Culture presentations

As you all know, last week on Wednesday and Thursday the culture presentations organized by the SUK2 class took place. I had the opportunity to see some fascinating presentations - by the way, all of the speakers I saw did a great job. I spent quite a while watching presentations about various topics and time went by so quickly. I learned a lot and I'm kind of sad that I couldn't watch more presentations (too many other courses, sorry) as there were so many other extremely interesting presentations. 

I watched 11 American and 3 Irish presentations (which were particularly interesting as I had never heard about those topics before). 


AMERICAN PRESENTATIONS:

1. Comic books and superheroes (Lucie Bois)
2. Harlem, New York City: Between legacy and change (Louis Nguyen)
3. Hurricane Prepardness (Claudia Schwaiger) 
4. Two Heroines of American Aviation: Amelia Earhart and Bessie Coleman (Orsolya Csizmar)
5. Religion made in America: Scientology (Harald Pasch)
6. Racial segregation as depicted in two movies (Tiana Jerkovic)
7. Why on earth would anyone live in Tornado alley? !!(Anna Agabani)
8. Painted America - Famous American paintings refleccting American culture in the 20th century (Natascha Ramic)
9. Recent Gun Discussions in the States (Stefanie Almer)
10. The Amish country (Anita Muzek)
11. TV shows depicting social issues (Christine Hartinger)

I really appreciated all of them and it was not easy to decide on 5 topics for the KGP. Those are all topics I could talk about, even though I didn't even know that I was interested in such a them before listening to the presentation. The best example is the one about Painted America: at first I thought that I wasn't really in to art and I just listened because I was there but actually Natascha managed to present her culture project in a great way and I loved it. 

However, we have to take decisions in life and I chose the following 5 culture presentations for the KGP:

1. Comic books and superheroes
2. Hurricane Preparedness
3. Religion made in America: Scientology
4. The Amish country
5. TV shows depicting social issues

IRISH PRESENTATIONS:

1. Kilmainham Gaol (Carola Ponjevic)
2. The hidden meanings of the children of Lir (Dajana Savic)
3. Gerry Conlon reflects on the case of the Guildford Four (Emina Ribo)

These topics were completely new to me and I appreciated learning something about the Irish culture. 

Planning a trip to Australia =)

As some of you already know, I'm going to Australia in September and I'm really looking forward to it. I'm going there with a friend and we are going to visit a friend I got to know when I was living in France and my best friend who is spending 7 months there.

Unfortunately we can only stay for three weeks so we have a huge problem: there are so many things we absolutely want to do and see and there is just not enough time.

I always knew that Australia is huge but I only realized how vast it is when we started planning our trip. There's a nice park next to Melbourne (or at least it seems to be next to Melbourne) but when we looked up how long it would take us to get there it turned out that it was 500km away!!!

The distances are enormous. So it will really really difficult to make the right decision - we certainly don't want to miss a thing from our "must-do-list" but I'm afraid we won't be able to manage to see all the great things.

Here's our current planning:

Melbourne - Yarra Valley - Ocean Road (we've got one week to do all that)

Afterwards we're flying to Brisbane, where we're planning to rent a car and drive to the Great Barrier Reef. There are several magnificent beaches we would love to see but we'll have to drive for about 20 hours just to get to Cairns (where the Great Barrier Reef is). And we only have about 8 days!!

After that we're going to take another plane and fly to Sydney, where we'll spend several days. And that's it!! It's just way too short..

If there's anyone who has already been to Australia I would be glad to hear your experiences and maybe some travel tips and recommendations ;)

I'll keep you up-to-date!!

Berlin Calling!

I was looking for a holiday destination for this year’s Easter break and I decided to take a trip to Germany’s amazing capital. It is a convenient destination as planes leave from Graz and I have a friend there, so I didn’t have to look for a hostel.

The flight went well and I arrived there Sunday evening. We spent a nice evening in a Lebanese restaurant and planned our week. I’ve already been to Berlin 6 years ago but that was only a 3-day-trip and as it was long time ago we decided to visit the most famous tourist attractions again. It took us one day to see the main sights like the Berlin Wall, Brandenburger Tor, Alexanderplatz, the Museum Island or the Siegessäule. 

Victory Column

Brandenburg Gate

Reichstag

Visiting a city with someone who lives there is completely different – eventually we didn’t to that much sightseeing but I got a closer look at places that real inhabitants of the city enjoy.  She took me to nice bars, we went to see a concert of a local musician and she showed me some magnificent parks.  

At the Rittersport shop

We also visited some museums – my favorite one is the Pergamonmuseum. It is divided into three sections: the antiquity collection, the Middle East museum and the museum of Islamic arts. The most impressive piece of art is the reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate, which was a gate to the inner city of Babylon. I also enjoyed the museum for Islamic art very much – probably because I’ve already heard much about Islamic art in Arabic classes but I’ve never had the chance to see some of it up to now. 

Ishtar Gate

Another must-see for Berlin visitors is Sanssouci – a palace located in Potsdam, half an hour from Berlin.  It reminds me a little bit of Versailles as it is built in a very similar style. The park is also beautiful. One can spend a lot of time wandering around there. Unfortunately it was freezing outside when we were there so we could not enjoy it that much. 

Since we were already in Potsdam I insisted on visiting the Babelsberg Film Studio. Many famous films are shot there – German films as well as international productions. It was an amazing experience where we got loads of information about the making of films. What’s even cooler is the fact that we could see the set of GZSZ, a German soap opera. I stopped watching it 10 years ago but it is still funny to see all these places which we know from TV in reality.

Walking in a winter wonderland =)

As one week is I also wanted to see something else than Berlin, so my friend proposed a trip to her hometown, which is situated in Saxony-Anhalt.  We spent two days there – it was quite a change because Thale – her hometown – is a small village that differs very much from the cosmopolitan city Berlin. It is situated in the Harz district, which is one of the most mountainous areas of Germany. Besides it is famous for its legends and sagas that are mostly about witches. 

Werningerode

Quedlinburg

The last night there we went out. Berlin has so many possibilities if you want to go out! It was really hard to reach a decision but eventually we agreed on going to Fritz Club near the East Side Gallery. There were various floors with different kinds of music and we spent a nice evening there. People there are different from Austrians. In my opinion they enjoy dancing much more and they seem more relaxed than the majority of dancing Austrians. 

It was an amazing week but unfortanely time flies when we have fun! I'm already looking forward to my next journey! :)

The most photographed part of the Berlin Wall

What national dishes from your country would you recommend to the world?

I’ve given this question a lot of thought and it’s not easy to find an answer. As I’ve already mentioned I’m not a big fan of the traditional Austrian cuisine but there are still some dishes that I like as well. It’s still difficult to make a choice because there are many regional meals that taste great but it is hard to remember them all because one only get’s them so rarely. I decided to present you a three-course menu that (if you’re not vegetarian) you will certainly appreciate.

To start off you should eat a “Fritattensuppe”. This is a really simple dish but it just tastes great. Fritattensuppe is a beef broth filled with thinly sliced pancakes.

For the main course I absolutely recommend “Tafelspitz”. It has it origins in Vienna but I’ve seen it in many restaurants by now. Tafelspitz is boiled beef in broth, which is usually served with vegetables. It can be absolutely delicious but sadly not everybody who prepares Tafelspitz really knows how to do it – so if you want to get a good-tasting Tafelspitz the best way to have it is preparing it yourself.

 The best Tafelspitz I've ever eaten was at Plachutta in Vienna. It is kind of pricy but it's totally worth it!

After eating these good dishes there’s only one way to complete this perfect menu: a “Sachertorte”! I think this cake is the best cake in the whole world and everybody should eat it at least once in a life time (after eating it once I’m sure you will have it more often ;)). It consists of two layers of chocolate cake filled with a thin layer of apricot jam (you can also try it with cherry jam, it tastes great as well). These layers are coated in dark chocolate couverture on top and on all sides. You can eat it with some whipped cream but in my opinion it is better without the cream. This cake is quite easy to prepare yourself so you should give it a try. If you don’t like baking that much you can also have an original Sachertorte at the Sacher-Café.

Here's a video so you can learn how to make it yourselves:

Another specialty I need to mention in this context is Austrian coffee. I think coffee is strongly related with food because many people sit together at a cup of coffee after having a good meal or while eating a Sachertorte. The Austrian coffee culture is extraordinary – there are much more different types of coffee than in other countries. In my opinion it also tastes much better than elsewhere. Austrians just love sitting in a traditional “Kaffeehaus”, reading the newspaper or a good book while enjoying a cup of delicious coffee.