Oct 7: Kebaps and Soup for a Rainy Friday

Today was cold and rainy. Proper October weather…the warm sun was making us worry that we might be caught in some kind of eternal summer. ;-) Tiny and I went to go turn in our residence permits early this morning. However, once my number was finally called, I was informed that I needed an official stamp on my birth certificate from the Austrian Embassy. That I should have got in Canada.

Ah. Right.

Since our application is being partially completed through the university, it’s not a big problem. We’ll be able to sort this out on Monday, because apparently all the other Canadians are in the same boat. Nothing dramatic will happen. But this may result in acquainting ourselves with yet another line…;-)

However, after we left the registration office, we decided that we should celebrate with a kebap. These are NOT a shish-kebob. They are a type of donair, served in a pita. They are very popular in Graz and are DELICIOUS! Especially when you’re cold and hungry and fed up with bureaucracy. (Never mind that it was 10:30am and we were the only customers in the shop. ;-)

I had another class, and then had a lovely walk home, despite the rain. But since it was cold, I decided to make soup…mushroom soup, with chicken and carrots. We even tore up some bread for croutons…dumplings…bread bits? There’s got to be a more precise word for this. Any ideas? Since it was Friday, and we were feeling more creative than usual, we took some photos. See below!

By the way, hope everyone at home has a lovely Thanksgiving this weekend! We miss you a lot but will talk to you very soon. We’re hoping to celebrate our own Thanksgiving next weekend, when more EU friends are here to experience it.

 For all the readers of this blog – it would be really neat if you could leave a comment below listing the dishes that you serve at Thanksgiving. Or another special celebration you have in your country. (I’ve checked the stats and there are readers from around the world! Thank you!) It would be really awesome to see what everyone likes to cook.

Stirring the brew...



Our table setting!



The first taste... (See the rain outside?)

Success. :-)

Oct 6: Classes begin!

This week, I started my courses. At last! I’m very excited for all of them, and so far, they’re all very interesting. I’m taking 3 German courses (intermediate German language, a speech proficiency course, and an Austrian culture course), a seminar on “music, religion, and consciousness”, a lecture on systematic musicology, and possibly a linguistics course. In December and January, I’m taking two block courses: a visualization course and a lecture on climate change. The course schedule is pretty different from what I’m used to at home (there seem to be a lot of gaps early in the term), but the content should be very challenging and rewarding. (Good words to start your first term abroad with…J)

I have had an interesting time finding my classrooms, though. As careful as I am in writing down the right room number and building, there’s no guarantee that I’ll wind up on the right floor…or even the right building! On Tuesday, I spent a good 10 minutes pacing up and down one corridor before realizing that I was in building number 4 instead of building 14…;-)

I’ve been getting a lot of use out of my bike. A LOT of use. I haven’t taken the bus in a couple of weeks now! The weather has been so beautiful here that I haven’t had to worry about rain…yet. The forecast isn’t optimistic about next week, so I may have to pull out my raincoat at last.

Some pictures of the week:

N and M, taking a break between classes.

We tried a nut dessert. The sauce contains apricots and possibly plums. Served hot! 

Pub quiz: Consensus?

We had a team of 11 at pub quiz this week.

Oct 2: A Beautiful Day in Bad Radkersburg

Last week, I was invited by E and P to see a chamber concert on October 2^nd in Bad Radkersburg, a small town on the border between Austria and Slovenia. So LATE last night, after I came back from my whirlwind museum tour, we drove out to the area around Bad Radkersburg where P’s parents live so that we could stay overnight and see the concert the next day. It was such a wonderful Sunday. P’s parents have a beautiful home, and I got a chance to try more traditional Styrian food. For breakfast/brunch, we had soft boiled eggs, homemade pumpkin seed spread on fresh bread, cheese, cold cuts, homemade jam, crepes with jam, and homemade juice.

Afterwards, I visited the town with P while E was doing some studying for an exam. We stopped by three churches to see inside (I love looking at the different types of stained glass), and had a chance to see the medieval wall that protected the town. Bad Radkersburg was first recorded as a town in the 1100s, but was located in a volatile area – since it is located on the Austrian-Slovenian border and is not far from Hungary, it faced a lot of conflict, especially in Austria’s wars with Turkish armies.

We also walked across the bridge into Slovenia. It’s pretty amazing that you can just cross the border, order a drink, and come back again, all in an afternoon! And no one asked to see our passports. We also walked up to see a castle on the hill above the river (the Mur) that separates Austria from Slovenia, but unfortunately could not go inside. We did, however, have a lovely view of the vineyards sloping down the hill…J

I got to try more Styrian specialities at dinner. It was amazing! As I may have mentioned before, pumpkin seeds are a specialty of the Styrian region, and are widely used in cooking. We started with pumpkin soup – it was a creamy, golden yellow colour, and each individual serving had a garnish of pumpkin seeds, pumpkin seed oil, and whipped cream. I got to help prepare the rest of the meal. There were various types of salad: potato salad (covered in balsamic vinegar, pumpkin seed oil, and lots of salt), lettuce salad (with pumpkin seed oil as a dressing), and sliced tomatoes with onions. And then there was schnitzel served with cooked grains. The schnitzel was pork, which I think is used more often than veal in the Styrian region. It was my job to bread them. First, I salted the pork, and then dusted it with a preliminary coat of white flour. Then I dipped the floured meat in an egg and milk coating, and finally covered it with bread crumbs containing – what else? – ground pumpkin seeds. J I loved all of it, everything tasted wonderful. Alles schmeckt wunderbar!

I also got lots of German practice talking to P’s parents. It was really great, because I hadn’t been speaking quite as much German now that I finished my intensive German course. By the way, the next time you want to use “spoilsport” in your conversation, you might consider “Spaßbremse” (ShbAss-brehm-suh). ;-)

After supper, we went to the concert. It was a piano trio – piano, violin, and cello. They played Ravel (Piano Trio in A major) and Schubert (Piano Trio No. 3 in B major, D 898 op.99). They’re all students at the music university and play extremely well. The Ravel is really magical. I’ve never heard it before, so now I will have to find a recording. And I also really enjoyed the Schubert. The second movement is very emotionally moving. The venue was a smaller concert hall, so it was a more intimate performance than a large-scale orchestral concert. There were only about 160 people in the audience, and the hall reminded me of when I first started going to concerts in the small town I used to live in.

Thanks again to everyone who made today such a lovely day, especially P’s parents for their wonderful hospitality. J



Chopping pumpkin seeds to put in the schnitzel bread crumbs.




P fully endorses this project. :-)




The boss...temporarily relieved of her camera.





1st course: soup.



Main course. See the salad bowls on the side?

The concert.









 

Oct 1: Lange Nacht Der Museen

Tonight I had the chance to go to the “Lange Nacht Der Museen” – the “Long Night of Museums.” For 11 Euros, you had the chance to go visit as many museums in Austria that you could…but only between 6pm and 1am. The race was on! I went with A, one of the other exchange students I met in our orientation sessions. She is from Taiwan and has a similar passion for things under glass, so we both had a ball biking from museum to museum. J

We visited 5 between 6:00 and 11:30. We started at the botanical gardens, where we got a tour of the three different greenhouses that keep plants from all over the world. The greenhouses had catwalks so that you could see the tops of some of the tallest trees growing there. The carnivorous plants were also interesting to see – take a look at the pictures!

We tried to take a look at the criminal museum (forensic science), but the line was a bit too long. So we stopped by the physics department at the university where they were showing historical physics instruments. Very cool, even though my German physics vocabulary was so limited that I had to guess at the purpose of a lot of the instruments. Our next stop was the armoury, because A hadn’t seen it yet. We got a tour in German, but I was able to understand some of it! I also learned some new information that I hadn’t known about when I went the first time, so that was really exciting.

We then stopped by a photography exhibit and peeked in at the modern art museum. It’s pretty big, though, so I think I’ll have to come back to that another time. But our last stop was at the Kepler museum. It was held in a junior high school, and they had a room entirely devoted to Kepler’s ideas (the “Keplerraum”). It was really amazing!!! (This year, I wrote a paper on Kepler’s work in musical harmonies and planetary motion, and to see an exhibit of Kepler’s work in the city that he worked in was incredibly exciting. :-D)

I think the best part of the night, however, was visiting the observatory at the Kepler museum. We waited…waited….waited in line, but when we got to the top, we had the chance to see Jupiter!!! We could also see its four moons Io, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa, sparkling like little jewels around it. The resolution was so good that we could even see the cloud bands. It was a wonderful night.



Plants requiring lots of moisture (many carnivorous plants in this area)



Venus flytrap.



Purple pitcher plant.



Toepler's Influence Machine



Model of the earth and the fixed stars (on a "celestial sphere"), likely 1500s-1600s.



M and A at the Kepler Museum.



The posters were Austria-wide!



In the Keplerraum.




A depiction of Kepler's "Platonic Solids".

 

The title page of one of Kepler's works.



Sept 30: Bike Lights, Baroque Palaces, and Tortellini!

Today, I was feeling pretty ambitious, so I resolved to get my rear bike light fixed AND visit Schloss Eggenberg, the Baroque palace that’s located on the outskirts of Graz. I found a bike shop about 10 minutes from my apartment, and 10 minutes and 0.75 Euros later, the new light was in and the plastic shell was fastened securely overtop.

Or so I thought. I met up with a few friends and we rode off towards the castle. Along the way, we got off to wheel our bikes across the intersection. I pulled mine off the curb and thunk! I looked behind, and the plastic shell over my rear light was lying in the middle of the tram tracks. Run, run, run, pick up the piece, scurry back across the road, THE TRAM IS COMING!!! Unfortunately, when I got back to the sidewalk and examined the bike, I found that the brand new light had fallen out in the process! So I was back to square one. But on the plus, I now knew where I could find these marvelous 0.75 Euro bike lights…J

I had the plastic shell, so I put it back on and we continued on to the palace. But the visit soon made up for any bike mishaps. It's so beautiful! Though part of the palace had been built as early as the 1400s, the main construction took place between 1625 and 1635. The palace belonged to Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg, who as the advisor of Ferdinand II, the Holy Roman Emperor, was one of the most influential princes in the Europe. In keeping with the mindset of the time, Eggenberg wanted his palace to reflect the rational order of the world. The palace has four towers which reflect the four seasons as well as the four elements. The importance of the calendar is shown too, through the inclusion of 365 windows (for each day of the year) and 24 state rooms (number of hours in a day). As you walk through the state rooms, you see that the first are painted in white to symbolize the day, but change to blue to symbolize dusk, and finally brown to symbolize the night. It was amazing to see all the metaphorical elements in the decoration and architecture of the palace.

In addition to having a guided tour of the state rooms and ballroom, we looked at the art gallery (with a significant collection of medieval art), the coin collection (including medieval and Roman coins), and the outdoor gardens. The grounds are beautiful! Still very green, and with huge trees. There was even a goldfish pond.

Afterwards, we went to get some supper at a restaurant that allows you to build your own pizza/pasta/salad/baked potato/stuffed pepper. Basically, you can customize your dish by checking off all the ingredients you would like to have on it. I had a tortellini dish with tomato sauce, meat, feta cheese, broccoli, and mushrooms. Very tasty.

And to end the day, I went back to the bike shop before it closed and bought TWO rear light bulbs PLUS a blinking red light to attach to my belt/backpack. I will be prepared next time!  J



The view from the gate.




Tail-less peacocks on the lawn!




The palace, a bit closer...



The central tower, symbolizing all four elements (there are four other towers as well).



The pond.




4 cafe lattes at lunch.




After dinner...



One of the four towers, with a modern addition.

Sept 29 – Audition Results/Bike Ride/Duets

Got some rather disappointing news today – unfortunately I didn’t make it in to the music university (KUG). I’ll still have all my regular studies at the main university (University of Graz), but I had really hoped that I could do some playing at the KUG. But it was a really good experience to prepare for the audition, and I got a chance to see what their music school is like.  I think I’ll just have to find some other musicians at my university and organize an ensemble. J

I had a lovely bike ride today. I rode to the university to pay my German course fees (I’m taking more language courses and an Austrian history and culture course!), and didn’t have to wait in line at all! Last time, I was there for 2 hours before I could pay my course fees, but I was lucky this time around. I was out by 9:10, and decided to take a bike ride around the neighbourhood. The area around the university is really beautiful. There are a lot of old houses and mature trees. Their leaves are turning yellow and orange. In the area, too, is a botanical garden. It’s one of the University of Graz’s projects and you can enter it just like a museum. I’m really excited to go visit it – might stop by on Saturday.

Best of all, I got together with E tonight to play some traditional Austrian folk songs! She plays violin, and bought a songbook at Aufsteirern so that we could play some duets. Since most songs have two voices (usually a harmony in thirds), it works out very nicely. We are thinking of making a video or two once we’ve practiced more. J Then we saw “Ein Freund Von Mir”, which was very fun and good practice, since there were German subtitles as well as spoken German language. A very productive evening. :-D

Sept 27: Return of the Pub Quiz!

Pub quiz again tonight! This time, the picture round was identifying mathematical formulas. The connection was hard, but we managed to get some decent answers for some of the other rounds. And there was a music quiz this time, with live music! I didn’t know any of the songs, but it was really pleasant to sit and listen as the guitarist cycled through the 10 different song selections.

Sept 26: Birthday for A (Finland)!

Today, one of our friends from Finland, A, celebrated her birthday! It was a lovely party. Our friends M and N were there too, and we had homemade pizza and a jam roll cake that M had made. Everything was so delicious! Making meals together with friends is one of the best ways to spend an evening, I think. J

More Stübing Photos

Here are some more photos of the museum:

Musical instruments including a hurdy-gurdy (top left) and violin.

Looking out to a balcony in one of the larger farmhouses.

Such a beautiful day!

Everyone walked along a single path to see all the buildings.

Sept 25: "Heritage Park" Museum in Stübing

Today, I went to Stübing, an area about 25 minutes outside of Graz, to visit the Freilichtmuseum – the “open air museum” that shows what farming used to be like as much as 400 years ago. It is pretty much like Heritage Park in Calgary, but showing buildings from the 1600s. ;-) It is incredibly beautiful there. And the smell of fresh air!!! Today was a special day, because the interpreters were showing various crafts and activities that farmers and their families would engage in. I saw some wonderful lacemaking. It’s so detailed, but the lacemakers have done it so long that they say they can watch TV while they’re finishing a piece. ;-) There was a man playing some kind of bagpipes, and a full band playing traditional songs. The gardens were really beautiful, and most of the flowers were still in bloom. Lots of dirndls and lederhosen there – I guess many people take this as an opportunity to wear their outfits after Aufsteirern.

We also got to try more food – honey pastries, cakes, topfen (like cream cheese) spread on bread, and more Sturm… There were also demonstrations of how to crack a whip (not on the animals!), and afterwards, one of the interpreters offered us a taste of his homemade plum schnapps. All I can say – if your passages need clearing out, you’ll never be stuffed up again after a sip of that!! ;-)



The entrance




One of the many gardens in front of the buildings.




The band playing traditional music.



Bedroom in one of the larger farmhouses.



Our coordinator trying the schnapps!



Happy M at the end of the day. :-)