always bakery style, so you can’t buy a loaf of sliced bread like we’d use for sandwiches in the U.S. Instead, you buy ‘American Toast Bread,’ which isn’t toasted and comes in a red, white and blue package. The individually-wrapped sliced cheese comes in the same style of packaging. Other foods like pretzel sticks and chocolate chip cookies come in the same patriotic wrapping, as well. My roommate had never seen someone eat cereal with milk until she saw me. I usually have something roughly equal to granola for breakfast, and it is traditionally eaten with yogurt. More traditionally American cereals like Corn Flakes would be eaten with milk. Baking, in general, is always an adventure because everything here is made from scratch, and well, we like things that come out of boxes – boxed pancake mix, boxed au gratin potatoes, boxed Velveeta macaroni and cheese, boxed cake mix and so on. Other things like icing, oatmeal, Cheerios and chocolate chips just don’t exist at all. But that’s all part of the fun of spending a year abroad.