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 ;)

What a good blog looks like...

Hey there! :)

So today I'm finally gonna post about what or how a good blog looks like.
After looking up the blogs from the list of the best blogs from last year, I've seen that they've all got one thing in common. The posts are published on a regular basis, they're rich in variety and with a lot to read. And that's exactly how I think a good blog should look like. That's also how my blog should look like in the future. I don't assume that I will have problems with the variety, but I'll definitely have to try harder to be a consistent writer and providing longer texts. They are all posting about stuff they're interested in or passionate about. That's also what I would like to do. Even if some topics may do not seem so interesting to you lot in the first place, I still hope that maybe you'll enjoy reading about them, because of the way I'm writing about them.

From the list of last year's best blogs, here are my personal favourites:

• http://fortymillionminutes.blogspot.co.at/
• http://hashtagdavids.blogspot.co.at/
• http://aleksapaleksa.blogspot.co.at/search?updated-max=2013-10-26T19:34:00%2B02:00&max-results=3&start=6&by-date=false
• http://verenaandthecatssmile.blogspot.co.at/search?updated-max=2014-06-20T14:06:00-07:00&max-results=7

The ruins of North Brother Island

Welcome to New York!
Between Bronx and Queens lies a little island - the North Brother Island. Have you ever heard of it? Me neither, and actually that's not surprising. No one is allowed to set foot on the island. It's abandoned for about 50 years now.

                                                                                              Photo: Google Maps

North Brother Island lies in the Hell Gate, a narrow tidal strait in the East River. It got its name from the dutch word "Hellegat" due to the heavy currents in this area. Indeed, hundreds of ships sank in the 19th century, because of the difficulties they had to face when sailing through the Hell Gate. And actually it's still no piece of cake to master these currents.
South Brother Island is the other one of the two islands. They both were discovered in 1614, only a few years after Jamestown, but because of the above-mentioned currents, both isles stayed uninhabited until 1885. By that time, the city of New York decided to build a quarantine hospital on the northern island. Many, at that time, lethal diseases as leprosy, tuberculosis, smallpox or typhus were spreading all over New York. The Riverside Hospital - as it was called, was perfectly located. It was close to the city, but, on the other hand, also perfectly separated from it by water. By 1890, the hospital was bursting at the seams. The sanitary state must have been gruesome. Not only was there a lack of medical tools but also of personnel. And as if this wouldn't be enough, in 1904, a paddleboat sank in front of the island and over 1000 passengers died. Most of them were women and children of New York's German immigrant community. Only about 300 people survived and saved themselves onto North Brother Island with the help of the hospital staff.
Underneath the people living on the island was, unfortunately, also a famous one. Unfortunately, because the reason why this patient is famous, isn't really the best. I'm talking about Mary Mallon or also "Typhoid Mary".  Mallon emigrated from Ireland to the US and worked as a cook for affluent families. She was later identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen associated with typhoid fever. She was presumed to have infected 53 people, three of whom died, over the course of her career as a cook. She was twice forcibly isolated by public health authorities and died after a total of nearly three decades in isolation, in 1938. A short time after, the hospital was closed.
Nevertheless, the history of North Brother Island doesn't finish here. After the Second World War, veterans were living on the island for a few years, subsequently heroin junkies went there for rehab. Rumour has it that most of them weren't there of one's own free will and maybe that's also a reason why the rehab mostly wasn't really successful. Anyway the rehab centre closed its doors in 1964 and it's since then that the access to the island is denied.

                                                                                                            Photo: 2E

The whole island is ragged now. The hospital and the few other buildings are ruins. And so, this deserted island turned into a place of deep mystery and enchantment. It must give you goosebumps to stand somewhere on this isle, knowing the history, but not exactly what happened on here; seeing the red bricks of the walls fallen down, overgrown with ivy and other plants. I imagine it to be an extraordinary feeling, standing in one of those ruins, looking at pavements full with books. If it wouldn't be for the signs of the times, it just seems as no sooner you came than everyone left. It must be an awesome place to rediscover, to look for all the little details.

Now that you know a little bit about the island here's a link to a video on Vimeo so you can see for yourself:   http://vimeo.com/48640895

The queerest language?

Hey guys!

Some time ago I stumbled upon this lovely poem and I thought it might be worth to share it with you.

We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox should be oxen, not oxes.
Then one fowl is goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a whole lot of mice,
But the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?
The cow in the plural may be cows or kine,
But a bow if repeated is never called bine,
And the plural of vow is vows, not vine.

If I speak of a foot and you show me your feet,
And I give you a boot would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth, and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?

If the singular's this and the plural is these,
Should the plural of kiss ever be nicknamed keese?
Then one may be that and three would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.

We speak of a brother, and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren,
Then the masculine pronouns are he his and him,
But imagine the feminine she, shis and shim,

So the English, I think you will agree,
Is the queerest language you ever did see...

-Anonymous

I really enjoy this poem. It shows some of the difficulties of the English grammar. Were you struggling whilst learning these irregular plural noun forms? have you had problems finding the logic behind them? I don't think they're too hard to remember once that you know the right form, at least not with common used words. But finding the right plural of such an irregular noun, when you hear the word for the first time? I think that can be quite tricky sometimes, especially if you're trying to do it with some kind of logic behind it as seen in this poem. Anyway, I hope you liked it.

It's Time For A Revival.

Hey guys!

As you can see, I'm reviving my blog. The reason I started blogging again is simple. I have to. It's part of my studies. When I heard that we have to blog, I had mixed feelings. In the beginning, I wasn't too happy about it, as I had my reasons to stop blogging. But after thinking about it for a while, I got excited again. Showing you once more a part of my life, a different country, a new city, thoughts, moments, it just seemed fun again. Then I read the blogging guidelines and saw that we should mostly blog about the English culture, language learners and so on. To be honest I'm not too excited about that, but it can't be helped. So for those of you, who are already familiar with my blog, don't wonder if it will change a bit. As some of you may have noticed I've deleted quite a few of my old posts. In the future, my blog will probably or hopefully be a good mix of posts regarding language and culture (uni stuff) as well as some posts of a private matter.

xoxo