AUSTRIA. Vienna, December 9, 2015,
Sherahmad Razi, 32, from Faryab province in Afghanistan, works in the breakfast room. He’s been in Austria for eight years after coming alone from Afghanistan, through Iran, Turkey and the Balkans. Back in Afghanistan he was a welder.
“It’s a bit of a difference (hotel work) but I can do anything. The biggest change from when I was unemployed (awaiting an asylum decision) is that I have to get up early. I used to sleep in until 10 or 11 but now I start at six, so I have to get up at twenty-to-five. I like interacting with the customers and it’s good to be earning a living.”
In his spare time, Sherahmad plays football and billiards and walks by the River Danube but sometimes, he says, “it is difficult to feel the good life.
“In Afghanistan, my mother is sick and my parents live in an area (on the border with the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan) where war is in front of our door. When there is no problem, there is no problem for me but when they are ill or something, I worry.”
Sherahmad married his wife Lina just before he left Afghanistan and has not seen her for eight years. He hopes to bring her to join him in Austria.