The "Friendly Alien"

No, I did not meet a very gentle extraterrestrial being - "Friendly Alien" is simply the nickname of the Kunsthaus, the most peculiar building in Graz when it comes to architecture.

It was built in 2003, when Graz was the European Capital of Culture. The Kunsthaus is an art gallery dedicated to contemporary and modern art. There are no permanent exhibitions so every few months you can see completely new works of art that have never been displayed in the Kunsthaus before.

I visited the Kunsthaus last weekend with an exchange student from Canada because she was curious what it was like inside and I had never been inside before either, which is quite a shame since I have been living not too far away from this special building all my life. 

On the first floor there was a modern art exhibition from local artists and I have to say, the charm of modern art will forever remain a mystery to me... On the second floor there was an exhibition from two Russian artists, which I found more fascinating. You could see the whole process of creating a work of art, from the first sketches to the actual painting or even a 3D model of a fantasy building. We could tell from the dates that it sometimes took the artist years to finish a painting or model, and that many changes were made in the process. The effort the artists had put into their work really fascinated me, especially because art is something done for the sake of it, and not primarily for profit or approval. The artist cannot know whether his work of art will be accepted or liked, yet he spends years on one.

I would like to share one picture that I took with you:

This mirror was mounted in the staircase, and at first I wondered why you would need a mirror there. After all, people are not likely to crash into one another in a big staircase like this. I found it a nice idea, though, until I realized that I was fooled - the "mirror" was not a mirror at all, but a painting! :-)

What's the word for...?

Huh, I haven't been blogging for a while. :-(

My first semester at university is over, all the exams are written and I can finally lean back and relax...or not? Unfortunately, the information saved in our brains tends to be forgotten faster than we would like to imagine if we don't revise regularly, so I decided to revise all the vocabulary I studied in the course of the semester. A friend of mine and I are also going to try and enforce a "no German" policy when we are meeting friends that are all English students.

When we were trying to hold a conversation only in English, and by conversation I mean one covering more more substantial subjects than the weather, we soon realized that we are lacking English words for everyday items that surround us. Something had to be done about this circumstance!

Our solution: We labelled many of the items in my apartment with Post-Its on which we wrote the correct English expression (both the American and British version, where there is an option). On the picture you can see some of the kitchen utensils we labelled. 

Then we walked through the apartment, reading all the words out loud in order to remember them, and when we were convinced that we know most of them, we played the game "I spy with my little eye [something that is green/made of plastic/soft...]".

It was a fun way to learn new vocabulary and I think I'm going to label all the items in my apartment again in the near future, but this time in Italian, my second language. If you have any other ideas how to learn new words in a playful way, let me know :-)