The first time I visited Austria was to Vienna and Salzburg with my family as a kid. I didn’t have any local knowledge at all and understood very little about the historical and cultural dynamic of German-speaking states in Europe. Needless to say, I found it difficult to make sense of anything around me even though I enjoyed my time there.
While I was studying architecture in Berlin, I revisited Vienna to see Angus, a friend from Hong Kong who ended up studying economics in Universität Wien. He showed me around the city and we even took a train trip to Slovakia together to see their capital Bratislava. However, it wasn’t until after I returned to Berlin that I acquired my love for the Austrian dessert Kaiserschmarren. It is a dish of warm, fluffy, shredded pancakes with sugar served with a lightly sour fruit compote, modern interpretations can include a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Germans don’t have the most accurate or the most friendly view of Austrians, and a simple google search (in German) will reveal that. The third time I went to Austria (and finally had authentic Kaiserschmarren in the country) was when I lived in Switzerland. Having actually lived in the two other German-speaking countries of Germany and Switzerland (don’t forget little Liechtenstein), I had more context.
I found the Austrian dialects of German to be more similar to Swiss-German (or Alemannic German) than it was to the standard form of High German found in northern Germany. Like they Swiss, the Austrians are höflich aber nicht herzlich – polite but not warm. Being in the EU despite having identified as being a part of the non-aligned moment and having suffered in both world wars, their social progressiveness is closer to that of the rest of Europe than to conservative Switzerland, but not quite as progressive as Germany.
