Don't stereotype Germans or Austrians, just take their humour with a handful of Mountain salt!

I came out to Salzburg with certain expectations. Well, initially I imagined I would be living up on a mountain, milking goat teets and yodelling, or dancing along Alpine hills and singing about The Sound of Music or something like that, anyway you get the picture! But actually, I ended up in a very modern city, clean, reserved, POSH.

I'm not very good at posh,  but I'm good at faking it (till I make it? Hmm not sure about that one!)  But I did the right things -bought some good quality woolen-based clothes (from flea-markets) and labelled all my work into organised folders, I even invested in a fountain pen! But gradually, I've realised that no one actually gives a fuck. On the surface Salzburg might seem grandiose, elite, hostile even, but when you dig deeper, that is all a well-earned facade. Yes, Germans and Austrians can seem hard and cold, (I'm not merging them together, they have distinctive cultural differences yada yada...) but I have been so fortunate to meet some bloody spot on people, during this exchange, who fit these stereotypes, but exceeded my narrow-minded world view in the best way possible.

When I first crash-landed into this City last September, absolutely nackered from an all all-nighter at Gatwick, with a broken suitcase -"Kaputt!" an old German man laughed as my suitcase wheel snapped off on the cobbled street... I thought what am I doing here? Every place lining these streets is designer, the shops charge an arm-and-a-leg for a dried out sandwich, the people don't smile they just cycle and tut tut. I didn't really even get the Mozart hype, yes he was very good, but why all the gift shops and tacky post-cards... I thought. I was disturbed by the homelessness on every street corner, under every bridge, couldn't understand the dicrepancy betwen the rich Austrian culture which subscibed to religious piousness, against the backdrop of a poor immigrant life. But now... well I am used to seeing homeless people everywhere, in fact its pretty much the same person on the same corner everyday, and apparently they're mostly run by the mafia, (so that helps to alleviate one's guilty conscience at not sparing a dime.) The students who seemed so all-together and classy, showed their cracks, let me see the people behind the masks, shared their stories and became really bloody good friends.

I slowly realised that there was an element of virtue that we have lost in the "student world" of England, extinguished by the "fuck it" attitude, I feel like we have stopped trusting ourselves to be good, to strive towards success or happiness. This was my revelation after I thought back to the days at Brighton. Living in a shared student house, where we argued, got drunk, hated each other for not doing dishes, got more drunk and pretended not to be socially anxious messes/devastations to our hopeful parents. Alas, many of the students here are hard-working, diligent and straight talking. They don't gloss anything up in superficial shit. It's raw, real, take me as I am attitude. And I love it! When I worked at an American Summer Camp two years ago, I got fed-up of this "Oh Amazing, awesome, oh wow, super good!" As if everything was prozac happy and you couldn't put a foot wrong because it's all about living the American dream and having a succesful instagram. If people don't like you here they will let you know, if they don't think you are achieveing to your full potential they'll say (in the most efficient German/Austrian way possible) come on! Get on with it! Constructive criticism. The professors don't want any fannying about, be straight, be human, be the best you are capable of being.  It's tough, but its principalled. Of course, it can be boring sometimes, when it's a Friday night, and there's no-one going out to party, your sweating away in a library over a 25 page assignment, and all your friends can say is "But are we going hiking at 6am tomorrow?" But it's rooted in good, in gold.

The smallness of Salzburg allows for the atmosphere of community, something which was desperately disjunct from Brighton. Don't get me wrong I loved the colour, wildness of Brighton, the land of drag and drugs and vegan-based-drama (Is that guacomole home-made or...?) But where is the community? The precious, old-fashioned village feel -that you can just pop round to a neighbours for a cuppa tea where you can gossip about menial bollocks or philosophise about cosmological, existential issues. That closeness of knowing that when you are having a breakdown in the library because nothing has any meaning anymore, you can cycle over to your friend's house for dinner and put the world to rights.

Here I found it, the people who truly cared about, were passionate about life, people who I really cared about, with lives that were as layered and multi-dimensional as the shifting Austrian weather patterns, sunshiny happy days by the lake, emotional thunderstorms at home huddled together, telling stories about our days, our hopes, our beliefs, being open with each other, talking to me in broken English about how to fix a broken society. Pure bliss. By jove! We even had a recycling routine!

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