the closest thing to magic

I had my first training session in moving things through thought-power. It's all scientific!

That's how it works:

First, my friend the neuropsychologist pluggs my brain to a machine while I'm thinking of certain hand movements. After 30 min. of rigorous thoughts-workout the machine has figured out the patterns in which my brain imagines these moves. Then it's my turn to train speed and strength of imagination - the goal is to reach and hold the maximum level of activation the computer has measured.

The screen in front of me shows a hand and a glass. I have to stay motionless - no blinking, no swallowing. At first, nothing happens. Then, suddenly, fueled by my thoughts, the hand on the screen starts to move, approach the glass, and take it. The better I imagine the movements, the closer I get to the glass; after a while the hand grabs the glass in a split-second.

In the end I feel like I heaved a crate of beer with my brain - without lifting a finger... Now if that isn't magic...

to whom it may concern...

Thoughts from this morning's walk to university:
I'm thinking that I don't like to see chocolate-Santas sold in the middle of October.
I think that I like how the old guitar-playing cowboy in the city looks at me every morning with this knowing smile, without knowing me. I like to smile back.
I think that I should discipline myself to look the beggars in the eye.
I'm thinking about how I live my life: being thrown into the unknown by an astonishing security net, making it more solid every time I fall back. So the trick is the jumping!, I grin and I walk past a ticket shop...
Un ballo in maschera, I'm thinking about me in a black dress, gold, velvet, an orchestra, and then I remember two black and silver masks, the Night, a crazy Frenchman, an asylum, glittery stars and a crazy croud.


Then I think of Victor and Ingmar, who kept me busy one year ago - this year it was Otto... I remember being undetermined whether I should be homesick or not. Approximately one year ago I was cooking a huge pot of pumpkin soup that would change my life.

A potage might be a strange symbol for this past year, but that's just what it has been: warm, rich and very filling. Thanks to all the responsibles, but especially to the one who added the piri-piri.

Happy New Year from Austria...

Happy New Year to all the Australians, Austrians, Americans, Belorussians, British, Canadians, Chinese, Finnish, French, Germans, Indians, Italians, Japanese, Mexicans, New Zealanders, Russians, Spanish, Swedes, Vietnamese, aaaand Greeks!
All the best to you!!!

I ate a lot of sweet fish-formed cookies, ...

... watched strangers hug and hugged many unknown people, ...

... and melted little tin-figures above a candle, ...

... threw them into a bowl of water ...

... and read the future in the bizzare forms...

It's going to be a year full of challenges, surprises, wise dogs, winged feet and blooming eggs...

how to do a half french-half austrian christmas...

N°1 - The Advent wreath
Very important! People who have stayed in Sweden will probably already know the tradition of lighting one candle each Sonday of Advent, until all four of them are burning on Christmas Eve. The only difference to Austria is that here, we don't put them in a row, but in a circle...


N°2 - The Christmas tree

Also very important! It's crucial to find a true fir-tree, not a spruce, if you don't want to constantly sting yourself during the hours of decoration (also, the smell is different, and fir trees tend to keep their needles longer). Decorate with real candles, if you know what good taste is! Put the presents under the tree if you are a grown up; and if you are a child, you wait for the Christkind (Baby-Christ) to do it...

N° 3 - The Food

Crucial, since both French and Austrian people are known to be unable to resist Lucullian delights... Some families have a traditional Christmas menu; we prefer to make up our minds anew each year. We try to put some dishes from every culture, which is a bit of a tightrope-walk, but it always works out well.

N° 3 a) The Starter

This year: Vegetable mousse with shrimps and a sauce of white wine (Susa rediscovered her Photoshop and overdid it, as you can see...)

N° 3 b) The Main Course

This year: Venison-ragout, red cabbage with chestnuts and dumplings and black-currant jam to eat in little portions with the meat. When I read what I just wrote, I can't help but feeling disgusted myself, but it's actually one of the finest dishes you can get (and I know some people out there who can attest to my good taste! *grmpf*)...

N° 3 c) La Bûche

The only course that must not change! The Bûche is a traditional French Christmas dessert in the form of a freshly cut tree-trunk. There are several ways to make it, but in our case (which is the "real" one, of course...) you prepare a delicious chunk of biscuit, butter, nuts, coffee and liquor...

Then, using all your physical force, you try to shape this lump in the form of a tree trunk. Demonstration by my mom, the expert-Bûche-producer (also, she made an effort to look really French):


A ton of chocolate and half an hour of patient fork-work later, the tree is almost perfect....


Finally, you put some artificial snow in form of sugar and simply eat it!

And then, all you have to do, is drink some coffee and marvel at your presents over and over again...

coming home

Ooohooo! Back again... It feels so strange, I tell you! I spent most of my Monday on the airport of Berlin and I was... irritated. I got used to not understanding what people around me are talking about - but it's certainly better this way... Besides, Austrian and German people have this nerve-wracking habit to discuss everything on their cell-phone in public. The louder the better. Is it like that in Sweden too, or did I just not notice/understand?

Back in Graz I was welcomed by a nice guard of honor. Now, I'm sure I'll have to deal with some rumours about my family later, if I tell you that my parents put a lot of different beers all the way up the stairs to my room. You'll be disappointed when I tell you that by now we have only finished two bottles (together!); which makes not even half a litre per person. But we're working on it...

And the rest of the time I'm still a bit groggy; jumping emotionally from enthusiasm (some people started producing babies in my absence...) to despair. Not because of the babies. It's because of... ah... *sigh*... Life is hard. More about that in the next post.

Bliss! I have my biiig bed again. And a big room. And sunny walls. And two hours more light. And no rain!

esperanto-update

Shiny happy people

1 picture, 9 nations, and (hopefully very soon) 2 (two) common languages.

Not so shiny, but still very happy people

1 picture, 5 people, 4 nations...

foooooood!

I spent Friday evening and Saturday afternoon preparing a lot of food for about 20 people. Dava came up with the idea to have a party and then I came up with the idea to cook dishes from Germany, Austria and France. So we had Styrian pumpkin soup, Bavarian Obatzda with a lot of bread, eggs and vegetables and finally French Mousse au Citron... We even had some delicious Tartiflette, thanks to Lolo... I just woke up and had a huge Sunday morning breakfast and I found that it makes me so utterly happy to cook for people (and even for myself) that I should do this more often...

I really enjoyed cooking for you, I'm happy that you liked it and that you had a good time! Thank you for coming, everybody!

More pictures here

1 liter of buttermilk, a load of lemon zest, even more sugar, 75 dl of cream and a lot of love -
it all fit in three stomachs!

opa! opa!

Following the magic scents in the enchanted Botanic Garden
***

Basically, you run into a lot of friends every day here in Lund just while walking from one library to the other. The other day I met Theo on his new purple bike, doing what he likes most here: getting lost in the city. So we fixed an appointment for today to get lost together.

It seems to me that this Greek guy has the gift of detecting the most enchanted places just by straying in the streets thinking some philosophical thoughts(needless to mention that he lives in a kind of gingerbread-house...). So after forgetting time in a charming antique shop run by an even more charming Swedish lady (who even fed my hungry hungry art-historian brain) we kind of stumbled on the old cemetary. This, my friends, is definitely the most beautiful place to be dead I have ever seen (right after the cemetary of Hallstatt). We basically just tumbled from one enchanted spot to the other - after the cemetary it was the huge Botanic Garden, which is stuffed with all sorts of trees and herbs and flowers from all over the world (I know this is the purpose of such a place...) and the most dazzling multitude of ethereal scents one could ever imagine.

It is now pretty clear that I'll absolutely have to go to Greece one day (ok, let me see, just after I have visited all these people from New Zealand, Germany, Russia and Spain...). I mean, just the fact that Greeks have one little word to express the whole range of human emotions wows me so deeply that I won't be able to think about anything else than this wise people for days. Listen, opa! is not only used to express your feelings of joy (e.g. while dancing), but also when you or someone else behave in a very clumsy way (like "oops!"), or again when you are attacked physically or verbally to put the person back in it's place.

It is fascinating how being abroad gives you the opportunity to discover both the foreign and mainly the own culture from a totally new point of view. I look at the notion of national identity in a completely new way now, and most of all, I like what I see.

Push the button to see more pictures...

Swedish antique shop

old cemetary

Botanic Garden

Autumn sun

cultural studies

Bin wiederhergestellt und habe einen guten Teil des Nachmittags mit Bernd im zweiten Stock des wunderhübschen Café Emma zugebracht. Unsere Hauptbeschäftigung war es, wiederkehrende Muster im Auftreten der Passanten auf der Straße zu erkennen, wobei wir allerdings kläglich gescheitert sind. Zum Beispiel ist das von uns herausgefilterte Muster Auf Vater mit Kind von links folgt automatisch Leggings-bekleidetes Mädchen von rechts nur genau 4x (in Worten: vier mal) eingetreten. Außerdem musste ich eine andere, schon früher von mir aufgestellte Theorie als falsch anerkennen, nämlich dass schwedische Männer sich von weiblichen Reizen jeglicher Art völlig unbeeindruckt zeigen. Seht selbst im folgenden Video:

***

I'm fit again and spent the whole afternoon with Bernd in a charming café watching people walking by on the street. We were very busy trying to detect recurring sequences in their movements but we didn't really succeed. For instance, the rule "father with child coming from the left is always followed from girl wearing leggings from the right" actually occured only four times. In addition to this I had to find out that my theory of "The non-responding behaviour of Swedes to any heterosexual impulse" was not true. Check out the following video: