Moving to Austria!

So far yet so close

“Found it,” says my mother. She hands me an old black-and-white photo of a middle-aged man standing in front of a small house. The photo is not very clear; I can’t really see the details of his face. He is wearing a suit and a hat. This is Peter, her “American” uncle.

Peter was born in 1904 in a small village in Salzburg. He was 14 when the First World War ended, and four years later, in 1922, Peter left Europe. He booked the cheapest ticket he could find and boarded a ship in Hamburg. Twelve days later, he arrived in New York. I wonder what it must have been like for him, seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time. Was he nervous, excited, scared? Or just tired from the long journey? 

My mum pours me a cup of tea and sits down at the kitchen table. “I feel like I know Peter really well, because your grandma talked about him all the time. But actually, I’ve only met him once,” she tells me as I study the picture. “He brought his wife Freda and their kids John and Mary over to meet us. That must have been 1951 or 52, I was very young. I remember that Freda spoke German with a funny accent, and the children only spoke English. But we got along really well.” 

My grandma missed her brother very much. He wrote to her once a month, often including a photo like the one in my hand, or sweets and chewing gum for my mum and her siblings.  As a kid, my mum thought that everyone in America was rich. That wasn’t true, of course. Peter’s first few years there were tough. He didn’t speak English, he didn’t know anyone, and he spent months looking for work. Eventually he found employment in Pennsylvania and soon met Freda. They worked hard and saved until they could buy a house – the one in the picture.

“Did he miss Austria?” I ask. My mum shakes her head. “He missed his parents and his sister, yes. But he never regretted going away. He made a good life for himself in the States.” She takes the photo back and smiles at it. “I think he felt at home there.”