Into the woods

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So.  We have been here in Austria three and a half days and it feels like about two weeks, after all the details we’ve had to attend to:  basically in order, we’ve bought groceries, moved in, unpacked, rearranged the small amount of furniture at our flat, and made numerous trips into Graz to get registered at the city registration bureau, work with the Uni Graz IT wizard to get connected to the internet, open an Austrian bank account, and pick up a used printer for our apartment.  Everyone has been absolutely kind and helpful; most people speak English better than we speak German, although we are trying very hard “sprechen auf Deutsch.”

All of you have been clamoring for photos so here they are with ein bisschen (a little bit) of commentary, for clarity’s sake.

Graz is in the south of Austria, not terribly close to the mountains, although there are rolling hills around.  We live on one of those hills at the eastern end of the city, near a small teich or pond, hence the name Hilmteich.  I am still trying to figure out what ‘hilm’ means, and will have to ask someone local because it’s not in any of the 10 dictionary or phrase books we brought along.

On one side of the pond is an imposing edifice…maybe a former small schloss (castle) but nothing appears to be happening there at the moment.

On the other side is the wooded hillside.  The woods are a mixture of deciduous (beech, oaks, maples) and conifers (cedar, firs, spruce).  Along the way up to our apartment we pass a Dancing School and a Wood School.  We are not sure what the wood school is…I thought it might be an educational outreach, as in nature center, but on the other hand, after hearing chain saws nearly every morning (good grief we can’t get away from them, even in Austria!) we wonder if there is some wood sculpting school going on!

the dance school we pass on the way up our hill

wood school at the bottom on the hill, or maybe it’s really at the top!

We’re about a 7 minute walk from the city street, up through the woods.  The woods are absolutely alive with birds chirping.  So far we’ve only had time to identify one bird…it is the Great Tit.  I am not making this up.  It looks like a chickadee but bigger and has an amazing array of songs and calls.

We can’t wait to have a little more time to explore the woods before spring/summer arrive and presumably lots of people.

Here’s why!

part of the Kletterkurs (climbing/ropes course) located on our hill

Not only is this a major climbing/ropes course but also a major fitness center.  There is a 21 km running course (cross country) as well as signs appearing every few meters, urging people on to greater health and fitness.  We see joggers, runners and just people having a walk in beautiful surroundings every day.  Inspirational, but you won’t see me up there among the trees.

Bill on the road up our hill

 

Right now, the snow is melting a little bit, although it has been cold here—in the 20’s and 30’s F. but sunny. (Yes, I know it has been even colder in Montana!)  Locals say this is ‘unusually cold’ for the end of February.  Doesn’t that sound familiar?

At the end of the walk is our apartment, one of about six in this remodeled villa.

the 100-year-old villa where our apartment is

There are a few other residents here…one family with a baby, and another with a dog, but we haven’t really had an opportunity to meet them yet.  The apartment is spacious.  The description we read in the original literature about the Technical University Guesthouse mentioned two rooms, plus a kitchen and bathroom.  We had no idea it would look like this:  parquet floors, 18 foot ceilings and massive wooden shutters to close over the otherwise unadorned windows!  The furniture is, by contrast, extremely modern.  There is plenty of storage space.  Here are some smaller photos of our Häuschen.

the door must be 100 years old. It is very heavy to open!

the dining room – balcony and terrace to the right

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the foyer
the kitchen – galley style but efficient

the bedroom is part of the subdivided big room. It’s partially walled off from a sitting area by the clothes cabinets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

my ‘office’ is the pass through between the bedroom and the dining room

the view from the terrace (large enough for a good size table and chairs)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the bathroom

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The latter might be the one point of frustration for us.  It’s the most complicated machine I have ever seen, and our German is definitely not good enough to decipher the manual.  I have never seen a machine that supposedly washes and dries clothes.  We are looking for some rope and clothespins tomorrow when we venture west of town to a bigger shopping center.

this is a washer and a dryer!

One of the pleasures of living in the woods is the fellow inhabitants.  I was charmed to find these guys (girls?) spending their winter between the storm and inside windows.

we have some other guests in the guest house!

This ladybug is small and efficient.  And it’s  like much of what we see in Austria.  I am struck by the small size of refrigerators, kitchens, washing machines, showers, water tanks, spoons, cars and trash receptacles.  Everything that isn’t waste is recycled.  People here have developed an ethic that is somehow missing in the U.S., where bigger is surely better.   We could learn a lot from these folks.

Lastly, for tonight at least, this is for the Dinosaurs in my (old) classroom at UCCC.

The crystal heart is hanging right where the sun can catch it!

Tomorrow, it’s off for some household essentials (those clothespins I mentioned, laundry soap, and a small rug to catch the mud in the foyer) and maybe on Sunday, the historic center of the city.  Thanks for reading and tschüss!

Update February 24 2011

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Note:  We are still awaiting internet connections to be set up for our flat.  It is between-semesters break here and many (most) people are on vacation.  Today we walked down to the streetcar stop rode to the stop nearest the University of Graz, and met up with the IT person, Georg, at the University of Graz.  He was able to at least configure our computers so we could use them on either campus (University of Graz and the Technical University).  So very helpful he was!  But the IT person at TU is still away, so any connections at the flat will need to wait until s/he is back.   Will do some more writing about our first days, when we have a little more time to compose and are connected.  Pictures also, once I can figure out Lightroom!

Floating through the sky

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Feb. 21-22:

Our last hours in Missoula were ones of quiet preparation.  We got an early start, after shoveling walks for the last time this year.  Six inches of the lightest-ever fluffy stuff had fallen over night.  As I peered out the window at 4 am at the crystalline and sparkling ground, it was hard to imagine that being replaced by the proverbial carpet of green by the next time we would see Missoula.  It was has been a long winter, hasn’t it?   Our friend Chris came along to drive our car back from the airport…he must have been up even earlier, because he was just finishing his own snow blowing operation as we arrived!  Chris— 5 AM!

The trip over the big pond was unbelievably smooth as far as connections go:  No delays whatsoever, interesting eavesdropping on the cockpit-air traffic controllers’ conversation as we approached Washington DC.  English is most definitely the international language of the air.  We enjoyed watching Secretariat, especially this horse lover with Virginia-Kentucky roots!   It was not quite as smooth, ride wise, with fairly severe turbulence from about 200 miles off the coast of Ireland over the entire island.  The captain even directed the flight crew to sit down.  I hoped we wouldn’t be making a first visit to the Emerald Isle unexpectedly (and why did I watch that PBS special on The Worst Airline Disasters three days before?)  Our longest layover was in Frankfurt (5 hours) but the hospitality of the Lufthansa Lounge let us recharge (great coffee, great breads, NUTELLA, a hot dog bar!), stretch out a bit (yes, pretty impossible to sleep sitting up on the airplane, even though we turned off the video and audio) and work harder on our German language skills.

I found myself marveling, as we flew from Missoula to Denver, Denver to Washington Dulles and Dulles to Frankfurt, Germany at the ability at the achievement of technology.  If we can pack 300 or so humans plus all their stuff into a fragile yet resilient container of plastic and metal and transport it all at 38,000 ft over mountains, plains and ocean on the slenderest of wings , why is it we cannot solve the problems confronting our world today?  We know so much, and yet we ‘know’ in the deepest sense of the word, so little.

Off we go!

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It’s been almost a month since I last posted and that month has been filled with the many details of preparing to leave for such a long time.   Saying ‘auf Wiedersehen’  to my fifteen preschoolers was hard.  We talked about experiences they had had traveling, and how I was going on a long trip, but not coming back real soon.  One little guy said, ‘why would you ever want to leave us?’  Oh my.  But I am leaving them in great hands with the teacher we hired to take over.  They will have a loving and dedicated leader and they will have each other.

We’re just about ready and as soon as I finish this, the computer will be stored in its carry-on and we will just need to try and sleep before getting up at 4 am.  I’ve been checking the Graz weather daily and see little snowflakes and temperatures only slightly warmer than here in Missoula…little wonder it’s almost at the same latitude.  So, we’ve got winter clothes, spring clothes and summer clothes, crammed into all our suitcases. Voluntary Simplicity is queued up on my Kindle so maybe the number of suitcases will change coming home.  (hee hee)

Our trip will take us through Denver, Washington DC (Dulles) and Frankfurt to Graz, if all goes according to plan.

The next time you hear anything from me, I hope it will be from Austrian soil.  First order of business will be to open a bank account and get registered at the Graz Rathaus.  Then I imagine we’ll provision the flat (thank goodness it is furnished) and explore our surroundings.

Thank you for the many well-wishes and comments, and thank you for reading!

Deutsch und mir

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I’ve always thought of myself as a linguaphile, that is someone who loves language, learning new languages, and for whom auditory learning has been, over the years, relatively easy.  That is, until I met German.

Bill and I have been working on German, via Rosetta Stone and with a native speaker and friend, for about six months now.  Our last name, Germanic in origin, has not helped one bit.   It has been a formidable task.   I mean,  French has rules and, there, we are used to assigning gender to nouns via the use of different articles (le, la, un, une). I  learned French very easily, and well.  (back then)   We feel it’s very important to try to not only understand some of the language where we’ll be living but be able to speak some as well.   So we started by learning some simple nouns and the three German gender articles:  “der” or ‘ein’ (for masculine nouns), “die” or ‘eine’ (for feminine nouns) , and “das” or ‘ein’ (for neutral nouns).   “O.K.!” thought I, “Kein problem!”

Wrong!  I have never seen a more complex language as German!  Not only is there gender for various nouns but the article modifying that noun changes depending on how the noun, or pronoun is used in the sentence!  These are known as the ‘cases’ in Deutsch.  We know them more affectionately as subject, direct object, indirect object and possessive.

The accusative case is used for the object of the sentence. So, in this case (pun intended) , “der” turns into “den” and “ein” into “einen”. “Die” and “das”, thankfully, remain the same.     Enter the dative case, used for the indirect object of the sentence.  In the dative case, “der” turns into “dem”, “die” turns into “der” and “das” turns into “dem”. Also, “ein” turns into “einem”, “eine” turns into “einer” and “ein” turns into “einem”.  And in the genitive (possessive) case,  “der” turns into “des”, “die” turns into “der” and “das” turns into “des”.  I won’t even get into the ein/eine mix!

And this is just the nouns!  German verbs seem less complicated than the conjugation I remember in high school and college French, but perhaps that’s just wishful remembrance!  They do, for the most part, follow a pretty regular group of endings as they shift for the various subjects (I run, you run, he/she runs, we run, etc.)  But…there are the verbs that separate and put part of the verb at the end of the sentence.  So a sentence like, ‘He finally arrived at home on Friday evening, ‘ would be:

Er kam am Freitagabend endlich zu Hause an .

(or literally)

He -rived on Friday evening finally ar- at home.

Don’t ask me why this is so.  It just is!

The beauty of the German language, though, is that with all this precision it is supposed to be very easy to figure out what someone is saying!  As our teacher,  Herr Professor Will says, ‘it is all contextual!’  “Gut!” say I, as Bill posts yet another index card on the refrigerator (listing the German words for various foods) or places copies of menus, newspapers and bus schedules from Graz into the reading material baskets in our house.  What has happened to Audubon and The Smithsonian?

So, our friends who have been to Austria remind us that Austrian German is a little different from standard German.  Not only in inflection and accent, but also in the 1000 or so different words that are used!  And further,  the province of Styria (Steinmark), where Graz is located, has a dialect that is even more pronounced than others.   We’re already struggling with Deutsch, and now there is Österreichisches Deutsch?

Well.  We’ll do our best.  You’ve got to love a language that has no problems making up new nouns by combining old ones.  We’ll probably need to know Gepäckaufbewahrungsschein (luggage-up-hold-certificate) = luggage check ticket on our travels but not so sure about Windschutzscheibewaschanlage, as we won’t have a car!

If worse comes to worse, I plan to carry a small pad of paper with me and plenty of pens.  I figure all those years of playing Pictionary definitely won’t be wasted!  Stay tuned!

Auf Wiedersehen! or as they say in Austria, “Tschüs!”

Our adventure begins

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Almost a year ago, in January 2010, we received notification that my husband, Bill, had been selected as a Fulbright Scholar for 2011.  Destination:  Graz, Austria.  Almost everyone has heard of Vienna and Salzburg, but Graz?  Well, we’re going to become intimately acquainted with that city of almost 300,000.  Actually the second-biggest of Austria’s many cities, Graz is located on the south-easterly side of the country and close to the borders of Croatia, Hungary and also Slovenia.

Now it’s a year later and preparations for our sojourn have swung into high gear.  Not the least of which was obtaining VISAs so we could spend the ‘summer’ semester (summer = March – June) between the Technical University of Graz and the Karl Franz University about a kilometer away.

Living in the rural inter-mountain west has some advantages but proximity to the edifices of foreign diplomacy  is not one of them.  We were first told by the ‘contact on behalf of the Austrian Embassy’ that we would have to appear at the Consulate in Los Angeles to meet with someone there on a Monday – Friday between the hours of 10 AM and 1 PM, but that no appointments are scheduled.  Fortunately, a phone call to that Consulate steered us to an Honorary Consul, who happens to live in Salt Lake City!   And fortunately, we just happened to be going to Salt Lake to visit family over the Christmas holidays.  We were able to arrange a meeting with him,  so he could certify our signatures on the Visa applications.

Herr Kolb could not have been more gracious or helpful!  He showed us the flag (and explained the significance of the coat of arms) of the state of Steiermark, where Graz is located, gave us names of people to contact, tips on things to say and not say, checked over our applications to make sure we had dotted all the i‘s and crossed the t‘s, and verified our signatures.    He even knew all about Missoula, having run the Missoula Marathon this past summer!  He agreed it was superbly organized!  I have a feeling we’ll be seeing him again.  If he is typical of Austrians, we are in for a delightful stay!

Our visa applications were sent that very day to Los Angeles and returned to us, approved, within a week!  Do you suppose the US government works as quickly for visitors coming here?

Now it’s time to get back to the German studies.  There’s more to say about that, but it’ll have to wait until another post!

Thanks for reading!