Here is the less glamourous side of working in Austria. Not everywhere is picturesque. Traun on the outskirts of Linz is certainly not. It might be named after the beautiful alpine river that flows past it and gives its name to the spectacular Traunsee, but it’s the home of strip malls and shopping centres.
The school and the students were great, but most of them lived in other places and travelled in by bus or tram. If you’ve seen the tv show Dark, it’s the same prefab school building. They’re all over Germany and Austria. Sometimes you find a rare red wind variant.
The high-rise hotel I stayed at had this bizarre glass indoor smoking cubicle because there was no outdoor spaces for guests.
My co-worker had the McDonalds drive-through directly under his window. He debated what would happen if he lowered down a basket on a rope to order.
The bathroom frequently flooded the bedroom when you had a shower as they’d got the gradient wrong.
There is a concept of the Backrooms, mazes of endless liminal corporate space, accessed by accidentally opening the wrong unmarked door. Limitless expanses of drab carpets, buzzing fluorescent lights, drab polystyrene ceiling tiles, empty rooms with sundry collections of abandoned everyday objects, and monsters that lurk just out of the corner of your eyes. The lounge of the hotel was certainly located there, with faded grey carpet, cheap outdoor patio tables inexplicably put indoors, and a half-empty vending machine with out of date stock.
The local shopping centre also has a bizarre fake Italian Renaissance cityscape inside, that looks like it’s made of Lego. Balconies on fake windows that nobody lives behind.
Escalators that go past fake stone towers and under a triumphant arch made of polystyrene. One giant stage set for mid-range consumerism. It wasn’t even a particularly good shopping centre.
As generic Austrian as you can get.
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