Americans? What kind of people are they?

"We had no idea what Americans look like. Americans? Americans? What kind of people are they? I remember that a few years earlier, even before the war, the word went around that there was a Negro downtown at Sigmundsplatz. `What? A Negro? What does he look like?' Everyone rushed over to see. Salzburg was truly a small town! Nowadays every school kid knows America is over there and Australia is there. But for us, that was all far, far away."

Gertraud D., born 1922, a Chemistry student, experienced the end of the war and the first encounter with GIs in Salzburg (Boltzmann-Institut/Steinocher-Fonds Interview Archive, Salzburg )