Cold boiled potatoes: a sign of a healthy intellect

Today I'd like to explain to you the phenomenon that is Austrian salad.

When you eat in an Austrian restaurant, most entrees come with salad. This is not, however, your tame American iceberg-lettuce-and-ranch-dressing concoction.

Austrian salad comes on a salad plate, but that about ends its resemblance to anything you might find in the U.S. The plate is piled high with items that are only vaguely related to salad, including cold boiled potatoes, pickled red (or sometimes white) cabbage, cold corn kernals, shredded carrots, cucumber slices, tomato crescents and perhaps stuffed into a little wedge in between all that, a few leaves of romaine lettuce. Then the whole thing is covered with some sort of tangy dressing that resembles oil and vinegar but isn't, and you sort of look at it and go, okay, the chef was cleaning out the refridgerator, wasn't he.

I actually think the whole thing is some sort of disguised personality test: people who don't eat the cabbage are reserved, unadventurous, people who don't eat the lettuce are bold and refuse to comply with traditional boundaries, etc. I don't eat the tomatoes and the cucumbers, which means I'm intelligent and refuse to do things against my will, like eat gross stuff.