Another tasty insight, anyone?

Appetizing Apple Strudel

One of my all-time favorite deserts or main dishes – and this is the rare occasion where you will see me get all patriotic – is apple strudel. Or Apfelstrudel. See, told you, patriotism kicking in right there. It’s as traditionally Austrian as you can get without using pork.

Also, this reminds me of my childhood and my momma. She is the undefeated queen of apple strudel. I’m doing my best to oust her from her office. One day I shall.
One day …

This is a simple yet tasty treat that will make everyone want to kiss the cook. Especially if you make one half with and one without raisins. (Never underestimate the culinary power of those little fellas. The world is divided into raisin-lovers and raisin-haters. There is no in between.)

Here’s what you need!

- 2 large apples: sour is best in this case, go for Elstar

- Cinnamon, lots of

- white or brown sugar (I prefer organic brown sugar, just makes you feel like a responsible citizen of Planet Earth. Also it tastes better.)

- 1 lemon (juice)

- 1 cup of raisins

- 1 sheet of filo dough (which you could make yourself but that would mean many more hours separating you and your loved ones from a delicious apple strudel. No bueno!)

- 1 egg

Next step, if there are any roomies, significant others or other innocent bystanders within reach, put them to work.

If not, peel and core the apples yourself. Now grate them. Of course you could also dice or slice them but where is the fun in that. Also, your end result will be a lot juicier when you grate the apples. And we like juicy. When you’re done with that you can preheat your oven to about 200 degrees Celsius.

Now place the grated apples in a large bowl and squeeze the juice of one lemon over them. Stir to prevent from going brown and yucky.

Add the raisins, sugar and cinnamon to taste. If your strudel is likely to fall into the hands of raisin-haters (shame on you, raisin-haters!) you may replace the raisins with buttery browned breadcrumbs or nuts.

Stir the mixture. Smell it. Mmmh … appleicious.

On a baking tray roll out the filo pastry and place the apple mixture in the middle of the filo sheet, leaving enough space on the sides to fold them in. Fold in the long and short sides, then brush with the whisked egg for a finish that’s beautifully golden brown (texture like sun … you know, like the song?).

And in the preheated oven it goes! Leave to bake for 25-30 minutes, dust with powdered sugar and enjoy!

Technical Traumata

I had a problem with my laptop last week. And to be exact it was not just a problem, it was a PROBLEM. And although my laptop and I have agreed to tolerate each other as a matter of pure form these circumstances were seriously putting our relationship at risk. See? I told you I had a problem. It all started when I was working on my seminar paper for a literature course. I had just finished my third page of writing when suddenly my laptop passed out and his screen went all blue. This was too much. Thank god I always save my documents in a backup file, don't you?

Yeah, me neither.

So I tried to reboot him, but, as usual, he refused to cooperate. All I got was the blue screen (also known as "Screen of Death" - yeah, now I'm scared). That’s when I started worrying. Honestly, I never really meant to hurt him when I yelled at him and called him all the bad names I could think off. And our relationship wasn’t that bad from the beginning. In fact, when I first saw him I just couldn’t keep my eyes and hands off. Yet, things got complicated when he started a fight with the printer and the router. But I’m digressing here.

So I asked my dad about the problem and he suggested ... rebooting the laptop. How smart, like I haven’ tried that one yet. Anyway, my dad then decided to try it himself because he is Mr. Know-It-All and because he had no trust in my technical skills. Turns out he was right.

As soon as he switched my baby on it worked just fine. Apparently, I am the only one he is trying to provoke. But remember, (and this is to you my dear friend): The cleverer gives in - not up.

Slurp Slurp ...

Being lucky to have extremely spontaneous friends, I found myself, squeezed together with three others in my Mini Cooper, on a crazy road trip to Italy. I am, however, not going to blog about the trip but rather about a very disturbing incident at the very first petrol station we stopped at. Roasting inside the car in the summer heat, the four of us quickly ran inside the “shop” to buy something to drink. And then it happened:

“What’s your favourite smoothie?”,

one of my friends asked me while rummaging through the shop’s fridge until she found what she was looking for: a pale orange mixture of banana, apple, mango and passion fruit in what looked like an oversized test tube. Very tempting, I have to admit.

My favourite smoothie? I never expected to be asked this question. I already have difficulty deciding what to wear every day, let alone what my favourite item of clothing is. The same with authors, songs, films etc. So, answering my friend’s question about which puréed fruit salad I liked best was too much for me. But when I told my friend that I don’t like smoothies, I wasn’t prepared for her reaction. “WHAT?”, she stammered and gave me a look as if I had said I hated chocolate. The conversation ended in an uncomfortable silence as we went to the cash point. The tension was only resolved when we stepped out of the shop and into the bright sunlight again. It almost “ruined” the whole trip, this stupid question.

Smoothies – mashed fruit filled into small glass bottles that often bear a striking resemblance to test tubes – are for me an unnecessary evolutionary link between fruit juice and baby food. The idea, offering fresh fruit in its liquid form, isn’t new: hundreds of years ago people were already squeezing fruit to juice because it just tasted better that way. What was left, the slimy pulp, was fed to animals. Today, we preserve the pulp and swallow it ourselves, paying about three Euros per ¼ l. Hello, progress!

I am not saying that Smoothies are bad – they certainly contain numerous vitamins and minerals, and drinking them sounds reasonable from a nutrition standpoint. But that’s about it. They are boring and I much prefer the taste of fresh fruit in its original form. Biting into an apple, to me at least, is so much nicer than trying to swallow a viscous, apple-tasting sludge. Also, come to think of it, we’ll all soon enough be forced to eat/drink our lunch and supper puréed at the old people’s home anyway. I’m going to wait until then. Yuck!

How To ... Survive the TOEFL

No matter which study abroad program you chose, you will have to take an exam to prove your knowledge of English is sufficient. There are a number of tests out there, for example the MELAB (Michigan English Language Assessment Battery) and the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language). Depending on which program you chose or which university you want to attend, a particular test will be required. The advantage of the MELAB (I haven’t actually taken this one) is that it is way cheaper than the TOEFL and it is offered about twice a year at the University of Salzburg (for those who study here). Since I have only taken the TOEFL, and my results were good enough for “The-one-that-shall-remain-nameless” and “The-one-that-will-hopefully-work-out”, I will concentrate on this particular one and try to give some advice on how to prepare best for this wicked test.

One obstacle (for a student at the University of Salzburg) is that the test is hardly ever offered in Salzburg. You’ll probably have to go to Munich or Vienna. So, in addition to the $ 225 one has to pay to simply take the test (crazy, right?), traveling to the test location adds to the amount of money one will end up spending for an exchange year. Luckily, there was one exam date in Salzburg at the time when I had planned on taking the test. I was especially lucky to check out exam dates when I did, because within one or two days, the date in Salzburg was completely booked.
Okay, so I had registered for the exam and paid the (unreasonable) fee. Next point on my list was preparation for the exam. To be honest, at first I took it quite lightly, assuming that I would have no problem “passing” the exam (there is no real passing or failing because each university or program simply requires a different score) considering that I am studying English anyway. Boy, was I wrong. After talking to the coordinator of the ISEP program (at that time I still had not decided what I wanted to do) and my brother, who also had to take the TOEFL when applying for a Master’s program in Sweden, I realized that it wouldn’t be as easy as I’d hoped.

The nice company behind the TOEFL had a solution to my problem. For only $ 45 one can purchase the TOEFL Practice Online (that way one is able practice online in test-like situations) and for about $ 29 one can purchase The Official Guide to the TOEFL Test (offers two full-length tests and lots of valuable tips for the exam). Great deal! Well, not really, and after paying $ 225 for the exam I started to feel stingy and I simply refused to spend even more money on the TOEFL. How did I prepare then? I started with checking out the library of the Department of English – remember the library? I found The Official Guide to the TOEFL Test on the reserve shelf. And after about ten minutes of flipping through the book, I already felt a lot better prepared for the big day.

I also have to thank my lucky stars for the preparation material my older brother sent me. Like brother, like sister, he had also refused to pay for the prep material but still managed to get, uhm, completely legal copies. And, good brother as he is, he passed them along to me. With these I could finally really start preparing for the TOEFL. And so I did, for about four hours combined, which is really not a lot. The part of the material that fascinated me the most, and which I mainly used for my preparation, were the “400 must-have words for the TOEFL”. Sometimes it can be fun to cram vocabulary. Don’t get me wrong, I also had a look at the structure of the test. That’s probably the most important aspect one should familiarize oneself with before taking the exam. There is a reading, listening, speaking, and writing section.

The TOEFL – Judgment Day

Reading was definitely the most challenging part. Which weirded me out a little. But the texts are often really difficult to understand (even for an English student) and a couple of fellow sufferers, who had also taken the exam, agreed. It might be the one part people take lightly, because really, how difficult can it be to read a text? More difficult than one might expect.

The listening part is designed to find out if the person taking the test is able to understand basic conversations that could happen at a university, for example in a classroom or in the dorm. The main problem here is to listen, scribble down a couple of key words, and not miss out on the important message, or at least the part the designers of the test consider important.

Speaking is similar to listening. The main topic is everyday university life. However, even this part isn’t without its obstacles. For example, after reading the instructions, one has about one minute to prepare the topic and then one has to speak for 30 to 45 seconds. This does not sound like a lot but it can be, and it is difficult to time your answers correctly. And short or long answers will lose you some essential points.

Finally, the writing part should not be too difficult for an English student (theoretically). One has to write two essays on two different topics. Here it is important to have a clear structure and a coherent and cohesive line of argument. Again, not that easy, especially without practice.

When Judgment Day arrives, prepare yourself for a long, exhausting day. The test usually starts in the morning and one is expected to be there half an hour before it starts. One reason is to see who showed up (and who didn’t), and to take a fabulous picture that is going to accompany your test score in the future (they put it on all the test score sheets for ID purposes). Nowadays, the TOEFL is usually internet based, that means you’ll spend about four hours sitting in front of a computer in a room full of students who all talk to invisible people – which is of course part of the test. There is one designated break for each student (if I remember correctly it was only 15 minutes) where you can use the bathroom and eat something. After about three and a half hours I was so annoyed by the computer, the test, and the constant mumbling surrounding me that I left as soon as I had finished (and quickly revised) my final essay. I almost ran out of the room and couldn’t wait to get some fresh air. For the rest of the day I was unable to do anything constructive since my batteries were simply empty.

The TOEFL results in my inbox were kind of my Christmas present last year – and it was fabulous.

Yours truly,

Lemon

The pursuit of perfection is not always a virtue

Cooking is one of my favorite hobbies. Once, my friends and I decided to have a little cooking competition. That meant that each month one of us invited the others to a spectacular dinner to find out who was the best cook among us (of course, it had to be a lavishly arranged three-course meal). I selected the most promising dishes I could think of and planned the dinner right down to the last detail. I left nothing to chance. When it was my turn, my friends were thrilled with my cooking skills.

I was not, of course.

The soup was too spicy, the fish too fatty, the risotto too cold. And my timing was too badly organized. Even though my friends told me how “delicious” the dishes tasted and how “creative” the menu was, I was convinced that I could have done it better. I was sure that if I had tried hard enough, I would have hosted a perfect dinner. Once more I became aware of my obsessive pursuit of perfection, no matter which area of living is concerned.

The pursuit of perfection is not always a virtue. It doesn't necessarily stimulate you to perform better, but it puts pressure on you, pressure that stops you from being satisfied with yourself. It isn't always the decisive factor to bring something to perfection. Not everything will be perfect. Not everything has to be perfect. Sometimes the more valuable lesson is that no matter which degree of perfection you accomplish, it is your goodwill that matters most.

But can I really believe that?

Holiday Fever

The summer holidays are getting closer and closer. So I have been thinking about my summer plans, especially where to travel to. Because I long to travel. To satisfy my desire for journeys and adventures. To get to know foreign countries and cultures. Travelling is one of my favorite hobbies, but unfortunately, also the most expensive. So I always save the money I get from my summer jobs and spend part of it on one nice journey.

I started travelling with my parents as a young child. Like many Austrian families we went to Italy several times, for example to Lake Garda and to Tuscany. And we visited the Greek islands of Rhodes, Crete, Zakynthos and Cos. Rhodes and Zakynthos have been my favorite places for several years because those islands are simply picturesque, with beautifully clear water and perfectly sunny weather. I have been there several times. But today I am more interested in trying to see as many different countries as possible.

When I took my first big trip abroad without my parents, it was an exciting experience for me. I was fourteen and on my way to Cambridge, England. I was going to spend three weeks with a British host family and study English at a language school. I met lots of nice people in Cambridge. And I found out a lot of new things, like how to find my way on my own in unfamiliar surroundings. The next journeys I took without my parents were in high school. In my first year of high school I once again travelled to Cambridge with my fellow students and several teachers. In my third year we went to Cannes, France. Both trips only lasted a week and their main purpose was for us to practice our English and French respectively. I enjoyed both trips very much. Even though I had to attend school almost each day, I still had time for sightseeing. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in Cannes during the Film Festival. I would have loved to catch a glimpse of a famous movie star. Around the age of sixteen, who isn’t crazy about good-looking Hollywood stars? It was also around the age of sixteen that I stopped travelling with my parents. It just wasn’t cool.


In recent years I’ve been travelling with my boyfriend. Five years ago we went to Egypt, to the Red Sea. It was a relaxed holiday because we simply swam and sunbathed most of the time. The two highlights were our quad bike tour into the wilderness and our one-day snorkeling trip. Both excursions were quite an adventure. With the quads we went up and down the sand dunes and explored remote oases. On the snorkeling trip, we saw gorgeous corals and all kinds of multicolored fish. So even though we had a more or less recreational holiday, we still experienced some adventure.


The following year we took a short city trip to Paris. It really is a wonderful city with lots of attractive sights to see. We saw the Eiffel Tower, the Moulin Rouge Theater, the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre Museum, to name but a few. I thoroughly enjoyed experiencing the typical French way of life. And it was a perfect opportunity to refresh my French. However, talking to real French people is always different from using a language in school. Not everyone is willing to talk as slowly as your French teacher. Not everyone is willing to repeat each sentence three or four times. Nevertheless, I was able to converse with several French people somehow. And this was highly advantageous for us so as to get along in an unfamiliar city. Because it is commonly known that the French dislike using any foreign language.


Then two years ago, we got the opportunity to go on a one-week cruise in the Mediterranean Sea. We started out in Italy, went to Greece, Turkey and back to Italy via Croatia. We visited Venice, Izmir, Istanbul and Dubrovnik. And though we only had a few hours to sightsee in each city, we were able to get a wonderful first impression of each destination. I had never seen so many different places, people and cultures at a time. This diversity is what makes a cruise such an attractive way to travel.

For this year’s summer holidays I haven’t yet planned my journey. Maybe I’ll do a short city trip again. I would be interested in more exotic cities like Moscow, Petersburg, Budapest or Stockholm. But I might stay home and put some money aside for a future journey. Because some time soon, I would like to go on a longer trip through the United States. So in case I don’t go abroad this summer, I’ll travel around Austria. There are still parts of my home country I would like to see. The main thing is that I am able to satisfy my longing to travel.

Blame it on the Weatherman…

It’s harder than you’d think to get people to stop complaining about the weather in Austria and it doesn’t matter whether they’re from a mountain region, Vienna or Styria. Of course this has a number of reasons and this post will try to shed some light on the matter.

Reason #1: The weather never fits the present situation or mood of the complaining party.

Reason #2: 85 % think a look at the sky will enable them to forecast the weather for at least a week. Deep inside they’re all weathermen!

Reason #3: The weather will always be the perfect excuse to get out of plans or commitments. After all, if it’s raining cats and dogs, no one in their right mind would leave the house.

Reason #4: It makes people feel very in touch with science when they complain about there now being two seasons anymore instead of the usual four. It’s all about ‘climate change’ anyways.

Reason #5: It is an unwritten universal law that all people shall first talk about the weather when running into each other: A: “Hell there, how’s it going?” B: “I’m good but the heat is driving me crazy.” A: “I know exactly what you mean. Just two days ago it was 20 degrees colder!”

Reason #6: The weather is always worst in the place you find yourself to be in. It doesn’t matter if there is hailstorm only 10 kilometers away: when it’s drizzling where you are the weather can go ‘where the sun don’t shine’. Pun very much intended.

Yours truly.
Michelle

I’m not an alcoholic, I swear

Using the public transport system is always a hassle. However, if you are lazy like me and have no intention of ever riding a bike then you don’t really have a choice. On some days I swear I will finally crack the damn lock on my bike . . . I only used it once in my first semester so I forgot the code.
Yesterday was such a day. How many crazy people can you actually meet on a bus? I sat down next to an old lady . . . they usually leave you in peace. Not this time, though.
Old lady: “Do you wanna talk?”
Keron thinks: “ Leave me alone crazy lady” but politely answers: “Thanks, I’m good”.
That was rather uncomfortable but I was in no mood for talking to weirdos at 7:30 a.m. Or are you ever?

In the afternoon I had to use the bus again and the minute I sat down all I could do was laugh madly. Someone had spilt * sniff* vodka and now I wasn’t only smelling like an alcoholic, but it sorta looked like I wet my pants. I was already late for class and had no time to go back home and change. On top of that I had a presentation. Fortunately, I managed to hide my backside . . . walking to the front without anyone noticing was a bit difficult, though. The smell, however, was all around me. The professor probably thought I was so nervous I had to have a few drinks first. She didn’t ask; maybe I should have told her.
What do we learn from this? Always check your seat before you sit down in public transportation.

On my road into the wild

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t plan on spending months On the Road on my way Into the Wild where I’ll find my end way too soon. But after jumping through enough hoops to qualify for the next Olympics, now seems like the right time to just lean back and start daydreaming about traveling. And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing when I’m feeling blue…

In fact, daydreaming has been the major reason for procrastination recently (salute to Michelle). To jumpstart my imagination I got a brand new Lonely Planet travel guide. I have to admit that I have used these travel guides for a couple of years now so bear with me if you’re not a fan. The first chapter I usually have a look at is “Getting Started”. There I found probably the most important advice for my trip, especially concerning packing, namely

after you halve your clothes, double your estimated budget, and it’ll work out fine.

Not sure yet how the doubling of my budget will work without committing a crime, but I’ll definitely (try to) stick to the second part of that advice. If you have ever been in the same situation you might remember the dilemma of suddenly having to chose between your favorite and the most practical outfit. Since the whole packing issue is still quite frustrating, I did the psychologically healthiest thing of repressing the issue and putting it off.

I continued to just browse through my travel guide some more when I came across Jack Kerouac again. So I looked for my copy of On the Road and found the passage that I consider essential – for Sal in the story and my story, too.

What’s your road, man? – holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It’s an anywhere road for anybody anyhow.

Yours truly,

Lemon

A Tasty Insight

YES WE CAN ... cook something other than spaghetti with ketchup!

Yes, this is a post about cooking. But before you roll your eyes and scroll down and out of here as fast as you can, give me a chance to explain. I would like to dedicate this post to all the busy university students (and the odd helpless bachelor) in the world. I know you are out there.

Please read on, especially if one or more of the following apply:

1) Chopping onions makes you very, very sad.
2) You have burnt pasta before. Or rice. Or soup. Or ...
3) Your microwave is your best friend.
4) Béchamel … that’s that city in Egypt, right?

Yes, I knew you were out there. You are probably terrified and hungry and the faint smell of burnt milk surrounds you. It’s ok. I once was one of you. I had convinced myself, after various failed attempts at mastering the art of cooking, that I just wasn’t cut out to be the cook of my own delicious and nutricious food. Cooking was for those Jamie Olivers, Auguste Gusteaus and supermoms out there who knew what they were doing.

Soon after I had moved out of home to start my life as an independent and able grown-up who had everything under control, however, I began to realize that maybe I shouldn’t have faked a medical emergency and fled the kitchen every time my pan-wielding, fresh-herbs-at-the-speed-of-light-chopping supermom wanted to show me a few tricks. It would have been a lot less humiliating to just take the time to listen to her then than calling her up from the smoke-filled kitchen of my apartment and coughing something along the lines of “MOTHER … you know how you used to make those pancakes for us?” into the phone. And definitely a lot less humiliating than having her immediately started laughing hysterically because (seeing as though she had been my mother for twenty something years) she knew exactly that I was dumping a stack of burnt and/or (yes, I mean and/or) runny pancakes in the trash can as we spoke.

(Supermom)

But here comes the good part. Once I had gotten over my initial fear and, let’s be honest here, laziness that had prevented me from unfolding my full culinary potential I not only discovered that my mother was, in fact, a genius and true supermom (I’d had my suspicions all along) for feeding three unappreciative kids plus one unappreciative husband. (It wasn’t all that bad, I’m just trying to make a point here.) I also discovered another thing: the fact that, in the words of cartoon chef Auguste Gusteau, “anyone can cook”.

Now, I’m not saying I deserve five stars or toques for my experiments in the kitchen, but I do think that young people, especially students, don’t cook enough for themselves. No time, tight budget, don’t know how to … those are the excuses I used to use. But in fact, when we just stop and think about it, it doesn’t take that long to whip up some Bolognese sauce. And if you have a tight budget, I’ve got one word for you: POTATOES! If you think you don’t know how to – just have some courage, try to find the will to experiment, get some friends together and I promise you will soon learn that you, too, can cook. No excuses.

To help you get out of those pizza places and fast food joints, I’ve hand-picked one of my favorite tasty and cheap recipes to motivate you. And hey, it even comes with pretty pictures!

Foolproof deliciousness also known as: LASAGNA

Besides being an instant hit with all the kids I’ve ever looked after, Lasagna is, contrary to wide-spread opinion, very easy to make. And this is the part where we learn that Béchamel is not a city in Egypt but rather the sauce that everybody, and I mean everybody, should be able to “accidentally” whip up while sleepwalking in their kitchen.

Step one: get all the ingredients together.

You will need:
- about 500 grams of ground beef
- lasagna sheets … use the precooked ones
- an onion
- two cloves of garlic
- some tomato paste
- about half a liter of tomato polpa (that’s Italian for pulp, you know)
- salt and pepper to taste
- three table spoons of butter
- four table spoons of flour
- ¾ of a liter of milk
- some curry powder (that’s my special little touch)
- some Grana Padano (that’s cheese, just get cheese) to sprinkle on top
- … and possibly a bay leaf or two and some nutmeg for extra-fanciness
- oh, and you will need olive oil, you almost always need olive oil


Step two: make Béchamel, the mother of all sauces. The most important thing when making the mother of all sauces is that you do not, under any circumstances, heat the stick of butter up in the microwave. You must melt it on low heat on your stove. Don’t ask me how I know this. I, err, just do. When the butter has turned into a pretty yellow liquid, whisk in the flour and then quickly add all the milk. Salt and pepper to taste, throw in the bay leaf and if you’re feeling particularly fancy, some nutmeg and just let it sit there on low heat until it starts to thicken.

By the way, I can’t help you with the question of how much salt or pepper you should put in. Just add some, taste, add some more, taste … you get the picture. If you have one of these you can gradually learn how many spoonfuls your dishes need. I love my little salt pot.

Step three: wipe the beads of sweat from your forehead – you have created Béchamel and it's good. Congratulations!

Step four: chop up your onion. (And this is the part where we learn that if you freeze your onion for a couple of minutes before starting to cut it … it won’t make you all emotional.) Chop up your garlic. Now heat up some olive oil in a pan. When you think it’s hot enough, throw in a tiny piece of onion. If it sizzles, the oil is indeed hot enough and the rest of the onion and garlic can go in. Stir it all around until the contents of the pan are nice and yellow. Now you can add the meat. Brown the meat and then add your polpa along with your desired amount of salt and pepper. I like lots. Molto bene! Now you could add about 100 milliliters of red wine. Instead, as a special little trick, I like to add a bit of curry powder. I just like the taste better. Done.



Step five: Preheat the oven to about 200 degrees Celsius and find a rectangular casserole dish. Now layer your lasagna as follows: Béchamel, noodles, Bolognese sauce, noodles, Béchamel, noodles … and so on. You should finish with a layer of Béchamel on top.

And in the oven it goes! After about 30 minutes sprinkle the cheese over the top of it and put it back in for another 10 minutes.

Et voilà! Food for the next three days.

You see, cooking yourself is not only easier than you thought, it’s also cheaper and it really isn’t all that time-consuming.

I will round off this post with a dash of simple things that I couldn’t imagine my student kitchen without:

1) Herbs. I grow my own basil, rosemary, thyme, chives and parsley. Cheap and fresh.


2) Potatoes. Oh, the things you can do with that precious bulb. Think mashed potatoes, hash browns, fries, tortilla de patatas, potato salad, baked potato, … and they are cheap as chips. Oh, you could also turn them into homemade chips (in the American sense of the word … actually also in the British sense … SEE? Potatoes are great!)


3) Puff pastry. Perfect because you can fill it with anything and it always tastes lovely. Make some good old Austrian apple strudel, some spicy meat cakes, and some vegetable strudel. Fantastic filo fun! (And feap, too! I mean cheap.)


I’m out of here for now, but I hope this little post has helped make your perhaps dull disciple diet a little bit more exciting.

And remember: anyone can cook!

A Guide to University: Step 4: University Characters

University is so fascinating because you meet so many different people there. First, there is the faculty. You come across professors, lecturers and assistants, young and old, male and female, pleasant and unpleasant. And each of them has a distinctive teaching style. There are professors who leave most of the talking in class to you because they either encourage lively discussions or set two to three students’ presentations per class. The first method allows you to participate more actively. This makes the lesson more interesting for you. But it gets difficult for the professor, if no one in class wants to contribute to the discussion. This leads to an awkward situation where you are sitting in class quietly waiting for the others to start talking. And if the professor doesn’t know how to get a discussion up and running, most of the lesson will pass in silence. Or it will again be the professor who does all the talking to break the silence. With the other method, having one presentation after another, you will in all likelihood get bored because you can only listen. You have to sit there passively for 90 minutes waiting for the time to pass. However, it is a successful way to avoid silence in class.

Another group of university professors works with texts which you have to read at home and then elaborate on in detail in class. You will probably like this method because you go through each text accurately. You discuss important aspects of each text together. And you can take supportive notes. This makes studying for the exam later much easier. Other professors make use of whole course books which include explanations or rules and various exercises. Unfortunately, sometimes professors have to use course books they themselves totally dislike, but still have to go through them. If they start making fun of the books and the people who wrote them, you might have some entertaining lessons.

On the one hand, some professors present their subject matters in a very creative way – like watching a TV series or a documentary in order to practice your listening skills. Other professors constantly use the same course notes and teaching methods. Sometimes their classes are less interesting because they simply read out their notes without integrating you.

It is an interesting phenomenon that in almost every university department you will find one professor who most of the students are afraid of. You are afraid simply because he or she is such an alarmingly formidable person. Or because he or she is infamous for holding especially difficult courses. But will you also discover the opposite – professors who are liked by most students? Surprisingly, you won’t find that very often. Owing to the fact that you might prefer a particular teaching style, you will have a different opinion about some professors than your fellow students.

It is not only fascinating to meet all those different types of professors, but also all different types of students. There is one group of students you will immediately identify with; namely those with characters that are most similar to yours. You will meet each other in the same courses and you will be similar types of students. This means that you will finish regular assignments equally early or equally late. And you will dislike similar classes and assignments. Then there is the kind of student who is the exact opposite of you. Let’s say you tend to start quite late with your assignments. Then this student will have already completed every written assignment when you are still looking for a suitable topic. In the opposite case, if you are always well prepared and study for hours and hours, you will meet students who complete their assignments at the very last minute and still make a good grade. Either way, this type of student will drive you crazy because he or she shows you how nerdy or lazy you could be in your studies.

You will see that comparing the various characters you meet at university, especially comparing them to you, is an interesting activity. You will come across new students even in your last term. Just as you think you already know pretty much all the students who started at the same time you did, you will meet still another new face. And that’s one of the reasons that make university and its characters so fascinating.

Procrastination 101

So I actually never really meant to talk about books, movies and accidents all that much, but life has this funny way of throwing you curveballs when you least expect it. Things become even more interesting though, when you throw yourself a curveball. I know this sounds very obscure, but I want to talk about a very simple concept. A concept EVERY student is familiar with: procrastination!

Many of you will probably have started grinning as soon as you read that one word and I don’t blame you because I’m pretty sure we can all say “Been there, done that!”. If the pearls of wisdom you can find on Wikipedia are to be believed (please note the irony), “[t]he psychological causes of procrastination vary greatly, but generally surround issues of anxiety, low sense of self-worth, and a self-defeating mentality.” Well, it sure does sound like we are in some serious trouble, us procrastinators.

Either way, I don’t know how it is for other procrastinators since I can only speak for myself but I have the feeling that low self-worth isn’t the issue here. I don’t really know what triggers procrastination, nor do I really care, to be honest. It’s just something everyone of us deals with on a regular basis. I find myself doing the most random things/stuff instead of completing more or less pressing assignments. What always fascinates me, though, is the fact that I do work quite well under pressure (read: when I have procrastinated long enough beforehand). It might be because you need to focus more intensely since you have a not-so-far-away deadline looming over you. Any other day you just think ‘Well, I might still do this and then that.” since you’ve got plenty of time at your hands anyway, but once you only have a couple more days left (a week if you’re lucky!) you better get crackin’!

That’s not all however and I found some more interesting facts on Wikipedia. Did you know that there are two types of procrastinators? No? Neither did I, so let me shed some light here. First, there is the so-called “relaxed type”. He, or she as the case may be, doesn’t cope well with responsibilities, sees them negatively. Hence, the person in question directs their energies elsewhere. It’s mostly the social life, which benefits since you obviously have to do something to keep yourself occupied when you’re not doing your homework. Hanging out with your friends seems to be the forgone conclusion.

Still, there is also the second type: the “tense-afraid type”. It seems to me that this one is pretty self-explanatory. This type is overwhelmed by pressure and other negative feelings that make him/her tense. Afternoons are taken off to relax but unconsciously he/she cannot relax, which makes the feeling of pressure only worse. It is a vicious circle of sorts. Their life ends up being marked by putting-off plans, delay and failure and they withdraw from social life because they feel inadequate and awkward when faced with driven, successful and confident people (who may or may not be procrastinating themselves)!

This sounds kind of depressing so I’ll continue by presenting my Top 5 Means of Procrastination:

1. This one is a complete no-brainer: Facebook. How many of us are addicted to checking their account more times a day than you can count? I am not excluding myself from that group and while Facebook all on its own was dangerous enough for the regular student, with games like Farmville, Fishville, Café World, Zoo World, etc… procrastination via Facebook seems to have entered its Golden Age.

2. When you are sitting at your desk, slaving over assignments and all you can think about is that dust bunny right there at the corner of your eye? It’s time to clean your room! To put this Ikea-style: “Putzt du noch oder lernst du schon?“ Once you’ve done your spring cleaning (no matter what time of the year, it’s the thought that counts!) and your floor is so spotless that McDreamy could perform surgery on it, you will be so exhausted and proud of yourself that you will have absolutely no qualms about…

3. Catching up on your favourite TV series. This is essential not only for your private pleasure but also to your social life. How else are you going to argue with your friends about what secret the newest Desperate Housewife is keeping from her nosy neighbors? Even if you watch shows that no-one’s ever heard of or just isn’t watching, this is your little reward and if you catch up regularly, you will never have to sit through a day’s worth of episodes… it sounds like fun but believe me, it’s not!

4. If your TV shows just aren't doing it anymore, go for coffee with your friends. It’s even better if you live in a dorm (like I do) since you can just stop by in someone else’s room for a chat. This turns into a win/win situation when said friend has a coffee machine in their room (and I am just that lucky). A nice talk over coffee will keep your bad conscience at bay and if you can gossip about other people in your dorm, that’s just a bonus.

5. If you just cannot be bothered to finish (or even start, as the case may be) your assignment and there is a party looming on the horizon, why not kill two birds with one stone and go shopping. After all your closet is always full with I-have-nothing-to-wear, so a trip to the city centre seems to be in order. As this is the more expensive version of procrastination, just make sure your bank account can actually handle you going on a shopping spree!

As you can probably tell, I know what I’m writing about and I do indeed have ample experience in the field of procrastination. Now it’s your turn: feel free to let me know your reasons for procrastinating. Don’t be shy and tell me what you do to pass the time :).

Yours truly,
Michelle

Wanderlust

When I first stumbled over Patrizia Schultz’s 2003 bestseller 1000 Places to Visit Before You Die I asked myself whether there are people out there, who have actually tried to reach the author’s attempted goal of visiting these 1000 places – I doubt it. And although I travel a lot and wish to travel even more when I’m done with my studies, I doubt that I will see even half of those places. However, this post is not about prototypical travel experiences and destinations, but more about the inner wish to leave behind an almost too familiar world and discover something completely new.

I believe the human urge to leave the places where we grew up and visit the most far away spots we can think of is quite natural and probably stems from our time as nomads (just guessing). Still, I think one has to distinguish clearly between people who like to travel and those who want to leave for a longer amount of time. I still remember the exact day when I first realized that I had to get out of my town of 1600 people. It was almost midnight on my 18th birthday. All my friends and guests had already left and I was kind of lonely. I was sitting in front of my computer, checking my empty email account for the fifth time in a row (Facebook hasn’t been popular back then). It was then that I realized I had to start something new, and the only thing I could think of was to somehow get out of town and my country altogether. A year later I was sitting on a plane which took me to the US where I then worked as an au-pair for a year.

What I was trying to get across with this little story of mine is not how sad and lonely I was when I made the decision to move away (although I probably was as my former boyfriend had just dumped me), but that the urge to leave is usually a sudden desire, which just like the need for a delicious cup of coffee, doesn’t leave your head until you’ve fulfilled it. The Irish writer George Bernard Shaw once wrote: “I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad”. To me, these nine words exactly describe why people find far away places more attractive than their familiar surroundings. It’s always the new, the different and the yet unknown that fascinates people. As soon as you feel at home the fascination decreases and you feel that you’re bound for somewhere else again.

Whenever I talk with people in my hometown about my wish to leave Austria again, I hear comments like: “You can only do that when you’re young”. But is it really a matter of age? I doubt it. In my opinion it’s just a matter of strong will but indeed, the opportunities to go abroad are endless especially for students. Websites like STATravel, or Abroad View offer Work and Study programs as well as Internships. For English students, for example, they have teaching programs in Chile, China or Guatemala. So if you also feel the urge to broaden your horizon by a year abroad check out these sites.

However, not every one seeks his fortune far away. A friend of mine, for instance, gets homesick as soon as she’s away from home for three days (no kidding). Sometimes the urge to come home is just as great as the urge to leave home. As Austrians love to say when they come back from a holiday: “Home is still the most beautiful place of all.”

The Young and the Restless

While our reasons may differ, we have all felt the urge to leave Salzburg at one point or another. For me it’s probably a little bit different than for many other students, though.
We came to Salzburg from all over Austria (some even from beyond the Austrian borders) and many cannot wait to get back home or feel homesick at times. However, I think of Salzburg as my home now.
No, it’s not because I grew up here, if that is what you are thinking. I’m actually from a town called Ried in Upper Austria. However, my mother did live in Salzburg for quite some time and my parents still have many friends here. I already was very famliliar with the city long before I started studying here.
Another reason why I feel at home in Salzburg is that my parents moved into a new house right after I finished high school. Whenever I go back "home" I feel more like a guest (even though I have my own room and all) because I have no childhood memories associated with the house.
Also, Ried seems to have become very small and it seems that I have "outgrown" it.
I don’t know what to do anymore when I’m at home. My school friends are scattered across Austria and many of them already work regular jobs, living their lives somewhere else. We usually meet up someplace that is convenient for everyone. So my social life has also shifted to Salzburg.
I know that your home is always supposed to be your home. You know, the old saying about having "roots and wings" and all that. I usually find it pretty easy to make my home wherever I go, taking my roots with me. Maybe this is because I have always moved around a lot. I attended four different high schools (one of them was a boarding school) and I even spent one year abroad in Kilkenny, Ireland. However, you won’t hear me complaining because I like it that way. I have always been restless and get bored rather quickly.
Maybe it’s also because my family is not originally from Austria. My family is actually from Italy and my grandparents – after a lot of moving around – finally settled in Austria, in Ried of all places. You see, restlessness is definitely a family trait.

However, even Salzburg has gotten smaller lately. It’s seems like the closer I get to the end of my studies the more impatient I’m growing to leave Salzburg. But where to?
Going back to Ried is not an option for me. Also the thought of getting a job after finishing university and staying in Salzburg sends chills down my spine and I get all claustrophobic (so does the thought of any "permanent" situation).
Anyways, I definitely want to go someplace new. I like "new"; meeting new people, not knowing your way around and all that. I like the feeling of not knowing where you might end up. A lot of people usually don’t understand that, because they like living in a solid circle of friends and family. It’s not like I get bored with people, but more with certain situations and daily routines.

After thinking a lot about what I want from the future and where I want my future to be I’ve decided to take it as it comes. After finishing university I will just see where life leads me. Hopefully far away. What do you think? Do you feel the urge to leave Salzburg or even Austria? If yes, why?