I think I’ve got a bug…a travel bug

My last few posts have been about the painful application process for an exchange year. Today, I thought I’d concentrate on a more positive aspect. It should have become clear by now that I feel a very pressing urge to leave Austria. But why is that? Austria is a beautiful country. Many tourists come here and love it, and I have been envied numerous times during my travels for living here – especially considering that Salzburg, where I live now, is the home of Mozart and The Sound of Music. Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate all of the beauties this country has to offer, cultural and natural. Then there are a number of things I really appreciate about living here that I’ve only come to appreciate after being far away from home. These include, for example, hot running water, being able to drink the tap water, and the famous Austrian pastries.

However, one of the main things I miss in Austria is an ocean. I know, I know, we used to have access to the ocean, but that has been a while. Remember when Austria was an empire? Exactly. So wouldn’t we all like to wake up to a view like this from time to time?



I was lucky enough to do exactly that (i.e. waking up to a view like above) about three years ago on a trip to Central America. But that is not when I got the travel bug.

To be honest, I can’t remember exactly when this slight obsession with leaving Austria and constantly wanting to see different countries, meet new people, and learn new languages started, but I do remember one important incident. Towards the end of my time in middle school when I was fourteen, one of my teachers asked what I wanted to do with my life (career wise). The only thing I could think of was traveling.

At the age of sixteen I finally realized that I had been infected. For a mandatory internship for high school, I went to England (on my own) for a couple of months to work and live there. Ever since then I have been unable to stay in Austria for an extended period of time. Somehow I have managed to squeeze quite a number of trips into my tight schedule. So I have left Austria for at least a month every summer, and for a couple of long weekends in between, before I decided to leave for an exchange year. Recently I have cut back on my travel time, except to visit my brother who is studying in Sweden. This travel bug seems to be either hereditary or contagious.

Starting university hasn’t really changed the fact that people keep asking me what I would like to do with my life and, my favorite question, where I see myself in ten years. Even though many things have changed since I was fourteen, the answer to that question hasn’t: I want to travel. Okay, I have to admit that one little aspect has changed. Now I try to combine my travels with my academic goals. This is one of the main reasons why I would like to study abroad for a year. Of course when you’re studying a language you always have one more excuse to leave your home, i.e. to master a certain language.

However, I sometimes have to justify my constant urge for traveling to my relatives who somehow never got infected with the travel bug and prefer a life in the exact village where they grew up (a salute to rockelfe). When I have to explain myself, yet again, a brilliant German author comes into mind, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “The best education for a clever person is found in travel.“ And I would never disagree with Goethe.

Yours truly,

Lemon