Q: Where are you exactly?
Q: Oh, cool. What's it like in Germany?
Well, except for a brief period we'd all rather forget, Austria has never been part of Germany. In fact, Austria was dominating Europe and repelling the Turks way before Germany got its act together. Take that, Piefkes!
But Austria is awesome, thanks for asking. That's why I keep coming back--I just can't seem to get this beautiful place and its wonderful people out of my head. I mean, really--how can you not fall in love with this?
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| Melk (Niederösterreich) |
Q: Do you speak Austrian?
At this point, I always smile gamely and say, "When you ask that question, you either know nothing about Austria, or you know quite a bit about Austria." Because Austrians speak German--sort of. The grammar is somewhat different, the vocabulary is way off, and everything is pronounced in a thick accent that -- just to make things even more confusing -- differs drastically by region. So when I studied abroad, I lived with people from Salzburg and learned to understand how they talked, but I had to start basically from scratch when I came back for the summer and lived with people from Niederösterreich.
Q: Oh, so like British English.
Q: Why Austria?
My obsession with Austria dates back to 2010, when I spent the fall semester (October - January) studying abroad here through Central College Abroad. I had originally wanted to go to Germany (because that's what you do when you take German, right?), but Austria ended up working out better for bureaucratic reasons. So I made the most of my time in this unexpected country: I took some classes, learned some German, made some friends, and drank some Punsch. And lucky for you, I documented all of it on this blog, which I also began that semester.
And so in January 2011, when I said my tearful goodbyes to Austria, I just knew I had to come back. And with funding from Harvard's David Rockefeller International Experience Grant, I was able to return to Wien for nine weeks in the summer of 2011 to work as a research assistant at the University of Vienna's Institute of Educational Psychology.
Once again, on the eve of my departure I realized that I just couldn't seem to shake Austria from my bones. My senior year dorm room was littered with maps of Austria, pictures I had taken with Austrian friends, and even a rot-weiß-rot scarf. In April 2012, I learned that I had been lucky enough to receive a Fulbright Scholarship.
So, thanks to the generosity of the U.S. and Austrian governments, I will be in Austria from mid-September 2012 to mid-July 2013. I have received a combined grant from the Fulbright Commission, which means that I will be taking classes at the University of Vienna (or, as you'll see me refer to it Uni Wien), conducting an independent research project about the incorporation of university activists into national party institutions, and serving as an English teaching assistant at a secondary school. I will, of course, be posting updates and stories from each of these projects to this blog.
Q: For real, though, why do you keep going back to Austria? Don't you want to see the world?
It's become something of a cliche to say that you "love to travel." So I'll just come out and say it: I hate traveling. I hate the unsettled feeling that comes from constantly rummaging around in a suitcase for the slightest thing; I hate the pressure to mind every second as I run from one flight/bus/train to the next; I hate the disorientation of having to look at a map every two seconds just to find my living quarters; I hate feeling that I'm just scratching the surface of what it's really like to live in a place.
For all that, however, I love turning new places into homes. And that's what I've done with Austria in the six months and some change I've spent here so far (pre-Fulbright). I can't wait to see what this next year has in store for me.
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