After a transatlantic flight, I have one first order of business, and one only: Coffee.
(The second, if I’m landing in the UK, is to locate Munchies candy somewhere in the airport.)
But on my first day in Austria, the caffeine expedition was a bit delayed due to some combination of a shorter layover and needing to catch a train.
Unfortunately, I don’t know if I can blame the lack of coffee in my system on the language barriers I encountered that afternoon. The indecipherable words laced with rolling r’s over the train loudspeaker and the guys sitting near me carrying on a conversation in German (maybe?) should have been my first clue that something was amiss.
It went something like this….
(Cue the dramatic “Yay, I’m traveling to Europe!” music… Pretty much just think of the score to any romcom where they travel to Europe, and there you go.)
Through the rain, I saw the spires, the pink, white, and yellow rococo facades, the red and brown rooftops clustering together into an early modern fairy tale town. “Once upon a time, I lived in Austria….”
This was the place, and I couldn’t wait to dive into those narrow cobblestone streets and find some caffeine for my jet-lagged brain.
But first, there was the small matter of my two large suitcases, and navigating those cobblestone streets to drop them off at my apartment. There was the telltale green-and-yellow “H” just outside the train station, letting me know that a bus–hopefully the right bus–would be there eventually.
I boarded what I thought was the right one, not entirely certain of my stop, but knowing approximately the cross streets where I’d need to hop out. There were a bunch of Gymnasium (high school) students on the bus. Their words blended together, the lilting sounds of the Austrian dialect just discernible over the roar of the bus.
That should have been my next clue.
I hopped off the bus in almost the right place, pushing one suitcase in front of me, dragging the other behind (Did I mention it was raining?) Advice to future self: Only bring one big suitcase when moving abroad for a year. The suitcases’ wheels click-clacked on the cobblestones.
After depositing my suitcases in my apartment, I could finally turn to the very important task at hand. (Caffeine, in case you forgot.)
The streets of Steyr came into focus without the weight of my suitcases. The rain had slowed down, too. Now I could start feeling like a local going about her day-to-day business. I crossed one of the bridges, passing the large pastel church and the steep incline up to the castle.
(Of course there was a castle.)
There was the town square, the spire of the town hall.
It was all even better than the pictures.
And then I found the place. It was a dark pink building tucked between two other cotton-candy-colored buildings. I only went there the one time, but I remember it well because of what happened next.
The woman behind the counter was blond, and the button-down shirt under her apron matched the pink of the building. She spoke quickly, assuming I was an Austrian, perhaps a student at the local college.
I stared. Come again?
Four years of German, including seven months abroad, and she might as well have been speaking Greek or Mandarin or Finnish. (Note: I still don’t speak any of those languages. Yet.)
Okay, I thought, Get it together. Smile and nod, smile and nod. I think I half-mumbled a “Ja.”
Her words ran together, and I couldn’t pick out a single one.
“Ein Cappuccino, bitte,” I said. “Danke.” At least there was that. Phew.
It would take less time than I had initially thought for me to learn the intricacies of the Upper Austrian dialect, a sound that soon became familiar, comforting, second nature.
Fast forward to the end of that year, and I could understand (almost) every word. Some might even say now that I have the slightest hint of an Austrian accent when speaking German. But I never forgot that initial stumble, a reminder that, while I soon grew to consider the city a second home, I was still a traveler.
One who really, really needed that coffee.
Note: I took the photo above during one of my many walks around town, standing on a bridge covered in some rather entertaining Denglish graffiti. On the right is the castle, and on the left are the spires of the town hall and cathedral.
