“After I finished university, for some reason, I really wanted to get out of Vienna. I thought I am so young and I want to travel, I don’t really want to settle here. So I went to Tunisia for a few months, I went to India, then to Germany, then I did a masters in London… So I was trying to escape from Vienna but I was always coming back. It was very funny, I did like 10 good-bye parties and I always came back. In the end I stopped doing them because people would say: She’s gone… and then she’s back again.

By now I like that Austria is comfortable, there are a lot of things which are life standard connected, so they are basic things you take for granted, but they are very nice. For example, I realized it when I moved to London for a year, I had taken for granted that coming home really late at night is safe. In London there are some pretty unsafe neighbourhoods and here I don’t even have to think about it. Or the fact that Vienna is not so huge and you can always meet people just for a coffee, without too much effort. I really enjoy these simple things which make it a very comfortable place to be in.”

Steli, from Sofia, Bulgaria, moved to Austria with her family in 2004