Culture Presentations

Wow! I really have to say, I was impressed by the vaste range of topics we carried together for our culture presentations. Listening to my colleagues I learned plenty new stuff.

Anita Bhatti introduced me to the art of Newgrange, the oldest artwork in the world.
From Diana Skof I got some shocking facts about Psychiatry in Ireland in the middle of the last century.
Irish Dance is no longer this big secret to me, thanks to Katharina Luttenberger.
I was stunned by the story Bianca Brandtner told about Donal Walsh's fight against suicide in Ireland.
Thanks to Carmen Loderer, I'm now jeallous of Irish students for their opportunity to do a transition year.
The stories Katja Wallner told about animal symbolism in Irish Mythology captivated me.
Until Verena Praschs presentation about Whiskey I didn't even know there is such a thing like Austrian Whiskey.
Next time I'm in Dublin I will pay the Dublin Docklands a visite, beeing curious about them since Sowannry Em introtuced them to me.
I do now have a deeper knowledge about the GAA, thanks Alexandra Perfler.
Me and my sisters will send our 40-years old single cuisine to Willie Daly, hoping he can help. Natalie Riedl
Next time I'm invited to a Dinner party in one of the southern states of the US I will bring a cake. Thanks to Julia Rauch for giving me all this information about Southern Hospitality.
Should I ever get arrested in the US, at least because of Livia Pershy I do now know which society threat group I have to become a member of, in order to not get beat up.
And the San Francisco bay arrea is no longer a stranger to me, after heaving heard Marina Margeta's presentation.

All in all it was a really fun afternoon with lots of fun new facts to learn.

The presentations which most ceptured me, which I'm really curious about and which I'm choosing to be tested on in the KGP are:


Irish Dance
Transition year.
Animal symbolism in Irish Mytholog
Whiskey
The GAA

"The Awful German Language" by Mark Twain

Just in case you don't know who Mark Twain is/was:
Whoever heard about Tom Sawyer and Huckleyberry Finn, has heard about Mark Twain too. Samuel Langhorn Clemens, how Mark Twain is actually called, is the author of this two fabulous books. He lived in the second half of 19th century and is an important American Author. So important that William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature" once.

Maybe you already knew who Mark Twain is. Maybe you even know all this information already. But I am pretty sure that there are not so many people out there to know this about this great man:

somewhen between is birth in 1838 and the publishing date of his book “A Tramp Abroad” in 1880 Mark Twain payed Heidelberg a visit. Staying in Germany for several months he took the effort to learn our complicated language. After wards he wrote about it in his book mentioned above. He wrote about all the little quirks of German.

First is frustrated by the many exceptions to every rule. Next he is completely lost in the cases-jungle. Later tells about him being taken aback by the, to english ears/eys, unusually long sentences. And at somepoint he talks about the very strange habit of us german speakers to talke about little girls in the neutra.

Should you now be as curious about looking at our language from the perspective of this great American Author. Please be my guest and check this out.


Have fun!

ASL - American Sign Language

For many, many years I thought, like many, many other people, that Sign Language is an international the same. By now, I know that's a ridiculous idea. When my friend started to work at a kindergarten for children with hearing disabilities, I first got in touch with signing. Together with her I started to learn some useful signs and it got very funny pretty quickly. When we were on a night out we would start to signin in discos. I acutally thought about taking sign language as my second language. But it was not until last week that I really dug in deeper into this matter.

I discovered this new TV-series "switched at birth" where many deaf and hard of hearing people act. One of those Actresses caught my attention and I started researching. Marlee Matlin lost her hearing nearly completley when she was 18 months old. Nonetheless, did she manage to start an acting career. Today she is the first and only deaf Actress to have recieved the Acadamy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Moreover, she acted in more than 15 movies and several Television productions. In her book "I'll scream later" she writes about her interesting life.

Thanks to this TV-series I now found out that in the US there is actually the world wide first, and unfortunately onliest, University for deaf and hard of hearing students. The Gallaudet University in Washington offers both undergraduate and graduate programms. I also tried to find out something about the educational situation for deaf and hard of hearing people in Austria and Germany. But all I could find, was that people in Germany try now already for several years to start a similar University in Bad Kreuznach. Unfornuately they still didn't manage to do that. 

Global Village

We all know that there are many ERASMUS Students in Graz. But how many do we actually know? Besides the exchange students in our courses of cours.

I didn't know many, but a few weeks ago my friend tragged me to this event.Global Village. I hadn't heard about it before and didn't know what to expect. The moment we arrived at the Meerscheinschlössl I noticed, it had to be something special. There was a long cue lining up outside waiting to be let in.

At the entrance we had to pay € 3,50 entrance fee and than inside there was a big room full with food. Many exchange students who are currently studying in Graz had prepared meals from their home country. The had set up tabels and the visitors could walk arround, taste the food and talk to the students who prepared it. It was really great fun. I tasted stuff I had never even heard about. Sometimes it was delicious and sometimes I just realized that if I am ever going to vist this country, I will have to make a big circle around this meals.

All in all it was a wonderful evening. I talked to people from many different countries like: the Philipines, Jordania, Mexico and many moor. They were very eager to tell me about their country and I was very curious to find out what an impression they have from austria.


I found out that this kind of event takes places two times a year, so once per semester. Next time I'm going to be there as well and I kan just recommend you try it.