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? :-)

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 :-)

PC2 writing task correction

I compared the influence of the Vikings and the Plantation settlers in Ireland.

While there is an obvious connection between these two items, there are also a number of significant differences. The Vikings as well as the Plantation settlers came to Ireland from the outside, but their reasons for this were different. While the Vikings came because they were seeking wealthy places with food and artefacts to take, the Plantation settlers were strategically placed in Ireland. Their purpose was to spread Protestantism in order to strengthen the link to Britain. Both groups brought with them their own cultural backgrounds, but the assimilation process could not have been more different. The Viking settlers not only influenced Ireland by building settlements but also assimilated for instance by becoming Catholic. The Protestant settlers that had been brought to Ireland during the Plantation period, on the other hand, only imposed their views and beliefs on the Irish people. They were only successful inthe county of Ulster, which is now mainly Protestant, while the Vikings influenced a much greater part of Ireland. The settlers' and the Vikings' reasons for coming to Ireland and their ways of dealing with the culture they were confronted with may be poles apart, but it cannot be denied that both groups greatly shaped today's Ireland.

I am glad that I achieved such a high percentage for my text, but the Major No-No and the syntax problem I had annoy me. I was unsure of both of them while writing and proofreading but decided not to change them. While writing PC3 I am going to rephrase anything that seems odd right away.