Before moving to Austria, I knew I’d be one of a few Black people. In a country with only nine million people and roughly 40,000 of them Black, I knew what I had signed up for. Prior to moving to Austria, I had spent four years in a utopia called an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities). North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, a school built for Black folks who couldn’t get into the famed North Carolina State University during segregation and the Jim Crow era, was a safe space for Black folks who wanted to experience life and community with those who looked like them. After having completed my degree at an HBCU, I knew I would have massive culture shock in Austria.

I knew that Austria would be quite ignorant of the plight of Black folks. I knew they would make questionable comments, but since they were Europeans, I was expecting and ready to give them a pass. “It’s not a part of their history,” I said to myself, knowing the woes of the colonization of Africa that began on this very continent. I knew I would have to educate not only my students but also most people I interacted with. My HBCU had given me thick skin—though a type of thick skin different from the kind that we were assumed to have during Jim Crow and that was used as an excuse to whip and beat us. From my time at an HBCU, I gained the thickness to love my melanin and help others see what it truly means to be Black.

I began taking pride in my Blackness and my African roots. When talking with and meeting other Black folks, the question of “Where are you really from?” began to come up. It hits different when someone who looks like you says it. It doesn’t feel as dismissive or condescending as when a non-Black person says it; it feels like a true inquisitiveness so that we could connect on a deeper level. “Oh, my family comes from slavery, so I don’t really know,” I’d reply with this fleeting feeling of sorrow. I wish I could say something like “Ghana, and our Jollof is the best,” but instead the marks of colonialism were all over me. My lighter complexion meant that I was diluted, and my constant use of African American Vernacular English was the cherry on top.

They still accepted me for who I was, because even if I didn’t intrinsically know certain things to be African, I was still their kinfolk. So I started listening to Afrobeats. I was persistent in learning French to talk more with a friend from Côte d’Ivoire and his family. My aunt had even recently done an ancestry DNA test, so I had a better idea of where I was from. My answer changed from “I don’t really know” to “My ancestry is from primarily New Guinea, the Congo, and Cameroon.” I felt pride in my West African roots. Even if I wasn’t 100% sure, something felt better than nothing.

The feeling that I had bottled up and that eventually boiled over was anger. In these moments of sharing knowledge about and pride in Black history, I was also pushing down microaggressions.

I experienced my first form of direct racism just a few weeks into living in Austria. I was taking a walk with a friend who was also Black when someone leaned out of their car to yell “niggers” at us before speeding off. My friend was so angry that he couldn’t do anything about it. But my reaction was the opposite. I laughed and said “Oh wow” because to me it was comical. For me, it was the only appropriate reaction to have because racism is inescapable to the point that it's laughable. But once my laughter died down, I began to realize that there would be even more moments like this. I hoped my laughter would be able to carry me throughout these painful moments.

I spent months dealing with small amounts of racism, stereotypes, and microaggressions. Being asked to do the rapping part of a karaoke song because it’s “second nature.” Being met with suspicion at stores and checkout counters until people heard my obvious American accent while speaking German. Having to hear many Austrians say “What? We’re not racist, we never had anything like segregation,” as if having children dress up in blackface on Epiphany is merely part of a tradition and could never be offensive.

I felt alone. I felt like I was the only Black person everywhere I went. I would walk down the street and look around for other people who looked like me. Four other Black people on an average day, ten if I was lucky. In America, when Black people see each other in predominately White spaces, we smile or do a slight head nod. This small greeting means “I see you,” and it has provided me with so much comfort throughout life. But in Austria, I’d offer a smile or a nod and was met with a stillness that hurt. I asked myself, “What has this country done to my people that made them forget how warm we are?” We are not cold beings. I began to shut down. I too turned cold.

During my first summer in Europe, I cried so hard because I hated the way I looked. I was not the Austrian beauty standard, and I felt it. I had never struggled with self-confidence before. I know I’m beautiful, but Austria made me feel so ugly. I am the exact opposite of a tall, skinny, blonde-haired White woman. I am a short and curvy Black woman. If I wore shorts or a tank top, people would stare at me like I was an extraterrestrial being. “Is there something on my face?” I wondered as I patted myself down, hoping that I hadn’t been walking around with toilet paper on the bottom of my shoe or my shirt on backward. But nothing was there except for the same skin that I had been living in for over 20 years. I wanted to crawl out of it. I wanted to escape it just momentarily so I wouldn’t always feel like the odd one out. Just a few minutes so no one would question my belonging.

I left my room and sought a support system. A group of people who may not necessarily look like me but felt the same way as me. I found community through other teaching assistants (TAs) that were just like me: living in a foreign country, trying to get a grasp of the Austrian dialect, and dealing with waves of homesickness. I then found myself in a community that was so beautiful and ran so deep that I fostered friendships that I knew would last a lifetime.

A TA from Las Vegas, Nevada, introduced me to “the volleyball crew.” We were a group of young people—the majority from foreign countries, with a sprinkle of Austrians—who all found themselves in Austria for different reasons. Some people for work, others for study and, everyone's favorite trope, for love. We’d meet at the Donaulände park in Linz on warm sunny days and enjoy a few matches of volleyball. Then our friendships grew off the courts and into game nights, potluck dinners, and even a road trip across eastern Europe.