I love it here!! -October 2017

Everyday Salzburg looks different, every hour the shifting clouds of the Alps bring with them a new weather front; snow, sunshine, hail or mist. When the rain comes, and oh it does, men and women unfasten their stylish umbrellas and correct their coat, I run in the rain, with mascara trailing, because I'm an absolute rebel "F*ck the system" and end up with a cold. My new house is great, it's actually pretty seventies style and feels like I'm lodging in a ski resort with bright yellow balconies and striped wooden floors, a communal cellar where we wash our clothes and store our bicycles, an assortment of bells, baskets and laundry powder! A mahogany elevator and a beige tiled bathroom, metal shutters that you pull to drown out the street lights. As I haven't yet bought a bicycle, I have to skip through the Mönschberg tunnel everyday, which connects this leafy green suburb of Reidenberg to the Old Town. I feel very lucky to live in this part of town. "Its very safe" said my eccentric Austrian Landlord Alexander, (who uses various names for "legal reasons" and apparently has an obsession with England, stemming from a Gentleman's holiday, "Oh I love London, I went there with my boyfriends, Mumma Mia in the West End... unforgettable!") My housemates are all bloody lovely, which is an equal bonus, and very pro-active, which I must not attribute to any German stereotypes as they are German, and the two that are Austrian are so Austrian! For example, when young Gabriel arrived, his Austrian Mother, with a stoic figure and a strong work ethic, ran flustered around the house with a dishcloth, lifting our arses off the seats in the kitchen to scrub under them. She then educated me on proper housewife skills, like dry-cleaning a mattress cover, and placing it on slightly damp so it doesn't shrink, (this is actually really handy as so far I've managed to shrink my favorite woolen jumper). And when Celine got here, her parents repainted the entire bedroom not stopping to wipe the sweat off their brow before leaving to drive back down the country to their small village, complaining about the poor quality builds of modern houses. It's all about quality here, not quantity, and aside from the IKEA flatpack generation which is (sadly) swooping in, "Austrian quality" is superior to any cheap imitations. Gabriel reiterates this every time he grabs a 100 year old cheese from the fridge, or shows off his homegrown family sausage, (his family have a pig farm outside the city). Even when drinking alcohol, he purchases locally produced Schnaps, an alcohol made from fermented mountain flowers. Not long ago, he showed us all a David Attenborough style documentary of Arlberg, his hometown, (the birthplace of modern day alpine ski-ing!) and it even featured his lovely old Grandmother peeling and chopping the root of the Schnaps plant. I have been trying to change my buying habits, exploring Fleamarkets full of heaps of blankets, antiques and lovely old ladies. It's too easy to go to EuroPark (the huge shopping Centre outside of town), and none of the new stuff is as homely, and when you live so far from home, a good warm blanket and a pair of preloved gloves, matter.