Music

As you might (or might not) know, I am going to spend the whole summer break in the UK this year. For this reason I am currently trying to put together a summer playlist. Music is very important for me whenever I go abroad because it makes spending hours on planes, trains and busses less boring. Also I will connect it to memories of the places I have been, so whenever I listen to a holiday playlist later on, I will be taken back to this place and the feelings that are connected with it.

I wanted to take this chance and introduce you to some bands whose songs will be part of my playlist.

First of all, there are The Naked and Famous. They are a band from New Zealand that has only released two albums so far. I think it is difficult to define music by certain labels, but if I had to, I would say theirs is synthpop or indie pop. Many of you will know their songs Young Blood or Punching in a Dream from their first album, Passive Me, Aggressive You. Here is a video from their new album, In Rolling Waves, which I will put onto my playlist:

By the way, I am looking forward to seeing them live in June! :-)

The second band on my playlist are Crystal Fighters. When I saw them live at a music festival in 2011, I did not like them at all - actually I thought they were just a group of drug addicts that make crappy music. However, a while ago a friend re-introduced me to them and I started to like their new album, Cave Rave. The video is for their song At Home, which is not on their new album, but still on my playlist because it is wonderful and dreamy.

One band, or rather collaboration, that deserves more attention in my opinion is Volcano Choir. I called it a collaboration because it consists of the members of an instrumental band called Collections of Colonies of Bees and Justin Vernon from the band Bon Iver as a singer. I especially like their songs Comrade, Byegone and Alaskans. Altough, if you decide to listen to Comrade, promise me to listen to the whole song. I did not like the beginning when I heard it for the first time either and was about to skip the song when the refrain started and got me caught.

A band that never ceases to amaze me is Alcest. Every album they release sounds so different from the last one, yet they never fully abandon their typical dreamy style. I love Away from their newest album, Shelter. It is one of the few songs with English lyrics they have. Their lead singer is French, so obviously the lyrics are usually French too. Promise me to listen to Tir Nan Og, which is by far their most brilliant song. You cannot deny that it makes you feel as if you were riding a unicorn through a haunted forest! As far as I know, though, the lyrics are based on an old Irish tale and are in Gaelic.

I think I have given you enough to listen to for a while, but maybe I will let you know more about the bands and singers I like at a later stage.

English is in my feet

Well, technically, a language cannot be in your feet. If anywhere, it is located in your brain - that is, unless you let children draw language portraits.

Every language portrait starts with a simple silhouette of the human body. Children are now encouraged to colour them, with each colour representing one of the languages they know. They should also write comments or short texts explaining which languages they described and why they can be found in certain body parts. The idea behind language portraits is to make children think about the languages and cultures that influence them, and to show them that diversity is important. They should be proud of knowing more than one language instead of having the feeling that one of their languages is "bad" or "unwanted".

The descriptions (collected by Krumm, 2003) are insightful and sometimes heartwarming. One child, for example, wrote "German is in my head because it is the language my thoughts are in." Another one, however, said the reason for English being in his head is that he has to think a lot about it when speaking it.

I wanted to post my own language portrait at this point, but it is difficult, if not impossible, to draw one freely after all that I've read about them. Maybe I will let the topic rest for a while and add my own language portrait later. What would your portraits look like, though?

Wherever the languages you know are located, you cannot deny that they are a part of you and define who you are. I think Pentti Saarikoski put it best:

”Suomen kieli 

on minulle ikkuna ja talo

minä asun tässä kielessä

Se on minun ihoni.” 

It can be roughly translated as:

"The (Finnish) language

is for me like a window and a house

I live in this language

it is my skin."

castles, caves and dangerous climbing

Yesterday some friends (that is Eva, Helene, Tom, Daniel, Magdalena) and I went on an adventure in Southern Styria! We took the train to Wildon, where we wanted to visit a castle from the 13th century that is now a ruin. After we had got off the train and walked a few hundred meters, we met a friend of Eva's by chance. He told us the best way to get to the ruin, which is on top of a hill.

the open-air stage

First we walked through the centre of Wildon with all its old buildings and wonderfully conserved facades. We even took a look inside the church. Then we followed a path uphill that led us to Wildon's open-air stage. However, after the stage, the path seemed to end and we did not know where to go. Eva called her friend to ask for directions again and according to him there should have been a visible path, but we couldn't make out anything as the ground of the forest was covered in leaves.

The ruins of the castle were directly above us, so eventually we decided to just head for them as best we could - that was when our relaxing hike turned into a rather exhausting and potentially dangerous climb! We were all very relieved when we finally reached the top of the hill. The ruins are scattered over the whole hill top, some of them almost perfectly conserved, others only pieces of stone walls.

Later we realized that there would actually have been a path leading to the ruins - we had simply come from the wrong side of the hill! Climbing instead of taking the path had been more fun, but we did not want to risk injuries on our way back down, so this time we took the safe path. On our way down we looked out for a cave called "Wilde-Mann-Höhle". We knew that is was supposed to be south of the castle and also what the entrance looked like because we had seen a video. It was impossible to find, however, and when we asked a jogger for directions he believed it had to be somewhere near the path we had taken before. By then we were all tired and hungry, so we gave up the search at this point and made our way back to the centre of Wildon.

When we left the path we noticed a sign that made us all laugh: "Access to site of the ruins prohibited - danger of collapse!" How good that we had come climbing from the opposite direction... :-)

because we ♥ animals

If you still think that vegan food is boring, bland and not filling, let me present to you a restaurant that will definitely change your mind!

During a discussion about food in class, a girl from my group mentioned a vegetarian/vegan restaurant called Ginko. Today I did not feel like cooking myself so a friend and I decided to try the food there. Located in the city centre, the restaurant is easy to reach by public transport or bike. Ginko is a self-service restaurant, which means you do not sit down and wait for someone to take your order, but you pick up a plate and a tray and take your food from a buffet.

The buffet might look rather small at first, but believe me when I tell you that there is such a variety of dishes that deciding what to take is almost impossible. There were a number of different salads, but also warm food such as chili con soja or a chick-pea curry. My strategy was to simply load a spoonful of everything onto my plate - and of course I couldn't resist to also take a glass full of tiramisu with me.

All the dishes are either vegetarian or vegan and they are clearly labeled. If you have questions about the ingredients, for example because you have an allergy, the staff will gladly help you. In my opinion, this is a big plus. I suffer from an allergy myself and I have often experienced in other restaurants that the staff did not actually know what exactly their dishes were made of, which left me frustrated and slightly worried.

In Ginko, the cost of your food is calculated by its weight. I had expected it to be rather expensive, so I was surprised when it was only €10 for a plate full of most of the things from the buffet, a dessert and a drink! Of all the things on my plate, there was absolutely nothing I did not like the taste of. My favourite was the chick-pea curry, though, because I love dishes that have curry in them - or then maybe it was the tiramisu that was my favourite. :-)

A last point worth mentioning is the friendly and welcoming atmosphere. In Ginko, you will see all types of people - from businessmen to students, even some very old people who generally tend to be of the opinion that any decent meal must include a chunk of meat.

If you are a vegetarian or vegan, I guarantee you that this will become your new favourite restaurant - and if you're not (yet) vegetarian, this place might just change your mind... :-)

Ready, set, shoot!

Are you as enthusiastic about photography as I am? If the answer is yes, you will be thrilled to hear about the photography marathon.

"A marathon? But I'm not sporty!"

Don't worry, a photography marathon is not so much about running - unless you are bad at time management, because you have exactly twelve hours to complete it. In those twelve hours, your goal is to take 24 pictures to given topics. The topics are kept quite general, for example "yellow", "fragile" or "window" so that the participants can be very creative.

There are only a few rules you have to obey if you want to take part in such a photo marathon:

• You have to use a digital camera, and you cannot use your mobile phone.
• You have to sign up in advance and pay a participation fee.
• At the end of the day there have to be exactly 25 pictures in the right order on your memory card.
• You have to return the memory card by 9pm.

On the day of the marathon, you can collect your starting number at 9am and then it's time to shoot some wonderful pictures - but don't forget that your first picture has to be the one of your starting number. Even there you can already be creative. For example, take a look at the participant number 33. He took a picture of bus line number 33!

As I said before, you have to return your memory card at the end of the day and a jury will then have a look at all the pictures. The winners will be informed about a month after the marathon and will be invited to a ceremony. There are always valuable prices such as cameras!

There will be a photo marathon this May or June in my city. Some friends and I are planning to participate - I will let you know how it was afterwards!

What good bloggers do

This week, I had a look at a number of blogs written by my classmates in order to find out what makes a good blog and even better blog.

We were supposed to find our "top blogs" - an almost impossible task for me to do! Every blog is unique, which makes it difficult to compare them to one another. However, one of the most outstanding blogs is David's. He once told us that it takes him several hours to write a blog post - if you have a closer look at his blog, you will understand why. He writes about unusual and sometimes very sophisticated topics, but always in a witty way that is fun to read. Every post consists of text as well as videos or pictures - and he even made an effort to create memes or photoshop himself into some of the pictures taken from Lord of the Rings! Oh, and did you notice that David's blog has its own favicon in the tab of your browser? I don't know how you did it, but this is a brilliant detail! The only thing I dislike about it is the dark design, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and at least he uses a white font so that everything is clearly legible.

Another one of my favourite blogs is Josepha's. The simple, yet structured design made me like it even before I had read a single post. Josepha writes extremely long posts, but you will never feel the urge to skip to the next one in the middle of reading because what she writes seems extraordinarily honest and passionate.

The perfect blog is a mixture of well-chosen design and content. I believe everyone's taste in colours and fonts is different, but titles as well as the content should at least be legible and the background image or additional gadgets should not distract too much from the actual blog entries. Personal experiences are always great to read about, especially because you can (or have to) express yourself freely when telling them, which makes the post lively and authentic. I also enjoy reading about unusual hobbies or websites that I would not have known about otherwise, so whenever you come across something interesting, let your classmates and the rest of the blogging world know!

Be passionate!

Be authentic!

Be unique!

I started to improve my blog by finally changing the background image. I did not like the standard image because some others used it too and it made my blog less outstanding. I am still not quite content with the flower image because it might seem too pink and girly (which I am absolutely not, I swear), however, I found many colourful images too distracting and many simple images too boring and depressing - well yes, I am probably picky. I also don't like the blog title but I haven't found anything better yet - I am still waiting for some sort of epiphany.

If I look at my later posts, many of them were assigned posts so they are less interesting to read. I decided to start writing more about personal experiences again, and try to make the assigned posts sound less as if they were written with a "okay, I did it because I had to, are you happy now?"-attitude. Since this is an assigned post too - did I succeed? :-)