Six months of my life in a small town of Austria

It was a sunny Monday morning of fall when my husband and I arrived in this small town of Austria. The town is called Krems. European addresses are very short unlike Bangladeshi addresses. We thought the address written on our house-rent contract is not correct. After getting off the train, we started asking people if it was really an address. People here are very bad in English. They speak Austrian version of German. Only young generation can speak proper English but young generation is a scarcity here. Old or middle aged people are the majority, but no matter what the age is, they are not dependent on young. I found a school girl who speaks my language and understood me. The girl tried to help us by calling our landlord over phone to ask if the address was correct but the landlord only responded the next day when we already managed to find our room.

When we finally found our apartment, it took us time to believe that people live in this building for real. Everything is so calm and quiet- which we later identified as a typical feature of an Austrian town. Suddenly an Ethiopian student, who stays in the apartment came out of his room and helped us to realize that we are at the right place. If he didn’t come out, we would have been stayed outside for hours. It took us 4 days to get settled in the apartment because we reached Austria faster than our luggage and our luggage remained at Dubai airport. Although we and the luggage were supposed to be in the same plane, just the handlers couldn’t shift them from one plane to another on time. Losing luggage for the time being was a blessing in disguise. That’s a different story for another day. However, when our luggage arrived after 4 days, we unpacked our home that our mother packed for us.

Krems is a very small town. People of Austria are very early riser. They start their day when the sky is still dark and ends their day when there is still light outside. An interesting thing is, they don’t fully light up their house in the evening. They love to stay in dim lighting. After it gets dark, it would be hard to believe that someone lives in the houses. Saturday and Sunday means pin drop silence. No one comes out of their home and I always wondered what are they doing inside? I was worried how we are going to spend 6 months in this small town coming from noisy and busy city like Dhaka. But days passed by…

Suddenly one day we noticed that those green trees turned into yellow and few days later the leaves disappeared. We would jog by the Danube River during the summer with a hope of shedding some pounds which we gained back in Bangladesh with the help of feasts at relatives. At around 8pm the sky would get dark then and suddenly we noticed the sky gets dark at 4pm now. When and exactly why we stopped jogging I do not remember. But I certainly remember when we ate Biriyani (a Bangladeshi traditional dish) for the last time.

The first time we cooked Biriyani was a day of my in-laws marriage anniversary. We walked three and half km for buying beef at a cheaper rate from Merkurt. We didn’t know the same meat is also available at the stores nearby. Whenever we cooked Biriyani, the joy on my husband’s face was something to be remembered all through my life. Cooking is the thing I loved here in Austria but it had to be a new, fancy or an innovative cooking. I hated cooking when I was fully into a different assignment of my life and meal time is half an hour away. However, I don’t know if I got better at cooking or not. Probably he has the right answer. But this I can say that I cook faster now and I know a number of Vegan recipes. Another interesting thing to be noted that being a vegan is a “thing” here.

Leaving Austria today, not sure if we would visit this country again, but would certainly remember these five things: the first day of my class when he took me to the University, that moment when I saw him waiting for me with a Sandwich during the lunch break, the first meal in Austria at a Chinese buffet, all the experiences with cooking and shopping. And that two-euro wine.

Adios.

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