Following the East Wind: An International Marriage

In Austria during the post-war reconstruction years, when foreigners were few and bicultural couples rare, a young Austrian girl and a Korean student met and fell in love. They were determined to overcome all obstacles in order to build a life together. This is their story.

Waltraud posing for a photo.

By Waltraud Kim

Ever since I was a little girl I wanted to marry an Asian.

My first interest in Asia was aroused when I was about 7 or 8 years old. We were invited to the house of some friends of my parents.  At that time, it was around 1953, my twin sister and I did not have many things to play with. Books for kids were scarce. So we were brought up in a rather modest way.

We were thrilled to go to the house of our parent’s friends because they liked to tell us stories about far-away countries. There, I first learned that there are many more countries in the world, with people that look and talk differently from the way we do. My interest grew.

When I was told that the Chinese and Japanese have black hair and black eyes, “just like you,” I was thrilled. Only the form of their eyes is different, I was told. Their eyes are more slanted. The fact that I could look slightly different from my twin sister inspired me to work on my eyes to give them a “Japanese form”, a little slant.  I started to pull the corners of the eyes upwards to give them the desired exotic form. But how sad, they did not stay the way I wanted them.  After many fruitless attempts I gave up.  But from now on I was very interested in China and Japan, and whenever I could get information about these countries,  I absorbed it like a sponge.

When I was 17 years old (it was the year 1963), I wanted to go to a dancing school. In Vienna it was, so to say, a “must” to know how to dance waltz and how to behave appropriately in society. Things like etiquette were also taught there. Of course I also wanted to get to know a partner, and the dancing schools were an ideal place for singles. There were many dancing schools in Vienna, big ones with a very good reputation and smaller schools which were unknown.  I don’t know why, but I felt attracted to a small, almost shabby dancing school, which was near our apartment.

The first day of class approached. I bought myself a fashionable, tight, pink cotton dress with a big, gray bow tie around the waist, and gray, high heeled shoes, which were so tight that I needed some extra massage for my feet after I wore them, because my feet were hurting so much.

In the school, which consisted of a foyer and a big dancing room, the ladies and gentlemen had to sit separately in two rows opposite each other on both sides of the wall. What disappointment!

Now we realized that my sister and I, as well as our friend, who came with us to the dancing school, were the only ones who did not bring a partner.  This meant that most of the time we were just sitting there watching the others dance and had to wait until you were asked to dance by one of the gentlemen.  How boring!  We were frustrated. I regretted that we decided to go to this dancing school.

Next lesson was the same and also the following lesson did not bring much change.  One more time we would go, and if there were not more gentlemen, we would not come again.

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