Days since last round up: 30-ish
Doses of vaccine received: 2
European countries visited/lived in/passed through: 4
Months spent away from Manchester: 8
Years abroad completed: 1
Direction: Homeward bound
Official level of German: C2 - that’s what the language course certificate says at least, but, while studying at C2 certainly fills some gaps, it also reveals how much there is yet to master …
Major achievements: breaking the lock of our apartment door on my very first day was pretty impressive, but doesn’t top actually being able to (kind of) understand Austrian dialect, and successfully use the expression ‘Gemma’ (in standard German ‘gehen wir’ - let’s go!)
Vocab: WG, Wohngemeinschaft (essentially means a flatshare, but translates literally as ‘living community’ and is the standard set up for students at unis in European cities - it’s different to halls and even student housing because students search on the housing market just like regular tenants, and also because it’s quite common not to search for a house with specific people and just end up with new housemates, but the positive is that it feels less like student living than just young adults in the city, and is a great wat to make lif—long friends)
Weather: changeable, with everything from thunderstorms to blistering sun (much closer to what I know from British summers!)
After a generally chilled July in Nice, in every sense but the weather, I was ready for things to pick up pace for my very last month abroad. I have to say that around 20% of my head and anywhere up to 50% of my heart are hovering somewhere in north-west England, as the end of a big year approaches, and with so many new experiences I’ve been looking forward for quite a while to the grounding which a familiar environment, country, and people bring. Having said all that, I can un-tentatively say that this month in Vienna has been the best single month of the whole year, and I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect, if unexpected, end to the year abroad.
August didn’t actually start in Vienna though - we flew from Nice direct to Geneva, where we were met by Francesca’s dad, to be driven to their house in Lausanne. As if French and German weren’t enough, Francesca (a fellow French and German-ite at the same college as me in Oxford, close friend and travel companion for summer) is also half Italian, so we had a very cosy weekend filled with good food and lots of languages. It was an ideal little reset to prepare us for ten hours of train, travelling first from Lausanne to Zurich, and from there on to Vienna. We survived the day without going entirely stir-crazy, but our welcome meal was much needed: perfect Napolitan pizza ten minutes away from my new apartment, shared with Leo, an Austrian friend met (ironically) on holiday in Nice at the end of sixth form, and his flatmate Antonia, who have a place free while their 3rd WG-Mitbewohnerin does a semester abroad. Add Leo’s girlfriend, the lovely Sophie, and we had ourselves a ready-made friendship group, a little Austrian-speaking squad, which turned out to be invaluable, and not just for the language practise. Our time in Vienna would not have been the same without them, and I have so much gratitude to them for how seamlessly they welcomed us into their lives for the summer (and definitely beyond) and what a great time they gave us.
The evening ended with a visit to the alternative Kaffeehaus, Cafe Kafka, which we’d be seeing a lot more of over the next month. Vienna’s famous Kaffeehauser are somewhere between a cafe and a restaurant, protected by UNESCO heritage, and have to fulfil certain criteria to be worthy of the name. They range from the institutional and more tourist-filled Cafe Central and Cafe Landmann, to the old-fashioned charm of tucked away Cafe Sperl or Cafe Jelinek, all the way to the edgy, studenty (and more affordable!) vibes of Kafka, which becomes a bar in the evening. For more on these typically Viennese gems, see my Kaffeehaus edition of favourite finds.
The main purpose of the stay was a German summer course at the University of Vienna, taught by a perfectly stereotypical Viennese linguistics professor, whose specialist knowledge couldn’t be rivalled, even if his people skills were a little lacking. We got used to him and the rest of the class over the four weeks, though, and it was generally a very useful refresh of German having not spoken it for 7 months, and also gave me a more thorough grounding in lots of grammar points that I’d never explicitly studied before. The plan had been to spend my afternoons alternately working in a vegan bistrot in the centre of town, and volunteering with a grassroots NGO who help refugees with their search for flatshares. Even though I’d set both in motion before coming, they moved a bit slower than expected, and after a week or so trying to get things sorted it turns out that British citizens can’t work in Austria without a visa since Brexit made everything complicated, but the upside was that I was left with plenty of time to check out Vienna’s cultural offering, which is probably second only to Paris or Berlin. With the limited time Bundesmuseen-Card, I could visit 8 of the state-owned museums for just 20 euros, to which we added a reduced price block of tickets for an artsy independent cinema on the Ring, and plenty of evenings socialising in and out - and all in Austrian!
Highlights included a homemade pizza evening and group trip planning (see upcoming post on visits from Vienna!), as well as few Friday night get-togethers with good food, drink, and some of Leo and Antonia’s friends from school and university. Leo’s birthday celebrations in the sun at Stadtpark, evenings chatting about everything from language to gender to philosophy in Cafe Kafka, and finally date-night style cinema trips followed by dinner or preceded by a Kaffehaus snack are also real highlights. It’s hard to separate my experience of Vienna as a ciy in its own right from the people and good times which made it so special, but it’s very much a city I can imagine myself living in: it’s packed with culture and utterly beautiful, without the intense pace (or prices) of Paris, it’s not too big but there’s always something going on, it’s easy to navigate and charming to just wander through. From the majestic buildings all around the ring to the more hipster 6th and 7th, and even the greenery of the Augarten and the Prater, it really does have everything you could want in a city, and it’s forged a special place in my heart. It wasn’t until the last week or so that I realised how much I’d fallen head over heels with the city, but the Volksgarten at golden hour was enough to bring it home.
I will undoubtedly be back to Vienna, but for now it’s quite a different direction, finally flying home to Manchester (after one final weekend in Venice) and as wonderful has the last month as been, I would be lying if I said I hadn’t been waiting for this for at least two months. I never thought I would have been this eager to come back to the UK at the end of my year abroad, but it’s a little more than that - I know Europe will always be there, and will continue to play a big part in anything I do in the future, but for now it’s been far to long since I’ve touched base in good old Manchester, and I cannot wait to settle back into something which is more recognisably home. This year has taught me to feel at home in Europe, and that home is about the people you’re with rather than the place, but it’s also showed me that Manchester will always be my point of origin, and for now I’m more than happy with that.
