Austria trip, part 4: why I like travelling

Women on a bench outside the farmer's market.


(Trip report continued from Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. Also check out my gradually expanding Austria trip photo album.)

Everyone has a different preference for "sightseeing" in another country. I tend to veer away from too many organized tours and big group activities. While these can be informative and fun, they leave little flexibility for individual interests.

I like to get an overview of a place or building via advance research or a quick tour, but then be able to follow up on my own, spending more time on things I find most interesting. Unfortunately one of the realities of vacations is TIME; if you only have one day in Vienna, for example, you inevitably end up rushing through sights and experiences you'd ordinarily want to spend an entire afternoon for each.




Took this photo when Jeff and I decided to walk
to Pottenbrunn on our own one day.


My idea of hell, I have to say, would be one of those "42 countries in seven days" bus tours. I think it's the crowds that would get to me. I've never been much of a crowd person, even in my own country. I don't mind occasionally doing the "everyone shuffle into this tiny room while the guide finishes her brief talk and it's time to shuffle into the next room", especially if it's the only way to access some tourist sights. BUT I also need something more to truly enjoy a vacation in another country.




A gypsy band (led by Harri Stojka, on the left) performed at the Schloss for us.
Many thanks to Arline for arranging this!


It's one of the reasons I usually attempt, even a feeble one, at learning the native language in advance; making some kind of connection with the people in the country, even in a minor way, greatly enhances the travel experience for me. Staying in the Schloss with a group of friends was also a huge bonus, getting to know the staff, establishing (even very briefly) a feeling of a "home base", a place to come back to after a day of sightseeing.





It would be a shame to visit Paris and not see the Eiffel Tower, but if I had one day in Paris and a choice between a tour of the Tower or spending the afternoon in an outdoor cafe, people-watching, I'd opt for the latter.




Vienna Choir Boys performance in Vienna.


In the end, what I love most about travelling is that I get a glimpse of a different way of life. It's a breath of fresh air, really, and a reminder not to take things for granted, good or bad.




Cora in Durnstein with a Caffe Melange.


It's like food, really. Hm...interesting how everything can relate to food somehow, isn't it? :-)

I might like porridge one day and start eating it every morning for breakfast. I may not even get bored with it, adding different toppings and serving it in a variety of dishes. But HEY, one day someone's set a dish of (*gasp) scrambled eggs down by my bowl of porridge. And crispy bacon.




Jeff!


And suddenly my world is changed. I still like porridge but y'know, maybe I'll try something different every so often. Mix things up, experiment a bit.

Ok, I'll stop with the food analogy. Besides, it's making me hungry again.

By the way, I feel the same way about travelling whether it's overseas or to the U.S. or even a little town fifty miles from Toronto. It's one reason I like snooping through neighbourhood grocery or department stores; I find you get a pretty good sense of some lifestyle differences that way. :-)




Typical street in Durnstein.


I'll end this entry with a poll question: Do you like travelling? If you like it, WHY do you like it? What is your focus during the trip? Sightseeing? Socializing? Food? etc.




Durnstein Abbey.


(Trip report to be continued)

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Austria trip, Part 3: the FOOD (!)

Woman vendor at the farmer's market near St. Polten's.


(Trip report continued from Part 1 and Part 2, also check out my gradually expanding Austria trip photo album.)

And now to an aspect of our trip I particularly relished: Austrian food.

Ah, the FOOD.

We were especially spoiled by Lazi's cooking at the Schloss. This man was a culinary whiz, and near the end of our stay, we were all moved to invade the kitchen en masse, chanting his name, clapping and cheering. He was quite taken aback but obviously pleased.

My favourite of his dishes was a spectacular chocolate souffle we had for dessert on the first night. Oh YUM, it was truly to die for. I had never had chocolate souffle before. I knew my broken German would be painfully inadequate in expressing my gratitude, so I drew a little cartoon instead, a doodle of me floating in euphoric bliss, dreaming of chocolate souffle.

Lazi ended up pinning it up on a kitchen shelf. I drew several similar cartoons over the week, and the Countess told me she planned to put my doodles in a frame to hang in the Schloss. :-)

A typical breakfast table at the Schloss:





There was hot tea, coffee, and hot chocolate on a side table, along with cold drinks, cereal and muesli, milk and cream. You could ask the staff to cook eggs; I usually asked for mine "gekocht" (boiled). The breakfast spread included radishes and baby tomatoes, both of which are relatively uncommon at North American breakfast tables.




Sugar pastries on display at a restaurant ini Grein.


Here are just a few of my favourite food experiences in Austria, and please note that any dishes made at the Schloss were cooked or baked fresh specifically for us:

- Chocolate souffle @ the Schloss.

- The BREAD. I'm not usually a huge bread eater, but I was completely converted during this trip. My favourite bread was a pumpkin seed roll shown in yesterday's Blathering, served fresh every morning at the Schloss.

- Fresh figs! Never had these before. Lazi put them in a salad along with cubed cheese and basil (I think it was basil) with a homemade dressing:





- Pflaume and ginseng tea (plum and ginseng).

- Kalbsgulasch und Spetzl (veal goulasch with spetzl) @ the Schloss.

- Chocolate brownie cake with blueberries @ the Schloss, drizzled with cream:





- Baked fig filled with orange custard (dessert one night @ the Schloss.).

- Marillenpalatschinken (rolled crepe filled with apricot jam) @ the Gasthof in Pottenbrunn.

- Chocolate souffle cake @ the Schloss.

- Chocolate mousse @ the Schloss. We got to choose what dessert we wanted one lunchtime, and Lazi whipped this up. And...holy toledo. This was the best chocolate mousse I've ever had: cold, frothy, smooth, not too sweet. One of our party chose this as her favourite dessert during the trip.

- The fruit was absolutely delicious, and all locally grown. In fact, the Schloss grounds had an abundance of fruit trees. The pears were especially good.

- Milchramstrudel in Durnstein: Topfenstrudel with hot vanilla sauce drizzled over top. Topfenstrudel is a flakey strudel traditionally filled with warm fruit fillings and cream cheese.

I did try some Sacher Torte in Vienna. It was okay, but Kardinalschnitte is still my favourite Viennese dessert. Lazi's chocolate souffle, however, remains my top food experience in Austria.

(Pause while Debbie wipes the drool off her keyboard here.)

Saw these deer in a yard in Pottenbrunn:





Judging from the number of times that deer played a role in the menus at the Schloss, I'm pretty sure they're not being bred as pets.

:-\

We ate most of our meals at the Schloss, but sometimes tried the cuisine in local restaurants. A few of the menus had pictures or English translations, but most were all German text. Here's the main course page from the menu at the Gasthof zu den Linden in Pottenbrun. I made heavy use of my culinary dictionary for this one! Click on the image for a larger version:





At the Gasthof, I ordered the "forelle", which means trout. It came as a whole fish, eyes and tail and all. Yummy, though the little bones were a bit of a pain. For dessert, I had the Marillenpalatschinken, which was served warm (some places apparently serve it cold), along with melange, coffee made with frothed milk.

Some differences I've noticed between North American and Austrian restaurants, or at least the ones I've visited:

- In Austria, you're charged per piece of bread taken from the basket; they're counted up at the end of the meal. Bread tends to come free with the meal in North America. But it isn't NEARLY as good.

- In Austria, you have to ask for the bill; they won't automatically bring it. They're much more patient about patrons lingering over coffee and dessert and a newspaper. When you do ask for the bill, the waiter will stand at your table while you count out your money. Also, I've noticed that bills tend to be very casual, sometimes just a few scribbled numbers of a scrap of paper.

- In Austrian restaurants there are no non-smoking areas, and a LOT of people smoke. This was one of the only negative aspects of the trip for me, but I only noticed it when we went out of the Schloss.

- Austrian food doesn't seem to be big on salads or low-fat cuisine. Good thing we were walking a lot on that trip. :-)

One of my favourite experiences in Austria was going to the local farmer's market with Ginny and Arline to buy ingredients for an outdoor picnic lunch. GREAT people-watching, and I very much enjoyed checking out the types of items for sale. Very few people spoke any English, and it looked as if we were the only tourists.

Here are a few photos:

























Back at the Schloss, we had our lunch outside by the moat on a temporary table set up by the staff at the Schloss. An incredibly scenic setting for a picnic, with the weeping willows, the moat, the horses grazing peacefully nearby. Our meal consisted of cold meats, a salad, cheeses, and fruit, and Lazi surprised us with two homemade apple tarts with some kind of cream cheese filling which were mouthwateringly delicious, still warm from the oven.

Arline and Ginny had also picked up a bit bottle of Stürm, fermented grape juice available in different flavours. The bottle they bought at the market had no sealed cap, just a piece of paper wrapped over the top instead. I tried several types of Stürm. It was good, but much stronger than it seems at first. Also, if I had more than half a glass, I got a headache. I generally stuck to Mineralwasser or Caffe Melange instead.








Lazi's homemade apple tarts.


If you haven't been able to tell, the food was one of my favourite parts of our Austria trip. The Austrians sure know how to eat.

And hoo boy, am I going to miss Lazi's cooking.

Especially that chocolate souffle...

* happysighdrool *

:-)

(Trip report to be continued)

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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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allison takes over the liberal

Allison in the Liberal. Click on image for bigger version.


Last week, Allison gave me the copies of The Liberal I had begged her to pick up for me. I'll be donating one to Interfilk at OVFF, of course. Wow, hadn't realized how much of the front page her picture would cover! VERY cool. Happily, she got appropriately hassled at her school ;-) but she also got some surprise feedback, such as a letter from an old student of hers from early teaching days.




Inside article. Click on image for bigger version
(but PLEASE ignore my outdated geeky glasses back then).


Got an article assignment from Writer's Digest yesterday for their special Yearbook issue, due the week Jeff & I get back from Vienna. Glad I'm taking my laptop. Also glad my tendinitis has much improved these days, though I'm still careful to take arm breaks. Many thanks to Andrea Dale for helping me with Market Watch while I'm away!

I have my laser surgery follow-up appointment today, wish me luck. I don't notice the shadow in my periphery as much anymore. Not sure if it's because it's shrunk or (more likely) my vision has adjusted around it.

Did more packing and prep yesterday, including buying an adaptor plug at The Travel Stop on Cumberland so I can charge up my laptop, iPod and digital camera batteries while I'm in Vienna, as well as a new neck pillow for the plane (my old one suffered a fatal leak on the way home from Nevada). Charged up my iPod and loaded it with new tunes and an audiobook (a history of jazz); I've decided to leave my Big New Book behind. Still hoping to sleep for most of the flight, though.

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learning languages

Wrote and sent off two articles, then did more packing and prep for our trip to Vienna. And cramming in as much last-minute German as I can, of course. :-)

As I've mentioned before, I love languages. I'm not near fluent in any except for English, but I know a smattering of German, Japanese, and French. I used to study a bit of Swedish, though now I can't remember how to say anything in that language except for "My hovercraft is full of eels."

I plan to eventually study some Japanese again, probably within the next year or two. Hey, Worldcon's in Japan in a few years...who knows? Maybe I'll actually go.

Anyway, I've been looking at several types of German self-study courses over the past while and have come to some conclusions:

- I need to see the written language to learn it. I can't just absorb through listening. Therefore a course that is entirely audio doesn't work for me unless I also have materials (not necessarily connected to the course) with written language as well.

- I need to hear the language. A LOT. I can't just absorb through a written course. And just one audio course isn't enough for me. I need to borrow or buy other audiovisual and other audio materials, or listen to the many audio samples on the Web. This also helps me from getting too cocky; listening to a regular German radio program, for example, is a humbling experience, and helps emphasize how listening to an instructor speak slowly and clearly is a far different thing than day-to-day conversation in the country itself.

- I suck at memorizing the usual travel phrases you find in the small tourist language books. I need to be able to understand at least some of the basics of the grammar.

- It takes me a long time, and a lot of repetition. Those "Learn German In 30 Days" books/courses are not written for me. I need to go through material over and over and over and over again, as well as trying connecting it with other things I've learned. Then go over and over it yet again.

But y'know what? It's fun! I used to love learning secret languages and deciphering codes as a child (made up some of my own, too), and I suppose this is just a grown-up version of that passion. I know I'll never be really fluent in any of these languages, but I get a huge amount of enjoyment in the process as well as the hope that maybe, someday, I'll at least have learned enough to be able to communicate with someone in another country in their own language enough to have it qualify as a simple conversation.

To those of you out there fluent in other languages, I'm curious: Did you learn the language(s) yourself, or take a course? If self-study, any tips? Did you use flash cards, for instance? Intensive study in a short time, or gradually over a number of years?

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