The Lederhosen Girl

Emily Freiburger // The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

When I got the email saying where I was to be placed for an English teaching position through Fulbright Austria the upcoming school year, I was nervous, excited, unsure, and a whole lot of other emotions. I would be assisting a group of English teachers and teaching over 300 students over the course of about 6 months. I would teach about the United States, give an international perspective, and be a native speaker to talk and listen to. That was quite the task.

“Congratulations, Emily. You have been granted a position at the Höhere Bundeslehranstalt für Forstwirtschaft – Bruck/Mur. Bis bald!”

Having spent the last 6 months studying in Vienna at a study abroad program through my home university, I had become accustomed to my Viennese lifestyle. I loved the subway system which could take me to my favorite Döner Kabab stand “Berliner Döner” in the 7th district. I loved the Stadtpark where my friends and I could sip on some Almdudlers as the ducks begged for crumbs. I loved the music scene I had been longing for my whole life as a musician.

But at the end of the day, I knew what I was and where I came from. I was a farm girl from a cornfield in the middle of no-where Illinois. Corn and bean fields beyond where the eye could see. Flat, with at least 1,500 kilometers to Colorado’s mountains from where I was planted in the Midwest.

I knew living in Vienna was temporary, but I was excited to be able to stay in Austria, at least.

But where exactly was Bruck an der Mur and what would the next short 6 months of my life in Austria look like?

The first thing I could do was do a simple Google search.

Bruck an der Mur

Bruck an der Mur is a city of some 13,500 people located in the district Bruck-Mürzzuschlag, in the Austrian state of Styria.

Interessant.

This city was about a 2-hour train ride from the capital city of Vienna and from what I’d learn later, full of some of the most breath-taking views. Mountains beyond the eyes could see, quaint villages on the rolling landscape, and houses seemingly inaccessible dotting the high hills. It was a reminder that there was more than just flat farmland to live on. It was from a fairytale and it would be my reality.

Beyond the geography, I would need to know about my school and what exactly I’d be getting into.

Next was to look at the school’s website.

Forstschule.at

Simple enough. “Forestry school”

Sehr interessant.

A forestry school within the ‘Green Heart of Austria’. Students from all throughout Austria and even a few from Germany could attend this school and learn all about the environment while working towards the opportunity to become a forester. Ages 14 and up could attend making some of my oldest students over 30. I’d come to learn that it went beyond all that. It was a place of community and a peek at authentic Austrian living outside the broad scope of an internationalized Vienna.

Folk and marching music, traditional clothing called Tracht with dirndls and feathered hats, and a thick dialect different with every student and teacher making me contemplate whether or not I could even feel confident in my language skills would be what I would soon come to implant myself in.

It looked beautiful. It looked serene. It looked frightening and made me insecure.

It looked unique.

It was something I had to take head-on and throw myself into.

This would be an opportunity of a lifetime and I would get to spend it in Bruck an der Mur.

Throughout my life, some of my most favorite memories have been in the forests of Canada fishing and spending a week in a cabin with my family. We would spend that week laughing, fishing for northern pikes, walleyes, and anything our hooks would catch onto - even trees. I remember the crisp air and giving yourself up to the elements and sounds of the loons cooing in the early mornings as they woke up. You truly don’t know peace until you cut yourself off from the rum and tum of the quick world we live in which is full of noise and notifications reminding us that we aren’t alone. Sometimes it was nice to take a break and breath.

It would be exciting to go hiking and enjoy that part of nature again.

Next was reaching out to past teaching assistants. Who had been there? Who was in my position? What did the teaching assistants from the area have to say? Speaking with Angelo, the last assistant, was quite helpful as he explained all about his experience working at this school. He told me all about my future duties, which teachers were fun to work with, and what the students would be like. I hung on every word as it would be my guide. I was terrified that I’d let someone down. I had the next generation of Austrian foresters in my foreign hands. What would they take with them about the United States and English when I left?

“You’ll love it. It is a very unique school.”

He wasn’t kidding.

One thing he failed to mention was one little detail that I learned in person and through talking with other assistants from the area before moving there myself.

Our conversations would go like this:

“Hello! I am so-and-so. I bet you are excited to start working here in Austria. Where are you teaching?”

“Hi! My name is Emily. I’m in the Bundesland of Steiermark.”

“Oh, that is great! I’ve heard great things about it. Are you teaching in Graz its capital? That’s where most of the assistants live.”

“Actually, I am in Bruck an der Mur at the forestry school there. Have you heard of it?”

Then their eyes would widen, their smile lines crinkle, and they would begin to chuckle with a hearty laugh. At first, I would just laugh with them. Something must have been funny even if I didn’t know what.

What on Earth did that laugh mean? Was it a good laugh? A bad one? What had Angelo not told me?

“The Lederhosen school!”

I heard this from almost every teaching assistant that had lived in Austria in the previous years.

“Excuse me? The Lederhosen school?”

“Oh, Emily. You’re in a very unique place. You’re quite lucky, actually. At your school, many of the students wear lederhosen every day. They even wear leather shorts in the wintertime. No other American T.A. has this experience in the whole of Austria.”

I was going to be living in my own personal set of the Sound of Music even if Austrians don’t even know that that movie exists.

And that’s how I became the ‘Lederhosen’ girl. Whenever I spoke with other teaching assistants, all I’d have to say is,

“I’m at the Lederhosen school.”

And how thankful I am that I was there.

The school goes beyond what my students have decided to wear. It goes beyond their furry clogs, their feathered hats, and their leather pants. The school is made up of passionate, engaging, and kind people who I count myself blessed to have met and worked with. Things weren’t always easy. We had different opinions and experiences, but that’s what made my experience so much more beneficial and lifechanging even though I was there to help them.

Having studied German at my home university and then participating in the German language program in Vienna, I had learned a very standardized type of German. I felt confident and excited to put it to the test in a more immersed experience. However, when I first arrived, I struggled in understanding my own colleagues when they spoke in dialect with me. I felt so out of my depth. How had I gotten here if I couldn’t even understand them when they were asking me as simple a question as ‘what are you plans for the weekend”? I felt cut off, unincluded, and an outsider. I was the foreigner, not them. But I soon realized that was how my students felt every time they were in their English classes. I was the native speaker and they had to struggle to understand, speak, write, read, and put themselves out there to learn a language not their own for a grade.

We learned to bond over the fact that we weren’t fluent in the language we were learning. I gave them English and they gave me German. We laughed and shared our struggles together.

It is hard to understand how difficult our own mother languages are just as it is hard to see the forest as a tree from the inside.

It helped to have my chainsaw-lugging foresting students make it a bit easier, and I was just as happy to oblige.

I think that, at the end of the day, I can’t be a native. One has to accept that they’ll always be a bit different, but what’s wrong with that?

This just leads to more opportunities to make a mistake, laugh about it, and then move on.

No one is perfect.

I hope to return to my students one day and go back with them into the forests tugging along their chainsaws so they can identify trees for Frau Freiburger again all while asking me all about my life back home in Illinois.

“What is your home like, Frau Freiburger? Is Illinois like Austria? Do you have such good food and drink like us?”

“Are you liking it here in Bruck with us? It is so much better than Vienna.”

“You’re coming back next year aren’t you, Emily?”

How I wish I was.

I learned so much about dialect, how beautiful the Austrian mountains are, folk music, Tracht, forestry, the beautiful Styrian culture & people, and how much I miss seeing my students wearing Lederhosen every day.

Unique, indeed.