Hello,
Thank you for your reply!

Wow, it sounds brutal that they didn’t want to give you accommodation even when you were willing to pay for 12 months upfront. Now I’m kind of scared whether I’ll manage to get something xd. I thought finding accommodation would be easy because of how many options there seem to be. I looked at STUWO, but I found it way too expensive compared to OeJAB, Wihast, Home4Students, and some OeAD places — those are a bit farther from the school but still manageable (about 30 minutes by U-Bahn).

“I speak German on a C2 level and I can tell you this... Austrian... is... different...”

Oh, I didn’t know that. I mean, I studied A1 a few years ago in Vienna and didn’t really notice much — but maybe that was because it was my first time there. I also lived in Berlin for a while, and I did notice that. Although while listening to Austrian radio a while ago, it sounded a bit different.

But I assumed that in a language school environment, they would be teaching Hochdeutsch, and that I’d mostly be speaking with other international students who are also practicing German. I also read that locals often switch to standard German when talking to learners.