I am married to an Austrian for almost two years but I haven’t really realized the difference in the cuisine until now. Before we moved to Austria a couple of weeks ago, we have been living in as expats in China. China and Philippines have a lot of differences but I am quite glad of one thing—citizens of both countries consider rice as a very important part of every meal.

Being married to a European means eating less rice and while it was a big adjustment for me in the beginning, it was sort of okay because we were living in China. I can get rice anywhere and I can get it cheap.

Now that we are in Austria, things are a lot different and among those things is how rice is treated in this country. I knew already that people here don’t eat rice with every meal but I didn’t know that rice is being expensively priced. I was really shocked when we did our food shopping for the first time here.

In the Philippines and in China, we can buy rice in sacks (50kls/sack). Here…to my amusement—we buy rice in tiny boxes! If it were in Asia, this one box will not be enough to feed a family for even a day!

Also, they don’t have that many choices. I can count the kind of rice they sell in a regular store with my fingers. It is also kind of weird how they appreciate the kind of rice grains that don’t stick to each other than the ones that do. That tells me that when it comes to rice, they simply don’t know what’s good.

Considering the rice prices and the kind of rice they sell here, I’d say, I won’t be eating that much rice from now on.