Photo courtesy of Addie Johnson

Striding away from the Belvedere building complex, junior Addie Johnson and senior Cooper Johnson pose for a family picture in Vienna, Austria. The Johnson family lived in Austria for six years and while living there, Cooper said he enjoyed the freedom provided by public transportation. “I liked just the overall city and the public transportation,” Cooper said. “It gave me the ability to go anywhere I wanted whenever I felt like it.”

After taxiing lazily along the expansive gravel drive, the plane aligns with the runway and begins to pick up speed. Two little kids excitedly gaze out of the windows as the plane gets faster and faster then finally lifts off the ground and into the air. Nervous and excited, the kids are ready to start a new adventure in Austria.

After their dad got a job at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), senior Cooper Johnson and junior Addie Johnson moved to Vienna, Austria from Dripping Springs. When they moved there, Cooper was nine and Addie was seven. There are many differences between Texas and Austria from their infrastructure to their education system. While living in Austria, Cooper said he enjoyed the freedom provided by the public transportation there.

“I liked just the overall city and the public transportation,” Cooper said. “It gave me the ability to go anywhere I wanted whenever I felt like it.”

Addie said she liked the unique food in Austria that can’t be found in Texas. These Austrian foods included schnitzel, kaese krainer and krapfen.

“[The food] is really different,” Addie said. “First of all, the chocolate is better, the bread is better, the pastries are better, [and] even the water is better. But they don’t have any real Mexican food over there, so the only time we could ever have Tex-Mex or anything was if my mom made it because they just didn’t know how to do it.”

Cooper also said he enjoyed the German food they ate in Austria, such as kaese krainers.

‘I liked the food a lot,” Cooper said. “There was a lot of meat and bread [in Austria]. It was good. My favorite food is probably called the kaese krainer which is like a really long hot dog in a bun and it has cheese inside of it.”

According to Addie, one of her favorite things while living in Austria was visiting nearby places such as Salzburg with friends and family.

“One of the places we went a lot was Salzburg, which is where The Sound of Music was filmed,” Addie said. “There’s this bike tour that you can go on [to see] all these different places that were in The Sound of Music. We went on this tour so many times because whenever people visited we’d go on it again. [It] was fun.”

According to Addie, although there was a lot to love about Austria, there were some people that she was happy to leave behind.

“Some of the old ladies there are really mean,” Addie said. “For example, at our goodbye party, me and some of my friends went up on this really big tree, and we were just sitting on a branch talking up there, and this old lady comes up to us and she’s like ‘you’ve gotta get down from that tree. I don’t care if you break your necks, but you can’t hurt the tree.’ Memories like that were funny but also not great.”

The Johnson family began learning German before they left. Once they attended the schools in Austria where the students spoke German, Cooper said it took him about a year and a half to be pretty comfortable in the language.

“It was really hard to fit-in the first two years in the Austrian school,” Cooper said. “A lot of Austrian teachers target non-native Austrians to be their least favorite students [and] the teachers viewed me and my sister as outsiders.”

Austrian schools are different from schools in Texas in that there are only four years of elementary school, and students stay with the same teacher and the same class for all of elementary school. In middle school and high school, teachers will change, but the classes will remain the same. According to Addie, the teachers’ personalities in Austria are also different from those in Texas.

“The teachers were definitely a lot meaner,” Addie said. “They don’t have as many rules for teachers I feel like, so they can kind of just do whatever as long as there [isn’t] any proof against them. [One] teacher would grab students by the back of their neck or sometimes by their ear and move them and yell a really mean way of saying shut up [to] little third and fourth graders. It was kind of bad.”

After living in Austria for six years, Cooper and Addie’s dad’s contract ended with the IAEA, and COVID was beginning, so the Johnson family decided to move back to Texas. Addie said she would enjoy going back to Austria to visit nostalgic places.

“Instead of living there, I would just rather go back and visit every summer,” Addie said. “If I went back there, I’d probably just like to go back and walk past my old schools and our old apartment and go see some of my friends that still live there. Texas is just home to me, so I feel more comfortable living here, but [living in Austria] was definitely a cool experience.”