Home is where the heart is or not?

Hello everyone!

Today I was thinking a bit about home and decided it would be a good idea to talk to you about it.
I live in Graz now for about a year and a half. Graz, for me, felt like home from the first day I've been here. It always reminded me a bit at Meran, a city i used to live at. With it's Mediterranean atmosphere Graz was perfect. But after a while I started to miss something. something that never was utterly important to me, but gained more and more in importance over the last few years: the mountains. At home, in South Tyrol, there's just a perfect mix between the mountains, the whole alpine lifestyle, our Austrian roots and the Italian dolce vita, the southern atmosphere. That's what I love about home.

It doesn't matter where about in South Tyrol you are, you can always see the mountains. And with mountains I mean real mountains and not just some hills that are mistaken with mountains by some ignoramus people. Real mountains, high mountains, burning in the evening sun, and when you've crest the peak you would be able to breath the freshest, cleanest air of all, and depending on the time you're going there you could gaze at the stars, ore the most beautiful sunset or sunrise you would have ever seen. Because mountains are nothing to just look at or to climb at but more something to feel. You have to feel the nature, the mountains and the mountain spirits. To show you what I mean with that I here linked a video for you that I've found a few months ago. It's only short but gives you a good impression of the Dolomiti, one of our mountain chains. It is really worth watching!

Now that I've talked a bit about home and the mountains there's another thing I would like to tell you.  I don't know about you, but even though in the text above I stated South Tyrol as my home, actually it's never really clear to me where home is. People say home is where the heart is, but if that is the truth my heart definitely seems to be shattered. I think there are different kinds of home. To me South Tyrol is home, because it's where I've been born, where I grew up, where my roots are. On the other hand also Innsbruck means home for me. I mean, technically seen, I never really lived there. I never had a flat nor a room, not to mention that I never paid rent, but I still lived there kind of. I was there more than a year, always at my best friends place. Everyone said his living room seems more like my room, his couch was my bed. So yes, it definitely somehow felt like home. It's the same with England. I lived there, yes properly lived there, not Innsbruck-Style. It was one of the best times of my life and obviously Bournemouth is home - just as Graz is. Although I call all those places home, you can't compare one home to another. I mean ok, they are different places, but I think the difference isn't only defined by the different lives that I am clearly living, but more because something else that I can't explain. it just feels different, not a lot though, only slightly different.

Quite complicated, isn't it? Well I guess these are just casual Sunday thoughts and I'll rather get studying.

Enjoy your weekend :)

It's all about register!

Hey guys ;)

Today I'm going to tell you something about register. You may ask yourself what register is. I'm gonna try to explain it to you.

In sociolinguistics the term register is used when we talk about a different variety of languages used for a particular purpose or in a particular social situation. There are different kinds of register and it is mostly associated with formality. 

When you are at work and talk to your boss you will most likely use a different language, different phrasing than you would whilst talking to your friends or family. Also there you will probably notice a difference between talking to you parents, grandparents or your younger siblings for example. It is not because you will use more technical words at work but you will probably use more formal words talking to your boss than you would talking to your friends. The difference is also noticeable in whether or not you are honouring a person or at least should be honouring the person when communicating with it.

When you talk to a person you will choose your words more spontaneously than when you write to someone, then your word structure will probably be more complex, your words more appropriate and carefully chosen. Because the written language is also more situational, there is a bigger differentiation of style and register than there is in spoken language.

So why is register so important?

When you are writing a text for example, always keep in mind who you are writing for. Who is supposed to read and understand it? If you would use to informal words some people could get easily offended. Also what would you like to achieve with your text? What would you like the person to do?   That's why register is so important, it's all about the functionality of your language.

...not with a bang but a whimper.

Hey guys ;)

If you watched the video, you now heard one of my favourite poems. It's called The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot.

T.S. Eliot stands for Thomas Stearns Eliot, a British-based, American author, publisher and poet. Eliot even received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948 "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry". He is widely known for his poems including The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, or The Hollow Men. His poems are famous for being fragmental, mostly only using parts of his memories and mixing them up. He never published a huge amount of poems and was aware of that fact, but what was important to him, was that every poem had to be an event, unique in it's kind.

What I like about Eliot's poems is that they build a dark atmosphere, they take you to another place which sometimes seems cruel, foggy and gloomy, sometimes even hopeless, but I still perceive it as something good. Another thing I like about his poems is the structure. I appreciate that nothing really rhymes and I think that the fragments make the poems interesting. The Waste Land, in particular, shows how ingeniously he's even mixing up the languages.

Here's an excerpt of the first part of The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot:

Here's an excerpt of the first part of The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot:

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering	5
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,	10
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,	15
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

So yes, feel free to read some stuff by T.S. Eliot, I can definitely recommend it, and to end this post today there's only one thing I can say:

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

A time travel or Bournemouth my old love..

Hey guys ;)

So it is this time of the year again. This time when, from one second to another, I'm feeling strange again - drowning in the sweet melancholy of nostalgic feelings. When suddenly all those memories come to my mind - good ones and bad ones, that's when it's about time to call my good old friend Hippi, telling him, that we have to go back to Bournemouth. Almost 5 years ago, we didn't have this kind of feelings. We knew they would come in the future, but we didn't have them at that time. Why we didn't have them? Because we still were in our beloved Bournemouth, our true home. We, a group of about 20 people, but we - Hippi and I were the only ones with the strange feelings, the ones I'm talking about.

It was only yesterday, when I was at uni, listening to what the lecturer was telling me about british history. I was looking outside the window, as we had to sight the architecture of the house next to our building, when I saw that the sun was shining. Whilst I was sitting in this tiny, shadowy lecture hall, it seemed to me like I was able to feel the warm sunbeams from outside on my skin. And this was the moment when my brain and I time travelled. In the next second I found myself at the seaside, at one of my favourite spots. It's the roof of one of the public toilets and you can only get there by climbing up a wall and then walking a bit along a slope. So anyway, in my imagination I was sitting on that rooftop again, feeling the gentle breeze in my hair, enjoying the sunbeams, and looking straight at the beach, the sea and the horizon. The beach with all the small sand dunes, the bright horizon, and the sea sparkling like a thousand diamonds, the view was truly mesmerising. I've spent so many afternoons on this roof, alone and with friends, it was an amazing time. I could always relax there, the place was magical, calming my nerves, soothing my thoughts. Whenever I was there, no matter with what mood I went there, when I was at this place I became a luckier, more peaceful and optimistic person.

A few seconds later I was back, sitting in the tiny, shadowy lecture hall, thinking of the good old times. The class finished a few minutes later and as soon as I was out of uni I texted my good old friend Hippi, saying only one thing:"I want to go back". I didn't hear from him for quite a long time now, but he immediately knew what I was talking about. He didn't say hi or anything he only texted one thing:"Yes, indeed. Me too."

Serial Killers I

The BTK-Killer

Dennis Rader, an US-American serial killer, lived in the suburbs of Wichita, KS. He's also known as the BTK-Killer, where BTK stands for Bind, Torture, Kill. He gave him this name himself, as it was his method of killing his victims. Between 1974 and 1977 he killed at least 7 persons, mostly women, and another 3 between 1985 and 1991. Rader wasn't caught until 2005, when he was sentenced to life in prison ten times.

Dennis Rader was not only a member, but also elected president of the Christ Lutheran Church. He worked for a home security company, installing security alarms in hundreds of houses of residents fearing the BTK-Killer. Later he also worked for the city council and was known as a severe person. According to several records and his own confessions he tortured animals as a child. Later he developed a sexual fetish for women's underwear, stealing panties from his victims to wear them himself. Speaking of his victims, after bounding them, they were tortured crucially. Most of them died of suffocation with a plastic bag or strangulation with a rope, a belt or even nylon stockings.

More then a decade it was quiet around the BTK-Killer, and some experts even thought that was because he was in prison, which wasn't the case. On the 30th "anniversary" of his first assassination he wanted to be back on track and sent a letter with the driving license and pictures of one of his victims to a local newspaper, signing it with Bill Thomas Killman. After sending another letter, this time with a floppy-disk, he finally got caught. All letters were immediately sent to the FBI, they found out that the last person working with the floppy-disk was named Dennis and the disk itself was property of the Christ Lutheran Church. After some research they found Rader and subsequently they did an DNA-test on one of Rader's daughters giving the FBI the ultimate proof.

Whilst you are reading this, Rader is in prison. He plead guilty for killing 10 persons.

News :)

Hey guys,

So today I want to tell you about my weekend. Saturday was THE day. I was so stressed the whole week, studying every day, then on Friday I already felt a bit sick. Unfortunately I didn't feel better on Saturday. So anyway, the big day arrived and I was completely freaking out, because I was ill and scared to death to fail the exam. What exam you're asking? No exam from university, but one of the Red Cross - to become a ambulance officer. So about the exam: It was divided in about 3 practical and 3 theoretical stations. We started at about 9.00am and the exam lasted until about two in the afternoon. And you know what's really good about this kind of exam? You get to know the results on the same day. So since Saturday I'm an ambulance officer :D

In the evening then there was a party for all of us, who sat the exam, but i didn't go there. I felt so tired and exhausted from the day, that I preferred to spend the evening chilled with a friend of mine, some wine, food, and billiard. On Sunday then, i was lying in bed the whole bed, with fever, a huge headache and a cold. Lucky me, that it wasn't that bad on the day of the exam..

So as you can see, my weekend was quite nerve-racking, exciting, chilled and with a happy end, except for me being ill.
The next weeks my social life will still be dead, as I have to keep on studying for my exams.
And to you guys, enjoy every free minute you have ;)