What about a trip to Ireland?

As I love travelling, Ireland and the Easter break I thought why not combine these three things? Why not spend the Easter holidays travelling through Ireland? I have once been there with my English class years ago in the sixth grade. I was just 15 and now I'm 21 so I think it's a good time to revisit this beautiful country and spend some days in rainy Ireland (hopefully with less rain than it is known for :-))
At least I started planning a 10-day tour through the whole island and let's see, maybe I will realise my plans...

 

Day 1: 

The journey starts with a flight from Vienna to Shannon Airport, which will be the starting point. As the flight will not arrive before 1 p.m. there is just a short afternoon/evening programme. The hotel is located in the charming town called Ennis, where bus number 51 will take you in less than one hour. After checking-in at the hotel, a local guide will give you the opportunity to see some nice places and show you the main points of interest. After the walking tour you will have dinner in the hotel. 

Day 2: 

After having breakfast in the hotel you will go to the western coast to see the breathtaking Cliffs of Moher. The cliffs rise 120 metres above the Atlantic Ocean at Hag's Head and finally reach a height of 214 metres eight kilometres to the north near O'Brien's Tower. By going there you will have a marvellous view and will also be able to see the rounded limestone hills of the Burren and a huge stone monument marking a neolithic burial place called the Poulnabrone Dolmen. The next stop is Galway where you can have a tour through the city and enjoy Galway Bay. 

Day 3: 

Day 3 will lead you south again where you will visit Clonmacnoise Monastic Site. You will see many impressive round towers, old church ruins and the famous Celtic crosses Ireland is known for. In the afternoon you can join a tour to see Athlone Castle which was built in the 13th century. After that, you could have a typical Irish coffee in Ireland's oldest pub, Sean's Bar. After that it will be time for dinner which you could for example have at Glasson Village Restaurant. 

Day 4: 

On your fourth day you will visit the ruins of Boyle Abbey which was a Cistercian community founded in the 12th century but was mutilated during the 17th and 18th century. In the afternoon you will visit Glenveagh National Park in County Donegal. There you will have the opportunity to walk around the extensive gardens and see all the exotic plants. You can further visit Glenveagh Castle and learn something about Irish history. After that, you can drive along the Grand Atlantic Drive and finally have dinner in Stranorlar.

Day 5:

On the next day you will join a walking tour with a local guide to see all the places of Interest in Derry.  The guide will lead you to medieval city walls, the Diamond and St. Columb's Cathedral. After visiting Derry you will drive along the north coast and explore the really fascinating Giant's Causeway. These are enourmous hexagonal columns which were formed by volcanic activity millions of years ago. On driving along the coastal route called Nine Glens of Antrim you will have a wonderful scenery. In the late afternoon you will arrive in Belfast. 

 Day 6:

 On your sixth day you will have a panoramic tour around central Belfast and after that you can visit Titanic Belfast, an interactive museum where you get all the information about the famous ship and the history linked to it. The tour will go on by visiting Down Cathedral where you will see the place St. Patrick's burial place is suspected. In Belfast you can also visit the St. Patrick Centre to get an insight in his life and the period of time he lived in. In the late afternoon you will drive on to Dublin, the capital city of Ireland, where you will spend the next few days

  

Day 7: 

After breakfast you can walk through Dublin city. There are so many things to see and places to visit like the famous Georgian squares with brightly-painted doorways. You also have to cross River Liffey to O'Connel Street and see the General Post Office where the rebellion leading to the Easter Rising started. If you don't want to walk around the city there are also free tours, organised by an organisation called Sandeman (link: Sandeman's new Europe - Dublin). All their guides work on a tips-only basis so that highest quality is guaranteed. All these people are really passionate about their city and want tourists to spread this passion to tourists as well. 
In the afternoon you can revisit some places that you may have already been to with your guides like the Trinity College where you can see the Book of Kells, an 8th century manuscript. 

Day 8: 

On your eigth day you can decide wheter you want to visit either the famous Guiness brewery or Jameson. After lunch you will have time to go shopping, drink coffee or do anything else you want. There's also the opportunity to visit Kilmainham Gaol, the biggest unoccupied gaol in these days. On visiting it, you will get a dramatic and realistic insight what it must have been like to be imprisoned for example in times of the Easter Rising. In the evening you can go to Brazen Head Pub, Dublin's oldest one. 

 Day 9: 

On this day you will join a bus tour called The South Coast & Powerscourt Gardens tour. It takes only a day and it gives you the chance to visit not only a Victorian seaside resort, grand Renaissance gardens but also a National Park. Here's the link: South Coast & Powerscourt.The bus will bring you back to Dublin at 5 p.m. so there will be still enough time to go shopping, for example if you want to buy some souvenirs or just have dinner in the city.

 Day 10: 

Finally going home! Flight from Dublin to Vienna in the morning.

w a n d e r l u s t

Writing about all those travel stuff like my English homework about the most fascinating place I've ever been to, did not really do me a favour due to my now even stronger desire to travel. I think the biggest mistake was to look through old photographs of my latest journeys. It seems to be such a long time ago that I wandered through the streets of Istanbul or climbed the Vichren in Bulgaria - experiences that I wouldn't want to miss. 

Thinking about the most fascinating place I've ever been to made me virtually revisit all the places I have seen yet. Well, at least those I am able to remember because my memory isn't so reliable when it comes to my childhood. Every time I tell my mother that I want to go to Venice in summer, she tries to convince me that I've already been there. Ok, I have actually been there, but I was just three years old and no matter how hard I try, I just can't remember anything about this place, it's useless. 

Some time ago I read about the "best" way of travelling. Of course it always depends on the purpose of a journey but what I've realised over the last few years is that you will gain the most first by informing yourself about the country you are going to visit in advance and second by experiencing the way people actually live.The challenge is not to book the most expensive all-inclusive hotel and stay as far away from the natives as possible but sleep in small bed and breakfasts, eat in small, familiar restaurants and finally talk to people on the street. 

What I experienced is that people are really glad when foreigners show interest in their everyday life, their culture and country. The easiest way of course is to speak the language of the country you are visiting. For me it is always an awkward feeling when I realise that I can neither read anything, nor talk to anyone in a foreign country. There are so many languages spoken on our beautiful planet and it would be unrealistic to learn all of them. Nevertheless, it sounds more than attractive to be able to talk in the language of every country you visit :-)

I have a dream

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

This is my favourite part of Martin Luther King's speech "I have a dream" of August 1963. For me, he is one of the most admirable men in our history. 

When I was about 13 or 14 years of age my sister gave me a book called "Sie hatten einen Traum" (in English: They had a dream). The story takes place in the southern states of the US in Birmingham, Alabama and is about a 19 year old black girl who is attacked by members of the Ku-Klux-Klan but can luckily manage to flee. She then falls in love with a member of Martin Luther King's men, who has come down to Birmingham to non-violently protest for the rights of the Afro-American population. The book was so captivating and fascinated me so much that I wanted to know more about this period of American history. I started to inform myself and tried to find out as much as possible.

Then, at the oral matura, I chose to talk about a film released in 1988 called "Mississippi Burning". I would absolutely recommend this film to everyone out there because even though it was released about 25 years ago, it perfectly shows what it must have been like to be an Afro-American and live in the south of the United States. It conveys so many emotions, the fear as well as the hope, the weakness as well as the courage. When I finished watching it, I sat there in front of the TV for a few minutes and couldn't do anything else. I was still so into the film and thought about it over and over again. 

 

The film is shocking and brutal, there is no attempt to palliate, no effort to try to make things look less cruel. The soundtrack is brilliant. A house is burning, you can see the burning cross of the Ku-Klux-Klan and in the background there is this wonderful woman's voice, singing. Just her voice, nothing else. Nothing else would have fit the scene better and would have been able to convey so much emotion like her voice. It may sound strange, but that's the feeling I got while watching the film. 

 

 

 

Martin Luther King, his courage, his ambition and finally his dream of equal rights for everyone, no matter which skin colour, religion or gender, sparked so many people. America wouldn't be the same place today if there wasn't a man like him - if there wasn't a man, who stood up for equal rights, who encouraged other people to do the same and fight for something worth fighting for. I admire him and at the same time I am thinking about our generation. There are things worth fighting for, there is still so much injustice in our world - but where are the charismatic people standing up for what they believe in?

It's all about register...

register. R E G I S T E R. /ˈredʒɪstə(r)/
Linguistics a variety of a language or a level of usage, as determined by degree of formality and choice of vocabulary, pronunciation, and syntax, according to the communicative purpose, social context, and standing of the user. (Oxford Dictionaries)

When you start to learn a language you are glad when you remember words, phrases and sentences. You are glad when you are able to talk, understand and answer. By improving your language skills and by reaching a higher level step by step, you realise that this is simply not enough. Someone, in my case my English teacher, will tell you that not every word is appropriate in every situation and not every phrase fits every conversation. You start to realise that the whole language learning thing is about much more than just grammar or vocabulary. You will stumble across a word called "register" and you will soon realise that this word is more important than you might at first want it to be.

Register is about using the appropriate standard of English in different situations and for different purposes. It might for example not be the best idea to greet your boss at work or your teachers with "hey guys" because this is simply not the appropriate register. There are some major differences between talking to your close friends, acquaintances or your boss. Therefore it is necessary to look up in which situation and register you use a word when you learn new vocabulary. 

It's not as difficult as it sounds because once you understand that it's the same like in German, it gets much easier. Just imagine writing an e-mail to a professor. You wouldn't start your message with "hey" and go on with whatever you want to say, would you? Maybe if it's a teacher you don't know so well you would write something like "Dear Mr. XY..." or just "Dear ..." and the name of the person if you know them better. It always depends, but I'm sure that you will make a much better impression on the person you are writing to if you are polite and respectful. 

Of course this is just the most basic information when register is concerned but it's a start. As your language skills improve it becomes more complicated and you have to be careful because for example it's not appropriate to start a sentence with"but" or "so" in a text of higher register. On the contrary it might look strange if you use the word "hence" in a conversation or a text of lower register. 

As you can hopefully see using the appropriate register is essential when you want to improve your language skills because it's all about register...

Travelling!

"The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page" Saint Augustine

I love this quotation of Saint Augustine. I totally agree with it because that's exactly what travelling  feels like to me. Going somewhere you have never been before, exploring a new landscape, different culture and foreign people can give you so much. It can broaden your mind and enrich you in so many ways.

It is one thing to read about a country, about its inhabitants, history or culture and another one to experience it on your own. Just to give you one example, in my study of Geography at the University of Graz we had the opportunity to participate in an excursion to Cuba and as a preparation for the journey we had to attend a seminar. In groups of three we were asked to prepare a presentation of one special topic about Cuba like urban development or agriculture. Of course you learn a lot by doing so and it would be nonsense to travel to a country without any kind of preparation, but what I want to say is that you will not truly understand all the information you get (for instance by reading) unless you visit the country on your own.

On working out the presentation I read a lot about old colonial Cuban cities and the special charm these cities have. I tried really hard to imagine myself, walking through the streets of old Havanna, but comparing the feeling of actually being there on the excursion with the vision in my head months earlier, I can only say that I miserably failed.

Travelling can enrich you by learning from foreign people. Every country or let's better talk about the country's inhabitants, they all have their own special "character". When I think of Cuba and the Cuban people I am really thankful for the opportunity to experience their way of living.

First of all they have a more relaxed attitude towards so many things in life and I consider this a really positive characteristic.  For example when traffic is concerned no one would ever start to hoot just because another car driver didn't realise that the traffic lights have turned green. Another admirable characteristic of a majority of Cubans is their contentment. When we were travelling through the countryside of southern Cuba we once stopped at a small, shabby-looking building. Our professors told us that this was the school of the little village and that many of the children had to walk for hours just to get there. When we went inside the kids were dressed in school uniforms and they all looked so cheerful, so happy. Even though their families might be poor and they don't have a lot of money they are content with their life. I really got the impression that the children were glad to have the opportunity to attend school. I am not proud to write that but I think only a minority of Austrian children ever considers themselves thankful or happy just because they are "allowed" to learn.

I think a really important and essential message I learned by visiting Cuba is that sometimes you can't change a situation and the best thing you can do in that case is try to cope with it. Try to make the best out of the worst. Just thinking about how miserable your situation or life is won't make you feel any better, so stop it.

  

I could add a lot more Cuban experiences here but what I actually want to say is that every journey can broaden your mind if you just let it. You have to be open-minded and willing to experience the unknown in order to benefit from travelling and if you do so, it can really change your life in a positive way. 

Paragraph on Irish culture

The Story of Ireland 

 

The most fascinating aspect of Irish culture that I learned about by watching the Story of Ireland was that almost every famous person mentioned in Irish history was someone driven by a struggle for power. Looking at the special period of Ireland's history which was shown in the second part of the series beginning in the 12th century and ending with the victory of English troops over the Irish and Spanish in 1603, several warring powers can be observed. A man named Diarmuid Mac Murrough can be considered a good example of a man struggling for power in the middle of the 12th century. When he lost his kingdom of Leinster to his enemies he did everything to regain it. He even asked the Anglo-Norman king Henry II for help. Gaining more power might have also been a motive for Richard de Clare, known as Strongbow, to lead the invasion of the Anglo-Norman army. A piece of Irish land and Mac Murrough's daughter Aoife were promised to him, if he was victorious. The subsequent invasion changed Irish history and culture forever and led to a long-lasting conflict between Ireland and England. History shows that power can drive people to act in a way that not only affects their neigbourhood bun can even lead to unforseeable changes in a whole country.

God of Carnage!

I wouldn't consider myself the most culturally interested person in the world. Nevertheless, over the last few years I have developed a certain passion for going to the theatre. From time to time when there is a play that sounds interesting or thrilling or whatever I buy tickets and ask one of my friends or family members to join me. 

As I was looking through the plays of this season in October, I stumbled across a play called "Der Gott des Gemetzels" (in English: "God of Carnage"). If you keep asking yourself why you have the feeling of already knowing the title - in 2011 the film directed by Roman Polansky was released, starring Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz.

I must admit that I hadn't seen the film when I looked through this season's programme but as I knew the content I was really excited about it. I absolutely wanted to know what the play would be like and so I bought three tickets - one for each, my cousin, my sister and me. The premiere of the play took place on a Thursday evening in the theatre of Graz and I have to tell you that it was simply excellent. For me it was one of the best plays I have ever seen.

In case you have never heard of neither the film, nor the play I want to tell you shortly about the content: The whole play takes place in the living room of a French couple. You think that's weird? Of course it is,  but it makes the whole story even more interesting. 

There are two couples who want to sort out a struggle that had taken place between their two boys. One struck out at the other one with a stick and smashed two of his incisors.

At the beginning of the story the two couples sit in the living room in a "well mannered way". As a spectator you get the impression that both couples try to maintain their facade by trying to keep polite and friendly even though everyone feels extremely uncomfortable in this situation. The mother of the boy who injured the other one first tries to stick to her friendliness although the other woman insists on the fact that her poor little child was hurt intentionally. After a few minutes the whole situation starts to change direction and step by step you are able to see what the four adults truly think of each other and their facade slowly vanishes. The situation gets worse and worse and finally escalates: The two couples insult each other, the couples among themselves start to strongly argue and both, the two husbands and the two wives lose their temper. Everybody shouts at each other and loses control. 

What really made the play extraordinary was the Performance of the four actors.  I couldn't say which one played the best because all of them were simply brilliant.
The man with the bold, father of the injured son, first tried to act as a mediator and did everything to make the others feel comfortable, but in the course of the play you were able to observe how he lost his temper and showed his true personality. He became choleric and cruel man, who didn't show any regret or sympathy for any kind of creature. He further made clear that marriage is like a cage for him and that he and his wife have huge problems. She herself tried to maintain her composure for a very long time but finally suffered a nervous breakdown.

The play was brilliant and in the end I didn't know whether I should laugh or be upset or surprised. It was amazingly funny and thrilling at the same time.
I am convinced that of course all the people in the audience had much fun watching the play but at the same time I hope that it also made a lot of them think about their behaviour and their strong whish not to show any weakness. At least it had this effect on me. After the play I kept asking myself if it really is that way in reality. Don't we all try to maintain a special facade and try to give everyone around us the impression of us leading a "perfect" life? And if yes, what is the sense in doing so? Is there one?

19 years of companionship

I know we weren't supposed to write a post about our cat and just show thousands of photos. But that's not what I'm going to do, I'm going to tell you about 19 years of companionship.

As I was a little child of three years, I shared the room with my sister who is three years older than me. One evening when we were already lying in bed and our mother was sitting beside us, my father came home and knocked on our door. We weren't suspecting anything in particular because he often worked until late. But when the door opened we were more than surpised because our father held something small, really really small, in his hands. It suddenly moved and that was the moment when my sister and I realised that it was a little cat! We couldn't hide our excitement and jumped out of our beds because we wanted to have a closer look at the little thing our father had just sat down on one of the beds. It was so extremely sweet and immediately started to purr. For the four of us there wasn't any question about how to name our little cat, the purring had made it clear - Schnurli would be part of our lives from that day on.

And well, she was a part of our lives. A part that was so important to me that I can't imagine a life without her. Cats are not like dogs. They are a bit stubborn, or at least our cat was that way. She could be so sweet lying next to me while I was sleeping, or learning, but when she had enough, she just ran away from me without any reason. She also was a bit shy. If she heard the tiniest noise of an unknown voice she was the first one to run in the opposite direction and hide somewhere safe.
It is strange, but she was just always there. Even if her meowing was sometimes nail-biting and her inability to decide whether to go out into the garden or stay inside the house was really difficult to handle sometimes, she could be really funny. Then she hid behind a chair or behind the door and when I walked by she jumped out of her hiding place and I shrieked.

Anyway.
19 years is a very long time. 133 years for a cat. That's a lot.

Dirty chocolate

Chocolate. I absolutely love chocolate and therefore can't understand that there are people out there in this world who don't like chocolate. This is beyond my imagination because I really can't resist chocolate - a reason that made me think twice before watching the film "Schmutzige Schokolade II". It's a documentary that shows the Danish journalist Miki Misrati revealing the very bad conditions under which cocoa is harvested for the production of the chocolate we eat every day. 

 

Since it was revealed that the chocolate industry (mainly Nestlé and other big companies) is involved with child slavery in the Ivory coast, the big companies have been trying to clean their image and started campaigns promoting their social projects in cocoa planting regions. They claim to fight trafficking and child labour by building schools, hospitals and providing the workers of cocoa plantations with trainings to become responsible and successful workers at the same time. 

The film shows the Danish journalist trying to visit the Ivory Coast (one of the main cocoa producers) but the embassy refuses his entry until he has an invitation (from the chocolate industry) which turns out to be impossible. That is why Miki travels to Ghana, the neighbouring country, and manages to get a Ghanaian friend of him visiting the already above mentioned social projects in the Ivory Coast. 

Even after the first few minutes of the film it got clear that yes, the chocolate industry TRIES to fight trafficking and child labour by building schools and so on, BUT not successfully. None of the projects chosen to visit by random were really working. There were pictures of the outer walls of school buildings that were built years ago, but then left to go to rack and ruin. Furthermore there were little kids, not older than maybe eight, working with bayonets, something that is forbidden by law. All these projects, praised by the chocolate industry, are for absolutely nothing because the man in the film couldn't find any successful project. 

Although it's nothing new that there is child labour in our world and that there are really bad working conditions for a large number of people in some countries, I got a more than bad feeling after watching the film. It made me again realise that you can't trust in every certificate on a bar of chocolate. Of course a certificate is better than none but you really have to inform yourself about the conditions attached to it.

After having watched the film I'm not going to stop eating chocolate but one thing I know is that even though a Fairtrade chocolate (of course you can't be sure if there is absolutely no child labour, but at least Fairtrade only cooperates with small cocoa farmers and seems trustworthy) may cost a little bit more, but these euro is 100 per cent worth the investment.