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Published: October 1st 2008
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School
The back of a school and the foothills of the Alps in Graz. Servus.
I'm currently in the midst of my lazy two weeks off between DeutschIntensiv and actual classes. Sure sure, it sounds great, two weeks to hang around in Europe, but it's actually rather dull. Not too much going on, so not too much to write about. All my friends and I start classes at different times, so we're now all over the place, so there's not much to do during the days. For instance, Libor and Elizabeth started today, but Orla and I still have another week, so she actually went back to Ireland today. Oh well. I've been finding little ways to keep busy, though, fear not.
Yesterday was pretty low-key in the morning, went up to school and talked to one of the ladies in the international office about my schedule to see if I really didn't have classes for the next week, and she confirmed it. In the afternoon, my friends and I went and visited one of the other castles of Graz, Schloss Eggenberg. It was built in the 1700s for the Eggenberg family, and is more on the outskirts of the city. Basically what happened was, the head of the Eggenberg family came to
Oh, Hey, What's Up
Slovenia & Salzburg, this way. Graz, said, "Hm, das ist gut," claimed himself the duke, and boom. Castle. Or something like that.
It was really cool, though, nine of us went: me, Libor, Dietlinde, Elizabeth, Meghan, Thomas, Orla, George, and Nicolas (Thomas' French friend). We had a tour to ourselves with a really cool lady, Barbara, who did the tour all in German, and it was a lot of fun. She got a kick out of us, being such a weird combination of kids from around the world, but it was good practice with German, and we all understood everything! Well, except the French guys, but their German is awful and their accents are SO thick, it's impossible to understand them. Libor and I used to try hard to figure out what Thomas would be saying to us, but now we just look at each other, shrug, and keep going with what we were talking about.
The castle was really cool, though. Not as big as say the Schoenbrunn in Vienna, but still not exactly small. It took 3 generations to build, and everything is based around the calendar. There're 365 windows, 12 something, 24 something, 60 something, I don't remember it all,
Turkey
Everywhere at the castle. but it's all based around times, dates, historical events, it's really interesting. We also went into the art exhibition there, which was all art from the Middle Ages, which was really cool, stuff gathered from across Austria from a ridiculously long amount of time ago. It's still so wild to be living in the heart of so much history and in a place that changed Austria so many times, but where nobody knows about. The Habsburgs even stayed in the Schloss Eggenberg--meaning, for instance, Maria Theresia, who is pretty much the biggest name of a ruler in Austrian history.
Monday was Elizabeth's birthday, so last night we all got together at Meghan and Dietlinde's to hang out and celebrate. The Europeans and Elizabeth are all baffled by the concept of pancakes, they can't quite seem to grasp the concept of eating pancakes with syrup...and without mushrooms, lettuce, meat, honey, etc. Dietlinde, Meghan, and I decided to induct them into the world of Americana, and we had a pancake dinner for Elizabeth's birthday. We hung out there most of the night, just chatting and relaxing. Lots of fun. Tonight we made plans to meet in one of the smaller squares
The Castle
Walking up the looong walk to the castle. of Graz and from there go to a place to play some pool, so that'll be a lot of fun.
Today was also pretty low-key. I woke up and finally finished Eclipse, the third book of the Twilight series, and now am going to start reading a book in German. I met up with Elizabeth and Meghan at school and tried to register for a sport class. Unfortunately all the volleyball classes were full, but there's still some openings in a soccer one, so I'm going to go back tomorrow to try to register . I'm just hanging out now, waiting so I can do the pile of laundry I have if the machines downstairs ever are empty. I'm eating a tuna fish sandwich, which is a little bit risky when you live in a land-locked country, but so far, so good.
This weekend, Libor and I have made it our mission to find a place in Graz where we can play Fuss-Boden-Ball. There's not really a name in English for it, the only
translation we could find was "Soccer Tennis." In German, though, that means Foot-Floor-Ball. It's pretty much a combination of soccer, volleyball, and tennis, and it's from the Czech Republic. I'd seen videos of it, but didn't think anybody actually played it. He's going to teach me this weekend, though, so that'll be fun.
That's about it, though! I have some pictures from the Schloss yesterday, but we couldn't bring our cameras inside, so there aren't too many. I'm going to go on facebook and steal some pictures of my friends, since Kristy has requested them, so hope you enjoy!
Pfiat each!
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kristy
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turkeys. really? perhaps peacocks... good job with the people pics!