Insights of a very interesting life in Austria

Since I last wrote to you, I have been doing a little travelling, going to school and enjoying some new sports! Along with having a good time with my host family and friends!

School and German: I’m well into my 2^nd German novel called ‘Die Rebellin’, but it is 600 pages (recommended by my host brother – he is reading Harry Potter in English) and I have a long way to go. I am speaking mostly German now at school, and trying hard to at home as well, although this is still difficult when we have more serious discussions. But they speak mostly German to me which is great. I am also understanding so much more in school to, and whole conversations as well. The dialect is also growing on me, although I find it a bit ugly to listen to (but apparently it’s part of the people’s identity, so I can’t say this to loudly!). School is still good, everyone is really nice, and I even got a good school report (but I’m not actually getting graded). A few weeks I sat my first ‘Schulearbeit’ – kind of like exams every class has to do to make it through to the next year. I did mine with the 2^nd class (my friends are 12), and I did really well. I managed to write a whole page! I got a ‘2’ for this, which is equivalent to an ‘A’ – however this was a special-exchange-student-whose-only-been-learning-german-for-6-months ‘2’. But still this was really nice, and my teacher was pleased.

Last weekend I was away at an ‘adventure days’ camp which was awesome! This was in a town called Kötschach, only 14km from the Italian border,in the middle of the Alps. There was 8 exchange students there, and we all shared a huge apartment – so much fun! We laughed and talked the entire weekend away! We did activities such as rafting -

Travel: I went to Graz for a weekend – the 2^nd largest city in Austria (with only 250000 people! – Melbourne is Australia’s second largest city and has over 3.6 million!). I went with some other exchange students (from Venezuela and Ukraine), and my area rep, Katrin, drove us. On Saturday we visited the ‘Riegersburg’ – a gorgeous castle on top of an extinct volcano, which was very tall and steep! We walked up to the castle, through stone archways, vineyards and beautiful old stonework! This was my first real castle. I loved it and found it very interesting, although the instruments of torture and witch-burning stuff was pretty gruesome. This one was built in 1122. We also visited a famous Austrian chocolate factory, which included a ‘sushi-train style’ sample-as-much-as-you-want session. This was delicious (and interesting – they are famous for ‘different’ ingredients such as chilli and basil), although not everyone felt great afterwards! We ate dinner in another castle at a knights-dinner. Thankfully we were allowed to use cutlery, and enjoyed heaps of talking and laughing with the exchange students from the Graz area and medieval entertainment – including fire-breathing. I was also appointed a ‘bergfräulein’ – a maiden of the castle, which was fun. The next day we saw some of the city of Graz which is really nice. Interestingly, 50% of the residents are students, making it a very young city. we had lots of fun trying to manage our way through some fun rapids (although we did get stuck a few times on some big rocks!), getting pushed out of the boats by our instructors. Also the canyoning was really cool! I had never done anything like this before, and thought we would be walking up a knee deep, nice, placid river through a gorge! Well this was pretty far from the truth! We had an awesome time sliding down waterfalls, with the strong river current pushing us over the edge into pools that were often deeper than us! We slid down tree trunks, scrambled over rocks, and swam through some pools in a gorgeous little valley! Thankfully we were wearing THICK wetsuits with another wetsuit jacket over the top (covering head too!) and neoprene shoes to keep us warm - the water was pretty cold! I felt a bit like a seal - coverred in blubber! We also did some canoeing in big blow-up boats which was really hard work, but fun, and ended with a cook-your-own-sausage-on-the-fire which was really nice. Unfortunately due to bad weather we didn't get to go rock-climbing or abseiling, but we did go on a giant swing thing. It is the biggest in Europe, and thankfully 3 people go on it at the same time (I might have been too scared otherwise). We went from 0 - 100km/h in 2 seconds. Lots of fun and surprisingly not as scary as I'd thought.

Food: I am thrilled to say that the delicious Austrian foods keep coming! With the warmer weather, my host family make their own ice-cream with flavours such as ‘straciatella’ – Italian, with chocolate pieces in it.The change from winter to spring is a lot more noticeable here in the diet than I ever found in Australia. We are eating heaps more salads, and fresh fruit. This includes buying trays of strawberries that would be equivalent to us buying probably 15 punnets. Some of this is used in jams, or frozen to eat in Winter. We are also having some BBQs. I also tried the Austrian-style of French toast, which was delicious, but typically Austrian – they have everything (even boiled veggies or plain pasta) covered in butter and/or sugar. We also eat Würstl, which can be really yummy (especially the hot ones!), but I am missing the BBQ, almost charcoaled style sausages from home. I should point out, even in the BBQs we have here, the meat is cooked in a metal tray, over the coals. Not really on a BBQ plate. When a friend of mine (from NZ) came down for a weekend from Vienna, we made Lamingtons! I’d never made these before in Australia but they were so good! I will make big batches of them to give to my school classes before I leave. Last week my host dad was away, and since he normally cooks, I helped Angelika by cooking twice. One day I made vegetarian Mexican burritos – which actually worked really well! On another night I cooked with a friend from Venezuela at Katrin’s house, and I took the leftover pastry from her ‘impanas’? (I think they were called something like this) and cooked them for my host family the next day. They were like fried bread, with cheese and bacon and onion inside. Yummy but dangerous to make. I am also pleased to say that I have begun collecting collecting recipes of the things I want to be able to cook at home, and am even having some 'lessons' from my host dad (this consists of me watching, asking lots of questions that are usually answered by 'just go by the feeling', and taking notes). Maybe in 3 months I'll be able to make something!

P.S. Forgot to mention sports, I am still doing some mountain biking - did a crazy one the other day. Only 25km long, but we rode up a mountain (it took us 2.5hours to get up, 0.5 hour to get down) that was 650m in altitude!!! It was exhausting and thrilling and coming down was pretty rough in some places. We do archery in the garden, and go walking or running occasionally. Along with some swimming (so far in the pool, hopefully soon in the lakes).