Easter Tradition

Still stuffed with the filling food Carinthians traditionally eat at Easter, I tiredly look back at a typical Easter weekend full of relatives visiting, drinking and eating. My mother prepared the "Osterjause", a cold dinner, for all of us, which means that there were up to twenty one persons eating at a time. Luckily, we've got a large balcony with a huge dining table that creaked under the weight of the many plates.

The traditional Carinthian Easter meal consists of ham, sausages, lots of freshly ground horseradish (even the strongest and proudest men have to cry), eggs, egg cream, red beet sauce and white, sweet bread with raisins, cinnamon and sugar in it. This bread is called “Kärntner Reindling” or in my regional dialect “Woazas”.

As Easter is the most important Catholic holiday, Catholics traditionally keep to a diet for forty days before eating as much as possible of the Easter meal. Traditions go further and so we usually eat  veggies on Maundy Thursday and fish on Good Friday. On Saturday morning there is a mass where you bless the food you are going to eat. Midday indicates the end of Lent in our family (despite the fact that we are not that strict that we would give something up for Lent) and the whole family, many relatives from all over Austria included, eat as if there was no tomorrow. In the afternoon, everyone stays for cake and coffee and in the evening we all eat the Easter meal once again, for the last time this year.
We then sit together, drink and have fun until dawn breaks. On Sunday morning all the kids, still including me ;), search for the sweets, eggs and little presents that were hidden by the parents. We all - guess what - eat and continue to drink. A cheer for Austria!

That's our family's tradition. Of course I know that it differs from family to family, village to village, from valley to valley, whatever. I definitely like it the way it is....

The endless debate: Tea versus Coffee

Are there two different kinds of people on earth? The ones who drink tea and the others who drink coffee? Does that fact actually divide whole continents?
Yes. Well, maybe I exaggerated a bit, but all in all, yes.

I bet everyone has already had a discussion on whether tea is better than coffee or the other way round. In order to inform myself and you, I did some research on both beverages and prepared a table for you with the most important and disparating factors.

	COFFEE	TEA
Origin	Legend has it that coffee was drunk for the first time in the 9th century in the Ethiopian highlands, Africa.	Tea, however, is much older. Its history dates back to 2737 BC, China.
Culture	Coffee culture can be fast paced and frantic. Just think of people waiting in lines at the drive-through talking into microphones and driving around buildings to pick up huge paper cups of the daily special.	Tea is a rather genteel beverage requiring preparation and time to sip. Tea drinkers are referred to as being calm, tranquil and balanced in general. Tea is said to be soothing.
Caffeine	A regular cup of coffee contains the double amount of caffeine found in a cup of black tea. Therefore, it's best not to drink more than one or two cups of coffee a day because of the high blood pressure and heart disease risk. Unless, of course, the coffee is decaffeinated.	There is caffeine in tea, especially in green and black tea. But: In comparison to coffee-caffeine, the one that occurrs in tea takes longer to enter the blood stream and therefore is gentler to our system. On the other hand, the effect is not that powerful.
Other important ingredients	Antioxidants: They are chemicals found in plants. In our body, they protect our healthy tissues from oxidants that try to damage our cells.	Nutrients that naturally occur in the plants the tea is made of Antioxidants Fluoride, which is good for your teeth Tea may contain pesticides. Tanin, which reduces the absorption of iron and can lead to anemia
Impact on our body	Tooth discoloration Studies have shown that drinking a reasonable amount of coffee prevents Type 2 Diabetes and reduces the risk of developing gout.	Drinking up to four cups of tea per day prevents cancer and heart diseases. Tea hydrates the body. Green and black tea can be used as an antidepressant. It is also proven that drinking tea can prevent Type 1 Diabetes.
Varieties	Coffee with a lot of beans Coffee with less beans Coffee with milk and sugar Coffee without milk but with sugar Coffee without sugar but with milk No, let's be serious: There are various types of beans that taste differently. Adding much cream and sugar, though, like coffee is sold at coffee shop chains, kills the healthy aspect.	Green Tea: made of the non-fermented leaves of the tea plant White Tea: the leaves are fermented for about quarter an hour Black Tea:the leaves are fermented for approximately two hours Oolong Tea (30 minutes fermentation), Herbal Tea, Fruit Tea and many more My favorite: Matcha! Matcha is a traditional japanese tea type, made of green tea powder and together with milk gives a delicious beverage.
Taste	Obviously a rather subjective question. For me, black coffee tastes bitter and is not drinkable without milk and sugar.	Tea's flavor isn't as strong and dominant as the one of coffee, but more watery. In the end you'll have to decide on your own about which beverage is the right one for you.

Sources: https://www.cbn.com/health/nutrition/reinke_coffeetea.aspx
http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/nutrition/healthy-eating/healthy-breakfast-coffee-vs-tea.html
http://visual.ly/health-benefits-coffee-vs-tea 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coffee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea

Hello, I am Linda and I would like to stay at your house for a couple of days.

I guess almost everyone of you has already heard of couchsurfing. For those who have not: It is a social network which enables travellers to find a place to stay, people to meet, activities to join in and all that in every country of the world. No cultural borders, no mistrust or prejudices.

Anyway, the aim of this post is not to introduce you to the network from an informative and statistical point of view, but with my own experience.

I couchsurfed around New Zealand and Australia and want to share some stories and memories with you that I will never forget.

Trust

I arrived in Sydney but didn't tell my host the exact time or even the day. On the off-chance, I showed up at his place, he wasn't there, so I phoned him. He told me that he was still working but I could meet him at a certain corner in the inner city. I went there, talked to him for not even five minutes, he gave me the keys to his apartment and said: “Here you go. One last thing: Could you be at home at about five p.m. and open my door for me? I don't have a second key.”

Not a place where you would give a stranger your only key, is it?

Inspiration

Thinking about the range of people I met, there is one couple that fascinated me. A Luxembourger and his thirty years younger Chinese girlfriend. Not just the cultural combination took my interest, but also their stories, especially the one's of him. He is one of the few people who climbed every one of the seven summits, only failing on the third of four camps of Mount Everest. He rode his motorcycle along the Panamericana, crossed China on a bicycle, travelled on camels through the Taklamakan Desert, was in a Syrian prison for spying, skied to the South Pole, dog sled to the North Pole, walked from Luxembourg to Santiago, ran the Iron Man on Hawaii and so on. I think I could continue with this list for a long time and it won't get boring. His girlfriend escaped China and its strict regime and found a new home in New Zealand. Despite being passionate travellers, they are both pleasant people to talk to. I did one of the Great New Zealand Walks with them and while hiking, I learned much about life, travelling and taking risks.

Couchsurfing as medicine

J. is autistic, so she struggles to let people near her, even to talk to them in a proper way. That's why she started hosting. She isn't interested in travelling; for her letting all those people stay at her apartment means a new challenge every time someone arrives. For me, it was very interesting to communicate with her because she was straightforward, without being considerate towards me at all. She couldn't tell at any point of my stay at her house how I felt.

Crazy flats

The Marlborough Sounds - nothing left to say

You meet a lot of different characters on a journey, but the list of people I met who live in crazy flats is definitely my longest one. It is hard to decide which story may be better than another but I'll give it a try: We are in the North of the South Island of New Zealand, to be more precise, in Nelson. It is six in the morning, I am, as always, trying to find places. Eventually, I arrive at my host's house, ring the bell and an about forty-year-old man opens the door with only a towel around his hip. Great first impression... His name is Pete and he invites me to a spontaneous kajak trip in the Marlborough Sounds which are a beautiful group of islands in the Cook Strait. Of course I say yes to this unique offer and paddle around a breathtaking scenery for two days. We sleep in a hut that is located in one of the many bays and at midnight get our kajaks out on the sea again, paddling along with penguins, dolphins and all kind of fish. Every animal in the sea and the sea itself glow in the light of the full moon.
Back home again, Pete's flatmate throws a party. We join in and I get to learn some fire dancing skills.

Family feeling

At some point of a long journey, a girl needs a family and there are a few people that gave me the opportunity to rest for a few days. David, for instance, is a dairy farmer and priest who lives outside a small town called Wanganui. He didn't mind at all that I am not a religious person, introduced me to his family and friends, gave me his spare house to live in for as long as I wanted to stay.
I had a lot of fun playing cricket and sliding along the river on a water tub. His family even invited me to a family party. All in all, I felt welcome.

Bad experiences?
The most frequently asked question I get to hear is: "Didn't you experience something you would like to not have happened?" No. There are things that weren't pleasant at all but they are, in my opinion, important for a good journey. I once got off a bus in the middle of nowhere, which means on the West Coast of the South Island, in order to meet my host family who lived in a village that consisted of three houses. The family of five I was confronted with, was - well, let's say different. For instance: I don't want to know how often they take a shower but I simply couldn't because entering their shower would have resulted in coming out dirtier than before. I slept in the "living room" where I had a small path to my mattress on the floor, surrounded by trash.
I actually intended to stay there for three days but hitchhiked away after two because I haven't had an opportunity to buy food that doesn't need cooking and rarely ate dishes from their unwashed plates.

I could probably fill a book with people I met through couchsurfing but there has to be an end at some point. By the way, I started hosting as soon as I returned home. Maybe I'll write a post about all those restless travellers that slept/sleep/will sleep at my place. :)

Whistle, click and live in the present!

In order to become an interpreter, it is necessary to choose between a small amount of our world's languages and so I ended up stydying German, English and Russian. Without a doubt, each of these languages is fascinating, but there are some others that caught my interest from the very first moment I heard of them.

Whistle!

How you do it

Whistle like you've never whistled before, so that people on the other side of the valley, the river or
even the gorge can hear you. Do it like the inhabitants of La Gomera, which is one of the smaller islands in the Canaries. They speak Silbo Gomero, a whistled language. Fine... but... how does it work?
The speakers of this language try to imitate the articulation of a Spanish dialect through whistling. They distinguish between four vowels and eight consonants and differentiate them through the pitch, the intensity, the quality, the volume and the continuity.

A short introduction into the language and its importance for the inhabitants of La Gomera from the perspective of the speakers: It is worth checking out.

Click!

Xhosa people

Let's continue our journey around the world. Next stop: South Africa. Xhosa, the language supported by click consonants, is spoken by a large amount of people living in the far south of Africa. As a member of the Bantu language family, Xhosa is a tonal language, with a few exceptions. The letters "c", "x" and "q" are clicked, each of them produced in a different part of the mouth. The letter "c" combines six dental clicks: You need to click your tonuge right behind your teeth, as if you said something like "tsk". The "x" clicks are produced on the sides of the tonuge and the "q" clicks are made at the roof of the mouth by the tip of your tongue.

Of course you can try it yourself with a little help from a native speaker. :)

Maici River, the Pirahã definitely live in paradise

Live in the present!

Last, but definitely not least, I want to introduce you to the Pirahã language which is spoken by people living along the Maici River, a tributary of the Amazon. 
Every relative of the language family Pirahã belongs to, is extinct. That's the reason for its uniqueness. I'll try to give you an overview of the most unusual features:

Phonology: The Pirahã's language consists of only three vowels. There are a few more consonants but by far not as much as in any European language. It is quite easy to imitate the sound of Pirahã because the phones are much the same as in German, there are only less of them.

Kinship terms: Pirahã do not differentiate between mother and father. They are simply parents. With kinship terms they only go as far as biological siblings, not like Europeans who are proud to be the great-great-grandson/daughter of someone.

Numbers: In my opinion, this is a very complicated topic because Pirahã do not know any number above "two". As a result, the whole system of handling them is different. To give you an example: You have ten nails and ask a Pirahã how many you have, the answer is "many". If you now took four of them away, they would of course use a different word because there are less nails. The strange thing is, though, that they use a completely different word if you had two nails and put another two down. In both situations there are four nails in the end, but for a Pirahã that would be two different "numbers". On the right, you see the resulting table of an experiment. If you understand every aspect about this table, please let me know...

Colors: There are words for "light" and "dark". If they want to name a specific color they describe it through a thing they know, for example, "like grass" for "green".

Tenses: Pirahã live in the present, so they do not know any words or forms to express something that happened in the future or in the past. That is, in my opinion, the most amazing feature of this unusual language.

It is necessary to say, even though most of you probably know it, that the Pirahã could use color terms, numbers and tenses if they wanted to. They just do not need them in any way, as they are happy without them.

Finally, a video, recorded by Daniel Everett who lived with the Pirahã, learned to speak their language, analysed it and translated it into English. 

Sources: 
El Silbo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Silbo
http://www.gomeralive.com/el-silbo/
http://silbo-gomero.com/silbohome.html
Xhosa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xhosa_language
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/xhosa.htm
Pirahã: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001387.html
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/piraha.php
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language

Can you hear me playing?

 The title might sound a bit confusing, but you may guess that this blog post will be about people who pretend to play instruments, to be more precise, the guitar. Sounds strange, but there actually is more to it than anyone, including me, would have reckoned.

To give you a short introduction, the last "Annual Air Guitar World Championship Contest" Winner,   Eric "Mean Melin" Melin:

 What do you think?

I actually play the guitar myself and I love listening to music played with guitars, maybe I even sometimes play air guitar, but why would I ever want to go up stage with my invisible skills?!

Come on, take one!

One big reason for the success of playing air guitar professionally may be that it's absolutely free. You need yourself and a lot of imagination.

And it's fun.

Anyway, obvious questions probably crossed everyone's mind when watching the video above: How and where did they qualify for a World Championship? Who judges them and how do they judge them?

To qualify for the World Championship, you have to succeed in a national one (and a lot of countries have nationals, for instance, Germany does, Austria not).
The juries usually consist of B-list musicians, comedians, music critics and so on.
The scoring system is the same as in figure skating, which means there is a maximum of 6.0 points and there are four different criteria the jury judges on.
In two rounds, each round one minute, the participants have to show what they are capable of.

I really like the criteria because they sound that serious and professional:
1) Technique: The air guitar player has to play the song correctly as if he played on a real guitar, including riffs, solos, chords, etc. That's why a lot of them actually know how to play in real.
2) Mime: The illusion that they hold a real guitar while doing all the rock moves must be kept up.
3) Stage presence: The candidates have to drive the listeners. They have to be rock stars and entertain the audience!
4) Art: The performance has to be art, not just simulating to play the guitar. That one's rather subjective...

Maybe it's best to watch the video of Melin again. With all this new knowledge you may look at it from a different perspective, observing his technique and the rock moves.

If you want to check out the official website of the World Championships or this infographic.


Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_guitar
http://usairguitar.com/

What good bloggers do

New semester, new challenges. One of them is, at least for me, the blogging.

In the last few days I tried to find out how I could raise my motivation when it comes to writing new posts. So I looked at various successful blogs of other students and realized that there are many ways to improve my own.

First of all, the choice of the topic seems to be very important. The right topic is one you are passionate about so that the readers get infected with the enthusiasm. It doesn't matter if it's a sad, funny, informative or maybe even crazy subject, as long as you are interested in it. And that's one of the biggest mistakes I've made. I've written about things that didn't sound bad to me, but I actually wasn't really captivated by them. Now I changed my way of picking issues to write about and my mind is exploding because it's filled with too many ideas. I look forward to making all of these ideas into hopefully good blog posts!

Another big point of blogging is that people want to read about people. They want to know what the bloggers opinion is, share their experiences and thoughts. Keyword: Authenticity. I always had the opinion that I can't write freely because the whole world is able to read my blog. That surely is true, but I write about interesting stuff and my opinion of it, not a diary.

 
That leads me to my next point. Be funny or be yourself if you are a jolly person and at least try to be funny if you are a grouch. No information is useful to readers that probably check out your blog in the middle of the night when there is nothing else to do, unless it is presented in a humorous way. Who doesn't like to have a laugh when learning something new?

There is one last thing I'd like to mention: I am terrible at organizing. I can barely manage to structure my thoughts, and spend hours in front of my computer, trying to create a logical structured text. Doesn't quite work yet, but I'm still trying.

Anyway, in the end you have to bring a bit of a writing talent with you because even the most beautiful layout, the funniest pictures and videos can't make a blog successful, as long as the texts are boring and/or confusing. I will do my best packing information, my style, humour as well as seriousness into concise, well-written texts.

YOUPOST 4

Beautiful New Zealand

A few weeks ago, a girl asked me to give her some advice in terms of travelling. She intends to go to New Zealand and knows that I was there, so I happily gave her some recommendations on what to visit and to do. Now I would like to share my experience with you.

First of all, you do not have to know anything before leaving. There is nothing you must not do, maybe except committing a crime. To correct myself, there is nothing you must not do, that you are not allowed to do in your home country either.
Next, stay as long as possible, because a) the flight is too expensive for a weekend trip and b) you will not be able to get to know the culture in a short time.
In my view, the best way to travel is on your own because you will meet many people on the way and to be honest, I could not spend half a year 24/7 with the same person, even if it was my best friend. I chose to do couchsurfing, I hitch-hiked and survived it. It is not a recommendation to sleep at strangers houses and go with them to the next town, but it is much more adventurous.

Some destinations worth going to: (all the pictures are of course taken by myself, that's why they are not that good)

Queenstown, the city of adventure in the Southwest of the South Island. Known for its beautiful landscape and the great variety of extremsports offered. It is probably best to not stay for too long because after one week you will have spent all your money on things like rafting, mountainbiking and skiing, depends on which time of the year you are going. Remember: Winter on the northern hemisphere means summer in the southern one. Why not spend a hot Christmas and New Year's Eve?

If you then travel on westerly, you will find a hiking trail that leads to Milford Sound, the best known fjord of New Zealand. The attraction is not just the fjord, but the National Park surrounding it is maybe even more beautiful. It is a very touristy place and sadly the only fjord a backpacker can afford to have a look at.

A very remote part of New Zealand is the West Coast of the South Island because it is confined by the Southern Alps in the East and the Tasman Sea in the West. Maybe owing to the fact that there are so few people, the nature is picturesque. To name one example: On the picture above, there is the Fox Glacier, which is a Glacier that runs into the rainforest and the rainforest runs on until it touches the sea.

Another thing you might want to try on the West Coast is Whitebait, a tiny little fish that you eat on the whole. It is a delicacy.

I worked for two and a half weeks on a farm in the Golden Bay, in the North-West of the South Island and I fell in love with that part of the country. Above, you see a photo of Pupu Springs, the clearest waters in the world. 

I recommend eating fresh cockles, pipis and other mussels as well as oysters, picked by yourself in the Bay.

Another remarkable part of New Zealand are the Marlborough Sounds in the Cook Strait. The best way to explore them is to go by kajak. I slept in a hut on one of the many islands and did a night kajak-trip where I saw penguins, dolphins and fish glowing in the moonlight. If you like adventure, go for it!

You might want to try Paua, too. It's a rare, eatable sea snail, but the best part of it is the amazing, colourful shell. The only problem is that they are hard to get, you have to dive for them.

 

One last stop on the South Island: Dunedin, an old Scottish city and the Otago Peninsula, where you can watch some penguins coming home if you are lucky.

 

What I liked best about the North Island, was the Far North. On the left, you see a picture of the northernmost point, Cape Reinga. It is surrounded by a lot of Bays, rainforest and waterfalls. If you like nature, you will definitely like that area.

 

As I said, there are a lot of bays in the Far North and the most famous of them is the Bay of Islands. I prefer other bays over that one because in the Bay of Islands, there are too many tourists. If you have the opportunity to go to one the remote bays of the North, do it.

Rainforest in New Zealand is nothing like the rainforest in other places. The Kauri Trees growing in them are the biggest and highest trees in the world and every rainforest you will walk through, will be full of large ferns. By the way: The silverfern is the national plant of New Zealand.

 

Last but not least, if you like hiking and volcanoes, do the about 18 kilometres long Tongariro Trek in the center of the North Island. There is not much to say about it because, in my opinion, you have to see it for yourself.

I could have shown you about one hundred pictures more, from other stunning, picturesque, amazing places in New Zealand. Indeed, I would be able to fill an entire book about this country. Anyway, at some point there has to be an end.

Some other recommendations:

1) Try Marmite, you probably will not like it, but try it.

2) Wellington is a beautiful city, but maybe try to avoid Christchurch. You will be disappointed because the earthquake destroyed almost everything. A lot of people moved away, so it is a very lonesome city.

3) If you like bubbling muddholes, this is the country for you. On the North Island there are many volcanoes, geysers and other forms of geothermical energy on the surface. Be prepared for the smell of addled eggs!

4) Enjoy the sweet New Zealand accent. :)

5) Go to the small, unknown villages, too. The people will be friendly and show you some places no tourist has ever seen before.

6) Avoid staying in hostels, they are not as international as you might think. You will not speak a word English because ninety per cent of the tourists sleeping in hostels are Germans. If you stay at hostels, maybe you could take one outside of the cities. I had much better experiences with them, because the people are much friendlier and of more disparate cultures.

7) Try some jolly cake.