Washed Ashore by the Great Flood in 2002

In the early days of August 2002 we were literally washed ashore by the once-in-a-hundred-years flood and landed in Linz on the Danube – together with two enormous removal vans containing all our earthly belongings. (‘We’ meaning my husband, our three daughters and myself.) This was not a particularly auspicious start to a completely new and slightly daunting chapter of our lives. Friends and relatives back home in Germany kept calling us to make sure we were safe and sound and had not fallen prey to the deluge.

Unfortunately, the nearly three hundred painstakingly packed cardboard boxes were soaked by the torrential rain and, slowly but steadily, collapsed when piled on top of each other. Can you imagine the mess? To make matters even worse, my youngest daughter managed to break her right arm within hours of our arrival. Thanks to the excellent medical facilities in Linz, getting the right treatment for her was no problem at all but the accident did heighten the general apprehension accompanying this important move. After that, things definitely started to improve!

What kept amazing me over the next few weeks were the rather unanimous reactions of new acquaintances whether in the neighbourhood, at work or at school – the sheer incredulity that anyone would actually choose to live in Linz, sell their house and move there from the other end of Germany. Linz, it became clear, had the reputation of being an ugly, dirty, boring industrial city and even sworn Upper-Austrians seemed to share this view. Had we made the wrong decision by uprooting our children? Were they now doomed to live in an unworthy place? Fortunately not!

After nine years in the Upper-Austrian capital I still can’t agree with this negative appraisal. Admittedly, industry features prominently in some parts of Linz but, then again, jobs have to come from somewhere. Apart from work, Linz offers a well-developed, reliable public transport system; a nearby airport; an excellent cultural life; a wide range of good schools; institutions for further education; more than enough shops; numerous sports facilities; some beautiful architecture and – if you feel like leaving all this behind for a few hours – a close proximity to recreational areas as diverse and picturesque as the Mühlviertel or the Salzkammergut.

We had given the city preference over the nearby villages so that our older daughters could move more freely and were no longer dependent on being chauffeured around everywhere. (I wasn’t very keen on doing the chauffeuring either.) In addition, we hoped that a Protestant family from Northern Germany could blend in more easily in a larger town than in a small Catholic Austrian village where you have to live for at least five generations before being accepted as one of them.

One thing you have to get used to as a German expatriate in Austria (at least if you are no Bavarian or Saxon and speak reasonably decent High-German) is being instantly recognised as German the moment you open your mouth and say something – the language is a dead giveaway. I cannot count how often I have been told that I speak German with a German accent. At first, this sounded ridiculous to me. What other accent would I have? In my experience, the subject of language, whether or not someone is able to speak proper High-German, is a very touchy one with many Austrians – although they might deny this. It seems that people in Austria see a much closer connection between social status and language use, to an extent I have never experienced in Germany. No doubt whatsoever, Austrians are proud of their dialects. But the ability to express oneself fluently in High-German makes you step up the imaginary social ladder at least a few rungs and gives you a certain authority, even if it’s given to you grudgingly.

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