Servus,

many mighty fine stories which occurred since publishing my last post are to be told and hence here I am once again, writing about them. (In reality, what predominantly happened was me getting bankrupt through attending way too many concerts. I guess that’s how things work… This all has quite a chance of growing increasingly boring throughout the process of reading it but you’ll have to deal it — since it’s my darn blog.) Anyway, have a magnificent read!

First off, picking everything up right where I left it at, Sylvester night turned out pretty darn crazy. All had started with us creating a WhatsApp group and adding a few exchange students, which apparently stayed in Salzburg with Rotary, to it. We proceeded to meet up with them and then were essentially strolling around the city, exploring Salzburg’s nightlife just as I have done it before a few too many times. A bit farther into the night, we met and conversed with some vastly random people who had wished us a happy new year. All of which literally happened under a bridge and as it turned out quite a lot of them also either were international uni students and/or ex-exchange students. They then invited us to tag along with them to some ominous “super cool place” — and where did we end up at? Some private pay-as-you-wish punk bar. Well, looking back I do really appreciate my introduction to it since by now it’s one of my more favoured hangout locations relative to Salzburg’s nightlife. All in all, it definitely could be called a successful Sylvester night.

About a week later, on one of the last of the Christmas holidays, my reindeer, me, myself and I went to a spa in the picturesque village of Gastein, having been invited there by my mum and her fiancé. Just having had a pretty scarce night of sleep, I was feeling quite sick, was coughing quite often and amazingly ended up having some hilarious g-eazy-sounding-like voice. So once we had arrived there, had chilled in the whirlpool for a while, had eaten some delicious Schnitzel, where did we then proceed to spend the rest of our day? In the nude sauna of course! Really, before we knew what the heck even was going on, we were in there, feeling just like fish in water. First it was quite a big step out of our comfort zone, letting the covers fall… In the end we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves doing so though, releasing our most inner nudists. After all, getting out of the comfort zone really is what an (ex-)exchange student’s life is all about. On same day’s afternoon we also were to attend a local “Perchtenlauf” in Gastein. It’s an alpine tradition: a bunch of guys running around with all kinds of creepy masks, said to evict the evil spirits of Winter. This particular “Perchtenlauf” has by now been a go-to one for several centuries and actually got to be UNESCO world inheritance. Hence, quite the day to finish off quite the Christmas holidays.

Two weeks into school again, there surprisingly was a pretty rare event to be found amidst Salzburg. A freaking Fado concert. It’s a Portuguese genre of music I initially did not appreciate at all but very much learned to admire and absorb truly in the latter days of my exchange. It inherits a wild mix of influences, originating from Portuguese seaman travelling all across the world, taking inspiration back home. It’s commonly characterised by mournful tunes and lyrics, in which it often deals with the hardship of life and love. “Saudade”, a Portuguese word, which managed to find space in and later also on my chest, describes the core of this genre loosely. Longing, symbolising an irreplaceable loss. A feeling between homesickness and itchy feet… Anyway, so I attended that very Fado concert with an ex-classmate of mine and it was absolutely gorgeous, leading to quite a number of melancholic flashbacks. Listening to all of these typical sounds and rhythms also got me to reflect a bit — over the past and over my exchange. Plus afterwards, I even got to speak some Portuguese with the artists and let them in on my story. Only downside to all of this was that it was a Thursday and I got home super late hence transformed into a zombie for the coming day. I was a serious contender for an actual Walking Dead cameo. Worth it though.

Even my zombie self couldn’t miss out on next day’s “Local Heroes” event, which lined up a bunch of talented local Metal, Rock and even Jazz bands. It took place in the so called “Rockhouse”, a creative melting pot for Salzburg’s music scene. With its quite unique concept, mainly revolving around supporting those mentioned talented local bands as well as possible, it really got to be a catalyst for the music scene in here throughout the last decades. As much to that. Obviously the Norwegian-Austrian duo had to crash that kind of event so as we did. Most bands were super fine, the last band, which was the Jazz one, was super quirky and had a number of cool instrumentals.

Next on our concert crusade — the following weekend — we travelled to Austria’s marvellous capital, Vienna, to experience one hell of a band. Alt-J. They bombarded us with fantastic, spacy hits such as “Breezeblocks” and “Taro”. Originally we had planned to go out and experience Vienna’s nightlife afterwards but in the end we were just too exhausted from the hit-bombardment and rather got our heads on some comfy pillows in the flat of a Viennese relative of mine. Shoutout to her: She’s some serious world traveller, and she’s super cool.

Having had to seek out some recovery time for our beloved ears, we later that month made our way to Altenmarkt, more specifically the spa in there, where we got to express our newfound nudism once more, in the end even managing to drag my two primary-school-friends who came along into the sauna with us. After a bunch of enlightening meditation sessions in different saunas during the afternoon, at night, half of the spa suddenly turned into a freaking water disco and the nude sauna pools started shedding some sweet lights as well. Quite the magic was at work that night.

Farther into our infamous concert crusade, we found our way to Rockhouse once more. This time we spooked the crowd of a George Harrison tribute concert. For the sake of my mum being super obsessed with the Beatles, I have been in touch with their music for most of my childhood so it was some kind of musical home turf. Well, in the end, some absolutely random Norwegian, some other exchange student reigning from Brazil, staying in Austria with Rotary (whom we got to know in frame of the quite memorable Sylvester night) and my silly ass went to enjoy this musical delicacy. And it was worth the money once again — although my wallet was emptier than heaven by now.

A few days later, finally last on our glorious concert streak, was the show of an innovative, Viennese Austropop band going by the name of “Bilderbuch”. Although our ears might have been permanently damaged by a phalanx of screaming fangirls, it was an absolutely stunning performance. Next to passionately roasting the church, they didn’t contain themselves and happily played a whole four “Zugaben” (= encores).

By this day the Easter holidays have begun. The Norwegian’s off to a trip through Europe, organised by a bunch of different national AFS bureaus. I am enjoying some time for myself and a pinch of much-needed self-reflection. Farther, I applied for this year’s version of AFS Austria’s APFP camp in May as a volunteer. It’s about bringing together current international exchange students in Austria and future exchange students from Austria to share their reflections and expectations — quite the intercultural learning experience, if I may say so myself. This sure is gonna be one of the highlights of my 2018, so I dare the universe to bring it on; I’m psyched!

Have a truly wonderful day and go raise your vibration!

Julian