Make Your Life Easier By Adopting These 5 Austrian Character Traits
Secrets from an Austrian girl to beam yourself into happiness.
Life can be difficult sometimes. It can leave us without direction or faith.
But being Austrian can help. We have a special coping system for challenging situations and a certain way to handle our fellow human beings.
Luckily, you can adopt some of our traditional traits and use them in your own life. I invite you to experiment and see for yourself, how being a little bit Austrian can help to navigate through whatever god throws at you.
Easygoingness
Austrians like to take it slowly and easy. That’s what distinguishes us from our German and Swiss brothers and sisters.
The clocks tick slower in my home country — and that is really, really nice. It’s less stressful. It gives us more time to think before we act.
That’s true both for our personal and professional lives. Here are some examples:
- When something is trendy in the USA, it will probably hit Austria with a fifteen to twenty years delay. At least, we’ll be prepared then — or so we think.
- We like the idea of being the best, but don’t put enough energy into getting there. The view from the second and third place is nice too.
- If something doesn’t work out, that‘s okay. We’ll take it from there.
- Oh, and we’re not the most structured people. We do everything based on our feelings and we don’t take ourselves too seriously. To be an authentic Austrian, you have to be willing to laugh about yourself.
When to use this skill
Taking it easy is a great attitude for life. Life’s too short to be unsatisfied or worried. The next time something doesn’t work out as planned, try not to be caught in negative thoughts.
Laugh about the mishap and move on. Tomorrow you can have a better day.
Grumpiness
When Austrians think about Vienna, grumpiness is the first thing that comes to their minds. They hate it, tourists love it.
It’s the opposite of British politeness. While people from the UK are always polite to everybody, no matter the circumstances, Viennese aren’t.
Do you know the following saying from the Bible?
“… if somebody slaps your right cheek, offer him the other one.”
We don’t do that in Vienna. We slap back. But that’s okay. People expect us to be grumpy and snappish.
Austria’s capital is most probably the only city where it’s acceptable — and even charming — when waiters rants to a customer or a tram driver to a commuter.
But we‘re never unforgiving.
When to use the skill
Whenever something goes on your nerves! We don’t have to be nice all the time.
Did someone steal your parking lot or jump the queue? You go! It’s okay to whine around from time to time.
Take your five minutes and then move on.
Title enamored
Prof. Lic. phil. MMMMMag. DDDDr. Bakk. theol. Bacc. theol. Bakk. phil. Bacc. phil.
No, that’s not a tongue twister.
A man in Austria holds all these titles — fourteen in total. Aren’t they beautiful?
But mind you if you forget only one when you write him an email. That’s considered very rude here.
There are lots of academic titles available in Austria. It’s considered good manners to list name them all when addressing a person.
Originally, the titles were also transferred to the wives of the titleholder, who were then called “Ms. Prof.“ and so on.
When to use the skill
Titles are considered to display superiority and knowledge. People with many titles were seen as very intelligent and experienced in the past.
So whenever you feel down, or inferior to anybody or anything, step in front of the mirror and speak your name out loud (with a raised chest), like this:
“Prof. Lic. phil. MMMMMag. DDDDr. INSERT YOUR NAME HERE Bakk. theol. Bacc. theol. Bakk. phil. Bacc. phil.”
You‘ll instantly feel better.
“Das geht sich aus”
This saying means something like “It will probably do” or “That will work somehow”. But we don’t say it with full confidence. We actually say it with a hint of insecurity and hopefulness.
The saying is used whenever we’re unsure if something works out, yet we would like it to.
For example, when we try to park the car in a very, very small parking lot or when we have to decide if we still have time for a nap before going to work.
The phrase perfectly captures our wish for something to happen, despite immense doubts, and to exhaust life to the fullest.
When to use the skill
Always.
Take The Middle Route
Some might call it optimistic willingness to compromise. Others call it a weakness of decision-making.
Austrians don’t like to commit to anything. We like to make everybody happy but achieve exactly the opposite.
An example par excellence:
When our government had to decide whether or not to ban smoking from all restaurants, they didn’t.
Instead, they passed a law that restaurant and bar owners must transform the biggest room of their facilities into a smoking-free area. With some exceptions for one-room restaurants or locations with under 50 square meters.
Owners sometimes had to rebuild their restaurants.
A few years — and several billion spent — later, smoking was banned after all. The restaurant industry wasn’t very happy.
If you look at the recent history of this country, you’ll find many more examples like this.
When to use the skill
If you’re unsure what to do, make it the Austrian way: take the middle route.
Are you and your partner discussing where to go for your next holidays, Thailand or Spain? Azerbaijan is somewhere in the middle, so that’s where you should go. Problem resolved!
Trust me, it doesn’t matter if it makes sense.
You could also appoint a person in charge — a so-called Sacherverständiger — who then creates a working group for the problem. It will most probably not result in anything, but at least someone is looking at the issue.
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