Austria trip, Part 2: practising German (and a few other languages)

Spiral stairs at the library in Melk, with a mirror
at the bottom.


(Austria trip report continued from Part 1...)

Please note: I'll be posting some of my favourite photos from the trip on my Flickr page over the next week or so. I'm also going to be linking some of them up to my Blatherings photos, so if you click on some photos in Blatherings, you have the option of seeing that particular photo page (with a bigger version).

So I got a LOT more German language practice than I expected, yay! I had been fully prepared for everyone around to be fluent in English, as was often the case in Vienna when we visited in December. Of course I could have still spoken German, but there wouldn't have been as much motivation and I'd have been much more likely to stick to English.




Where we had breakfast every morning. Food details
in a future Blathering.


When we were given the tour of the Schloss by the owner (a real life Countess), however, we were told that of the staff, only one spoke a little English. We also spent most of our time in smaller towns in Austria, where most of the people spoke very little English.

So not only did I have huge motivation for practising my German, in many cases I was being looked to by some members of our group for translation help (!).





Ok, you can stop laughing now. Yes, I know I'm far from fluent. But y'know, I had SO MUCH FUN trying out my German. Once again, it's clear how much more quickly someone can learn a foreign language by spending solid time in that country. And being willing to make mistakes in the learning process, sometimes embarrassing ones. :-)

Practising German in Austria

I abandoned any attempt at trying to form grammatically correct and complete sentences in German; I have a lot more to learn about word order and declensions first. My strategy: a combination of trying to come up with enough key vocab and verbs, often accompanied with sign language, a piece of paper and pen, and carrying around a dictionary, to get across my basic meaning. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.




Some of the Schloss staff; the fellow on the left
is Lazlo, the chef.


I found the staff at the Schloss IMMENSELY helpful and patient with my feeble attempts. My first attempt at a conversation, for example, took place after we arrived at the Schloss and had a nice lunch prepared by the chef that began with some kind of soup with noodles. I decided that this would be a good opportunity, plus I didn't want to go through the week not knowing anything about what I ate!

So I took my mini-dictionary, a notebook and my sketchy German skills, and headed into the kitchen after the meal to ask Laslo the chef (nicknamed Lazi, pronounced "Laht-zee") what we had for lunch.




I LOVED the bread in Austria! More on my food
experiences later.


At first he misunderstood and began writing out the recipes. I quickly shook my head and looked for another way to convey my meaning, frantically trying to remember the word for "menu." This became the pattern for the rest of the trip, really...I KNEW I had learned certain vocab, but when the German speaker was right in front of me, my mind blanked out.

But wait..."Speisekarte"! Yay! I knew it tended to refer to menus in restaurants, but I hoped it would do the trick. Lazi nodded and smiled, started writing out the lunch menu. Except "Rehsuppe" didn't mean much to me in terms of what kind of soup, and I couldn't find it in my mini-dictionary. It was at that point I realized I needed a better dictionary.

"Reh"?




In Spitz, this grape stand was by the side of a narrow cobblestone street.
One Euro for a cup, self-serve. We tried a few grapes
(and paid); they
were AMAZING.


I pointed to "Reh" and asked in German, "What is that?"

And then the real fun began. :-) Lazi motioned outdoors, searched for the right word, and said in English (so he knew a little English after all!), "in the wild,"and pointed outside. I figured out that the soup broth was animal-based...but what kind of animal? I could look different types up in the dictionary, but that was too laborious.




Rehsuppe.


"Baaa?" I said. Lazi smiled and shook his head.

"Moooo!" I tried. Who knows? Maybe Austria has wild cows wandering the countryside. Lazi laughed but no go again. He put his hands up above his head in what was obviously an antler imitation.

"DEER?" I didn't know how to imitate a deer, so drew a little cartoon deer on the piece of paper. I was in a hurry, so the sketch looked more like a spastic Bambi with an eye twitch than an actual deer, but Lazi understood; he nodded and gave me the thumbs up.




The famous library in Melk Abbey.


WOOHOO! Only my first few hours at the Schloss, and I had already learned a new German word as well as had conversation with a native speaker. Ok, so it wasn't in fluent German. But it was immensely satisfying since we did manage to communicate, and I could tell that Lazi appreciated the effort.

I found that to be generally the case overall, at least in the smaller towns. Even if the other person claimed to know no English, they were usually willing to give it a shot once they saw that hey, the weird North American didn't mind making a fool of herself, making their own attempts far less embarrassing in comparison. :-)




Melk abbey.


Later in the week, I discovered in a conversation with one of the staff who knew a bit of English that NONE of the staff were German! Lazi wasn't a native German speaker after all; he was HUNGARIAN, and the others were Slovakian. They all spoke some German, but I assume they probably found understanding my poor German even more of a challenge.

And that's why I started learning a bit of Hungarian and Slovakian. :-)

Example:
"Ahoj" (pronounced "a-hoy") means "hello" in Czech-Slovak.
"D^akujem" (pronounced "yakwee-im") means "thank you" in Czech-Slovak.
"Köszönöm" (pronounced "kuss-en-em", I think) means "thank you" in Hungarian.

Michael (I suspect he really spells his name Michal, but wanted to make it easier for us) taught me this vocab, and I enjoyed surprising the other staff by greeting them in the hallways for the first time in their native language.




A rather gruesome memorial in Melk abbey.


Mary asked in LJ comments if I had found out about the stone hand in the library. Unfortunately that was beyond my language abilities this visit...though I would probably be able to ask the question, I'm not sure if I'd be able to grasp the full answer...or if the staff would have the time to convey it in a way I could understand. :-)

BUT! I did have interactions in broken German that accomplished things, like being the advance scout for a dinner outing in a small restaurant where I had to ask for a table for a certain number of people, understand and answer a question about whether we wanted to eat a meal or were we only interested in drinks, and help (with aid of the culinary reader of my German phrase book...to Allison and Jodi: I used this book a LOT during my visit!!) with translation of the menu.

My brief conversation with one of the booth owners in a flea market ("Flohmarket") near St. Polten's was another example. The very chatty, friendly woman was obviously curious about me since there weren't many tourists around, and asked me in German where I came from, why I was visiting. I managed to convey my answers in very broken German, with her encouragement and obvious delight. At the end, she gave a big smile and said haltingly in English, "Have good trip in Austria!"

Some photos from Mauthausen

Jeff, Ginny, Arline and I visited Mauthausen one day, a memorial built on an old concentration camp and the main camp for all of Austria. Very sobering.

One part of the Mauthausen memorial had videos of survivors telling their stories:





Just a few of the memorial pictures and messages posted on the wall near the gas chambers:







I've heard stories and seen black & white photos of concentration camps, of course, but it really hits home harder when you're actually standing in a small wooden hut where prisoners were kept, climbing what was known as the "Stairway of Death" where prisoners were forced to carry heavy blocks of stone from the rock quarry, the gas chambers where as many as 10,000 prisoners were killed between 1942 and 1945.

I found that I wasn't able to fully absorb the implications of the photos and museum exhibits, the documentary movie we saw, the preserved barracks and other buildings. My brain was trying to put a wall up, to distance itself from the horrors of what had happened in the place.

Made me appreciate what I have all that much more.

(Trip report continued in Part 3).
(And here's Part 1 of my trip report for those who missed it!)

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