Today is Austria’s national day and I wanted to write something about the special nice things and the people of this little country – kind of like you do when you go to someone’s birthday and hold a toast.
In real life, I being my grouchy Romanian self often complain and protest about a lot of things, most of them regarding my new home country. Despite the yammering I have to admit that I am positive that there is little places where life is actually as peaceful and as plain and simple ‘good’ as it is here.
Coming from a country in search of values, it took me a while and some struggling to understand that the Austrians really seem to get what society and life in general is all about.
Yes, they have all shops closed on Sunday – this in a country where 1/3 of the population takes pride in being atheists – and yes, they do not dance at parties and use the phrase „kein Stress” a little bit too much and usually keep a polite distance in the conversation that I am still uncomfortable with, but they seem to have gotten the big picture, there where most of us others are still struggling to get it.
They genuinely want things to work, probably like every human being, first of all for their own good, but they understood that it can only work if they try to make it better for all or at least most of the people around them.
They pay attention to others and their needs because they want the same in return.
They do not have to compulsively own big fancy homes and big fancy cars but instead like the freedom that this life without big possessions gives them.
They travel a lot but do not book luxury hotels, so that they really end up seeing some of the actual country they went to visit.
They are modest in their clothing and attitude because they probably believe that flashiness would only take one’s eyes away from the really important things in a person.
They preserve their old traditions and embrace traces of new and intercultural without losing the sense of who they are.
They respect education even more than work itself and they make it easy for people to have access to it. They respect their jobs and obligations because they understand if they wouldn’t, it will slowly all stop working.
They enjoy nature, a lot of free time and most of all thinking.
They are mostly still a mystery for me but until now one of my most valuable life lesson.
Hut ab Österreich!
Vienna Girl 