All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them: March 2013

I honestly do not even know where to start with this. How do you record absolutely everything that made your week just so amazing? The truth is, you really can't. But I'll try to go from the beginning. Prepare for an insight to the March 2013 STS Intensive German Course...

My train left from Wels at 5:45pm on Monday 25th March. I met Elliott and Jarrad on the train and after our first stop, Patrick met up with us. We had a little bit of fun on the train. The first part was the only group of seats together were in the "quiet" area which we didn't realise when we sat down. Whoops. When it was announced that our stop would be the next one, Jarrad decided to go to the toilet and when he came back, we decided to tell him that we had missed our stop; even though the train had never stopped. The look on his face was priceless. We then spent the last ten minutes of the trip making fun of the signs that had been translated to English and had either spelling or grammar mistakes. We then got off in Bad Ischl and met up with Chelci, Hannah and Katrin before heading to Strobl to Katrin's house; where we would be spending the week.

"After actuating..."

Arriving in Strobl, we met Philine and had a beautiful dinner of spaghetti bolognese and salad. It was a really great salad Philine!! Elliott and I were the ones who did the "salad challenge" where we finished all of the salad, and this then became a ritual for the rest of the week. We just decided to hang out for a bit then and catch up. Going back into talking in fast English was an instant reaction that we all had just from being around each other. Chelci and I went to bed around 11:30 but, as all girls do when they have a slumber party, stayed up talking until 1:00am.

Tuesday morning was kicked off with breakfast at 8:00am. It became an unspoken rule that there would be a pyjama party every morning at breakfast. Following was our first German lesson with our amazing teacher Philine! I struggled a lot on that first morning, but by the end of the week I really saw an improvement. It was really good incorporating games into the learning as well, rather than just reading from a book or talking about grammar and verbs non-stop; the games really helped to break that up and to put what we had learnt into practice.

Danach haben wir Mittagessen Pizza gegessen. Es war sehr gut! We then had Pizza for lunch and it was very good! Let's hope that I didn't make a mistake in that sentence!!! Soon after lunch we set off to our Mozartkugel cooking lesson. It was interesting to see how the little chocolates were made and we made a production line where we got to make them ourselves. Afterwards we got certificates; or "Diplomas".

That's right, you all thought my name was Tyarna, well, you're wrong! I'm Tyama!!!!

Once we were back at Katrin's house, we sat around for a little bit before Elliott, Jarrad and I decided to go for a walk. Our 'walk' turned into a climb when we literally climbed up the mountain at the back of the house! It wasn't our original plan to climb to the top of the mountain, but we followed a little stream for a little bit and found a waterfall that we wanted to see from the top. We couldn't find a path, so we started climbing. It was so hard because of how steep it was and because of all the snow, it took us a couple hours, but we finally emerged towards the top at a roadway that wasn't being used because of all the fallen trees across it. Let's just say that was a much easier walk than what we had just spent the past two hours doing!! We had to use our hands to help us climb up and also grab on to trees and sticks and roots so that we didn't slip back down the mountain a hell of a lot quicker than what we were going up. The views from the top were well worth the climb though. On the way down, we decided to follow the path instead of going down the way we came up! When we came out, we were nowhere near the house and had to find our way back. Jarrad assured us he knew exactly where we were going, however I still don't believe him; it was the biggest fluke.

Mountain Climbing =D

When we got back, Elliott, Hannah, Katrin and I played two games of Rummy-O. Katrin won the first game and I won the second! Woooo!! Thank you Nanna for teaching me how to play all those years ago! Elliott and I then landed the job of cooking the meat on the barbecue for dinner. That was something different. First we had to heat up our cooking rocks before we could start cooking the actual meat. It was really quite fun. And that meat was pretty bloody good if I must say so myself! The others inside also did a good job of preparing their dishes for the meal. Chelci and Patrick made a nice salad and Jarrad cooked some really good corn. All in all, it was a great dinner. As with the past two nights, after dinner we just sat around and talked. Elliott also started teaching me the cup song from Pitch Perfect and by the end of the week I had mastered it to the point of us doing it together in Maccas on Friday night.

"My horse is raw"

"Nein"

Wednesday morning we had another four hours of German lessons. We covered so much throughout the week that it is hard to pin point what we did every lesson. We followed our lessons with lunch and then headed into Salzburg to explore around there for a while. Salzburg is a very historical town and was where Mozart grew up! We walked across this bridge that had heaps and heaps of padlocks on it. It looked really cool actually.

Salzburg

After having dinner back at Katrin's, it was time we went and experienced our first German movie at the cinemas!! We saw "Die Croods" in 3D, which was an experience in itself. From listening quite closely and also watching the actions of the characters, it was quite easy to pick up the story line and what was going on. Some parts were quite funny and it would be interesting to see the movie in English to fully determine whether it was good or bad. I didn't mind it though. Back at the house we went about our usual nightly ritual of talking and practicing the cup song before going to bed.

“There’s a dead body in my cola”

As usual, Thursday morning saw another four hours of German. I do remember that in this lesson I learnt something that I should have known already about the Austrian lifestyle! We were focusing on food and ordering at cafes and restaurants when the topic of tipping came up. As we don’t tip in Australia, none of us had given it any thought, until we found out that in Austria they tip!! We all felt so bad because we had gone two months without tipping anyone! We did a role-playing game of customers and a waiter in a café. Let’s just leave it at it was interesting. There was a lot of laughing involved and I personally don’t think that the prices were acceptable and would not go back to eat there again.

Lunch once again followed our lessons and we had Austrian sausages. In the afternoon we went to a small museum that showed Austrian history and also focused on Austria during the Nazi period. Our guide took us to a tunnel that was built by the prisoners during the war. It was all very interesting. To actually see the places where these things occurred is really quite creepy, but makes it all seem that much more real. That night we had another great dinner before spending the evening at the Thermal Bath in Bad Ischl. Afterwards we continued with the nightly ritual. By this point, I was getting quite good at the cup song.

Friday marked our last full day together. We had more German lessons followed by Kaiserschmarrn for lunch; which was delicious as per usual. We then headed off to Salzburg where we started our “Sound of Music” tour. Our tour guide really made the tour a great experience! He was so funny and even told us a New Zealand joke that we hadn’t heard before!! That is rare. If anyone wishes to go on the “Sound of Music” tour, I recommend that you watch the movie first. I’m sure it would make a hell of a lot more sense if you actually knew what happened in the movie. Once we were finished the tour, we had to clean up our stuff back at the house and start packing up a few things. It was really sad knowing that the next day would be the last time that the group would all be together.

Jarrad, Patrick and Chelci

Group selfies

The Sound of Music

That night we got to “go away” in Bad Ischl (that is the literal translation from our program for the week). Some of us decided to have Kebap for dinner and the other half of us had Maccas. It was raining by the time we got into town and being holidays, there weren’t many people around. We spent a couple hours just walking around town, which was quite nice and the rest of the time we spent at Maccas. Elliott and I did the cup song in time with each other and had all of these people look at us, it worked really well though. Candy recorded it at one point and it was going really well until Elliott decided to throw his cup at me! I had a Twix McFlurry, which is something that I haven’t had before so it was pretty good.

After doing the cup song

Breakfast was at 7:00am on Saturday! It was the earliest we had been up all week and we had been out the night before as well, let’s just say that people had trouble concentrating in class that morning. Once classes were finished we had lunch and then we got our certificates for completing the week. We were graded on the week and I was so happy with my grade! I got a 2 which is brilliant because I had convinced myself that I was going to get a 5, 4 if I was really lucky! I still have a very, very long way to go with my German but the past week helped so much that now I think I may actually be able to achieve it.

Certificate =D

This moment though, marked the end of the week. It was sad packing our things into the car and driving to the train station. We said goodbye to the ones who weren’t going on the same train and departed our own ways.

Throughout the week, Elliott and I took many, many selfies and he also did handstands everywhere we went. It was just what we did!

Elliott and his handstands everywhere =)

Selfies!!!

I would like to say a big thank you to Katrin for letting us stay in your house for the week and also to Philine for being our German teacher! The week would also not have been the same without the wonderful people that I shared it with. I’ll see you lot at Vienna weekend!! Good luck with everything back home Chelci and I hope you have a safe flight. You better keep in contact with me! I’ll miss you a lot!

We will finish up with a few more photos from the week =D