The Urge to Leave Salzburg

Hello there. This post is going to be a little different than the others. This is a test-situation, a blog-test-situation. Interesting. Usually in written test-situations, I'd suffer from a severe case of writer's cramp (or cr*p - depending on the topic), but this time I think I can manage. Today's blog topic is "the urge to leave Salzburg", as the title already suggests.

To give you some insight into why I sometimes have the urge to leave Salzburg, I'll have to tell you two things: First, about my personal history (can you call it history if you're not even 25 yet, I wonder?) and second about my person or rather about specific character traits that come into play here.

As I'm only 21 ysears old now, I think the fact that, all together, I have already moved seven times is pretty striking. I was born in Carinthia, lived there for only a short time, then moved to Innsbruck, Tyrol, where my parents decided to stay a little longer before moving again. The next step and this is where we finally ended up after a couple of years, was the province of Salzburg. Our first station here was St. Johann im Pongau but, interestingly enough, my parents didn't like it there either - so we moved again. But only to the other side of town. (Don't ask.) The last move my family as a whole undertook was a move from St. Johann to the beautiful village of Wagrain on the other side of the mountain. It is a lovely place; nestled in the mountains of the ski-resort Amadé it is not only a perfect place for a skiing holiday but also a perfect place to live. However, I clearly prefer one half of the year to the other in Wagrain, since I love skiing, snowboarding and pretty much anything else what one can do in winter. Before I digress too much, I'll leave you with some nice pictures of the place where my parents still live.

But this is not the end. (If you've been counting, you're surely missing three more moves.) After "enduring" about eight years of living in Wagrain, I felt the urge to leave again - this time on my own. So, when I was only 14, I decided (as fas as one is in the position to decide anything at this age) to drop out of my current school and moved to London. I won't go into further detail here on what I particularly liked about London because one of my earlier posts deals with this beautiful city. Here are a couple of photos for you:

After finishing school there, I had to move back home again but I could not stand it there. Wagrain was just too small and so I soon moved into my flat in the city of Salzburg. This was my last move, so far. But as you can see, both my parents and I are rather restless types and with this history of constant moving from one place to another in a fairly short amount of time, I clearly have difficulty in settling down properly.

This was the first part to make my "occasional" urge to leave Salzburg sound reasonable - here is the second: As the first part was about my personal history I'd now like to tell you a bit about my person. (Although you don't know my sister) I am the very opposite of her. My sister always was (and actually still is) Mommy's little girl, whereas I almost always took every opportunity to leae the "nest". From when I was five years old, I participated in weeklong children's camps (bless the poor ponies!) in the remotest places in Carinthia or Styria. When I was a little older, I became more daring and took part in all sorts of language camps in England, Switzerland and France. (I'd go anywhere as long as there were ponies.) By coincidence, I found this old photo today and I thought it'd be good to have you laugh a bit at me on a slow, fat pony back in the day.

Over the years, my interests have changed a little and I'm not as much into horses as I used to be (come on girls, we all were!) but I still feel the urge to leave home every now and then.

Along with my liking of "adventurous" trips, I do have another character trait (not as amiable as fluffy ponies) that comes into play here. I have a rather short attention span - in every aspect. And with short i mean very short. I doesn't matter if it's books, films, music or anything else. Sometimes I cannot even mangage to listen to one song all the way through (those are a tough three minutes!!) and it's the same with books. With certain books I get so annoyed that I skip the "last" 2/3rds and read the last couple of pages instead. Not as time consuming as reading every single page.

Sadly, this also holds true for people. I'm a real people person. I always need people around me - as many different people as possible. Though I live on my own, my flat looks like I share it because I almost always have someone over. But, bringin this back to the actual topic, it comes clear that I do need a lot of variety, be it places or people.

Though this revelation doesn't portray me in a particular positive light, I think it makes clear what a restless person I am. I do have to say that I love the city of Salzburg with all its old (-fashioned) places and as much as I love Wagrain, though sometimes I feel like all this "comfort of a smal town" and its ordinaryness smother me. It's not that I get fed up with Salzburg or the people living here (at least most of the time; let's not talk about the Salzburg Festival) but for my unapeasable hunger to see new places, cities, countries and to encounter many people from all over the world. Travelling is one of my favourite (and most expensive) hobbies (thank God I quit horse-riding back then), and I try to get away as soon as I can afford it again (taking money and university into account, of course.) So far I have visited about 21 countries and all continents except Australia, but I've got some interesting plans for the summer - we will see.

The last major holiday I undertook was a three-week trop around SouthEast Asia. I started out in Hong Kong, where I visited some friends, then flew to Bali, Indonesia and went back home with a three-day stop-over in Singapore. To anyone interested in shopping, surfing, partying and having a blast of a time I'd surely recommend this trip! (Be aware of the monkeys on Bali though; they are mischievous!!) Again, without some photos I am sure one couldn'd describe the beauty (and the beast, top right) of Bali and Hong Kong properly.

If you, dear readers, also feel the same about Salzburg or generally about leaving home, here are some helpful links for a comparatively cheap getaway: (if you're not saving up for a "proper" holiday somewhere far off")

Ryan Air, GermanWings, Easy Jet.