How people interact with each other

1st Blog: By Giulia Stallwanger - Thursday, 3 November 2022, 8:34 AM
Today, I’m living exactly one month in Liechtenstein. When I first arrived, the greatest difference I noticed was the landscape. These high mountains and in between the flat valley with the Rhine. The following days and weeks I noticed that there were more differences, even though they were small. I would put these differences under the headline „how people interact with each other“ to sum it up and to give some examples for this aspect of living together.

The first thing is greeting in general, like on the street, in the bus and at the university. It's a feeling of appreciation if the most people say „Hoi“ to you, even small kids playing on the street or an old man with his walking stick. In comparison to Munich, which is a big city, anonymity is dominating the society and the way of living together or rather living next to each other. Greetings are rare and because of that it seems more unfriendly. In comparison to a small village far from a bigger city, the greeting situation is kind of similar to Liechtenstein. My reaction to the aspect I noticed is saying Hoi back and smile more often. In my opinion, the greeting thing makes the people more sympathetic. I realized that you feel more part of the community and more welcome. Another thing of living together is helping each other out. You can see people helping in the supermarket or in the neighborhood. It's nice to know people are interacting considerately and I noticed that I was also raised with this social value, so my reaction to it is logically being considerate too.

The next thing I noticed is that the people are always looking and observing what’s happening in their surrounding. Its obvious that they recognize a new face in their neighborhood and that’s the reason why some people have a closer look who’s walking in front of their house. I don’t know if I just feel watched but I think the people here know each other very well and because of that, it's conspicuous if there’s someone new. This kind of observation reminds me of living in a small village like I know it from Germany. I had no reaction to it because I was used to it. It showed me how similar people in different areas can be. Somehow that's kind of logic because it's a phenomenon of smaller communities that can be found everywhere.

The conclusion of my observation how people interact is that it’s the same in some points but in some aspects it seems like people in Liechtenstein are more caring. I appreciate this way of behavior and I do my best to fit in.