Insight #53 A Sense of Belonging

So I’ve come to realize something.

As a student from out of town (Lower Austria, to be exact) I had gotten used to the thought that I was just a temporary resident here in Salzburg, a long-term tourist with a permanent address. I had adjusted to the fact that there were “circles” in this town that I would never belong to. I didn’t really want to belong to them, to be honest, and I still don’t.

Maybe I was just paranoid, but I felt that there were certain circles of old families, mostly people born and raised here, who secretly ruled the city and made sure it remained an expensive little place where out-of-towners, especially students, were outwardly welcome, but inwardly looked down upon. I’m sure some of you know what I’m trying to put into words. I felt that there were certain people with a sense of entitlement in this town who were able to park their Porsches in front of their house all day and night for free in spitting distance of a parking meter – yet I repeatedly found rude notes on my ancient Mazda which I had parked in a perfectly legal spot (I checked and double-checked), telling me to park that thing elsewhere, this is not a permanent parking spot. And I am one-hundred percent sure that there would have been no rude notes on a nicer car without the “foreign” license plate.

Back then I probably was exaggerating anyway, but now I no longer feel this irrational contempt towards the “inner-Salzburg circle”, a term I used as a collective for all the people in Salzburg who had ever been rude to me or had a problem with me. Or with Mitzi, my Mazda.

What changed? I still have no connection to the inner circle, of course. But I started working in a public place. A very public place, Mozartplatz, with a straight view of Mozart’s brazen butt (literally).
It happened on my first early shift. One by one the little horse-drawn carriages passed by my booth on their way to Residenzplatz where they park and wait for milkable tourists. Suddenly, one of the owners tipped his little traditional hat with a friendly “Morning, Segway girl, beautiful day!” as his horses went clip-clopping past. Then another one came by and waved. And another one. Even that bitchy-looking lady with the long blonde French braid, whose face slightly resembles that of the two Haflinger horses drawing her carriage, raised her decorative whip in greeting. I peeped out from amidst my nerd-mobiles, smiling tentatively, amazed.

And all of a sudden it felt like I belonged. At first I didn’t know what to do with this newfound sense of, well, feeling like a local. It was like there was this big inside joke and … I was on the inside!

In any case, working out there on the tourist front makes me appreciate the beauty of the town of endless Schnürlregen more and more every day, the superficial beauty, the one that tourists see. (Superficial in an entirely positive sense.) Tourists admire the tall baroque churches, the old winding alleyways, the dirndls, the guild signs swaying in the wind. I used to see and admire those things, too, when I first came to Salzburg and I’m learning to do so again through the eyes of awe-struck Americans on Segways, through the gestures of lost Italians who ask for a map in a wild, unintelligible dialect, through the camera lenses of swarms of happy Japanese, laden with bags from the Manner shop.

And when the big bells of the Dom threaten to deafen me and my superstar of a booth neighbor Herr Karli at noon, I get goosebumps and feel slightly stupid, but I’m still glad I chose Salzburg over Vienna for college three years ago.