During my first posting in Vienna from 1984-87 I used to travel down the Westautobahn a great deal – often en route to Salzburg, Tyrol or Munich.
On the way home, I used to make a pit-stop at a certain motorway service station and consume a cup of hot chocolate.
Oddly, as I then saw it, the service station ran a promotional offer, presumably to promote hot choc sales, that for every portion you consumed you received a free cup. They looked like this and were made in England:
Over time I collected three of these cups, before deciding that my collection was large enough. I have long used them for measuring during cooking (“half a cup of rice”). Sadly, after moves from Vienna to London to Moscow to London to Bonn to Berlin to London to Kyiv to Istanbul and back to Vienna, only one now remains intact.
I remain, as I was then, puzzled by the economics or environmental sustainability of giving away a free earthenware mug with every drink consumed. So when, on a journey from Graz to Vienna recently I was offered another free mug after drinking my hot chocolate, I was so surprised that I took one. The retro design may have played a role in this decision:
Austria remains the only country where I have ever been offered free mugs with my drinks, let alone over a thirty-year period. I would welcome readers’ thoughts on why this might be – particularly in a country which generally has such admirable ecological credentials.