Pop Goes the Culture: Julian le Play

Welcome to Part I of what will become an ongoing series about everything I learn in the world of Austrian pop culture. Today's topic, Austrian heart-throb Julian le Play. The other day I read in the horrible train-newspaper about a concert he gave to a million screaming teenage girls, so I decided to check him out. I actually really like his music!! He's not terribly original or anything, but his music is catchy and that's frankly all I need. Also, I can understand his lyrics, which helps. I would characterize him as an an Austrian Jack Johnson (but more exciting) mixed with an Austrian David Archuleta (but less annoying). He was on the TV show "Helden von Morgen" which is essentially X-Factor, American Idol, etc. This is his most popular song, and it's basically a love song of sorts, about these people who love each other but can't be together, so they imagine a life where they can. Kind of. Whatever. Even if you don't understand the song, the music video for "Mr. Spielberg" (below) is really great. So, enjoy!

And here's a video of him singing in English, a song that everyone loves, if that makes you feel better:

He also really looks like Zach Braff.

My Winter Home: Hofburg Palace

Last Thursday, I finally visited one of my most highly-anticipated destinations: the Hofburg Palace. The Hofburg was the winter home of the Hapsburg family, most recently the last Holy Roman Emperor Franz Josef and his wife Elizabeth, affectionately known as Sissi, and quite possibly the most beloved figure in Austrian history (I’d say she rivals Mozart for that role). You all known how I feel about palaces, so needless to say, I’ve been incredibly excited to go there since I heard I was going to be living near Vienna this year. My ticket came with a free, helpful, and very well-done audio guide, and I listened to every single one of the 75 tracks on it. I’m REALLY into Hapsburg history, people. The combination of the guide and the ever-informative Rick Steves guided tour made for an amazing learning experience. I wont share everything I learned, just the extra cool or interesting stuff. 

Main entrance to the palace. It's not like its huge or beautiful or intimidating or anything...

 The first part of the tour was the Silberkammer, or the Silver Treasury. Basically this was a series of rooms full of the Habsburg porcelain, silver, and gold tableware. Never in my life did I think I would enjoy walking through 10 rooms of plates and forks but I TOTALLY DID. The audioguide made it super interesting and the decadence of this tableware was really incredible. It was the perfect intro to the Hapsburg lifestyle. This was also the only part of the palace that allowed pictures, so this blog will be top heavy on the pictures. Some of the coolest things I learned:

The set of silverware above is one of the original sets owned by true life Hapsburg monarchs, but it is STILL USED TODAY AT STATE DINNERS. How cool is that? Imagine eating soup out of a spoon that was USED AND OWNED BY HAPSBURGS or whatever other foreign monarch was being entertained at the palace. So cool.

Until the 19^th century, porcelain was viewed as inadequate for tableware and was therefore only used for dessert, because dessert dishes didn’t need to be as fancy. Silver (or gold plated other stuff) was used for the rest of the meal. However, this began to change when, during the Napoleonic Wars, most of the silver in the Holy Roman Empire was melted down to use for money. Not wanting to give themselves special treatment, the Hapsburgs also melted down a lot of their silverware (not just utensils, but places, serving dishes, etc), meaning more porcelain was used, and sadly little of the older Habsburg silverware remains today. How utilitarian of them.

This is my favorite fun fact: the Hapsburgs had their own technique of napkin folding, which was only allowed to be used when the Emperor was dining. The method of folding the napkin is a tightly kept secret to this day. Only 2 people know how to do it and it is still only used when a “crowned head” is dining. Pretty cool and exclusive, if you ask me.

There's a cute little space for the rolls! So inventive!!

The next part of the tour was the Sissi Museum. As I mentioned before, Sissi is a hugely beloved character, so lots of interesting myths have sprung up concerning her life. The goal of the museum is to debunk these myths and paint a more accurate picture of her and her very tragic and misunderstood life. In short, Sissi was born to a royal family in Bavaria, but married future emperor Franz Josef when he was 23 and she 16. They were first cousins (jokes about Hapsburg inbreeding are not just clichés) and met at FJ’s 23^rd birthday. He fell instantly in love with her even though he was already betrothed to someone else. She said, of FJ, “I like the emperor, if only he wasn’t the emperor.” They married and moved to Vienna, and thus began Sissi’s downward spiral. She absolutely hated public life and being the object of the public’s scrutiny. She was apparently known as the most beautiful woman of her time, and she felt pressured by that image, causing her to engage in strange diets and experiment with various beauty regiments to maintain her appearance. She felt trapped and chained, which led her to adopt certain interests to escape. She was an award-winning horsewoman, incredible poet, and she travelled a lot, essentially running from her problems. When her only son (and heir) Rudolf committed suicide she lost it. She wore black the rest of her life, and never escaped the mourning. She was seriously depressed. 

FJ and Sissi, in the dress she wore for her inauguration

Sissi post-Rudolf's death

To make things more tragic, she was assassinated by an Italian anti-monarchist who had nothing against Sissi but rather needed a monarch to kill to bring attention to his cause. Because Sissi was in Geneva when he planned his attack and his intended target (a random Italian Prince) was not, she was the victim. Basically I find Sissi’s story to be incredibly tragic and absolutely fascinating. A few fun facts about Sissi: her hair was ankle-length and took 2-3 hours to style each day, and an entire day to wash. Her waist was 20 inches and she was obsessed with exercise and strange diets but also really really loved ice cream. One exhibit case had letters and diary entries from friends about how much ice cream she ate as well as receipts from pastry shops. A woman after my own heart.

The final part of the tour was the Imperial Apartments. Here I learned more about Franz Josef, who was also a very interesting character. He was apparently universally beloved by his people, even though he was a terrible military man, and is sometimes blamed for helping to start WW1. Oops. He took his “job” as “chief executor of the empire” very seriously and loved paperwork and bureaucracy (weirdo). He held an audience twice/week, during which any and every citizen of the empire could come speak with him, no matter how poor. And although he had minimal furniture in his room and slept on a very unflashy, small bed, he did have 14 personal servants so I can’t say he lived too modestly. In general the furniture in the apartments wasn’t super impressive but the rooms themselves were gorgeous, decorated in the Baroque/Rococo style that is expected of European royalty from the time period of FJ and Sissi (I would love to see what it looked like in the earlier times—some parts of the palace date back to the 13^th century). My favorite part was the set of hallways that had very detailed and imaginative tropical murals painted on the walls!

All in all, the Hofburg was awesome. It was definitely more informative than fantasy-indulging (like I was expecting), but it was a super super interesting kind of informative. And, because FJ and Sissi are very important to Austrian history, I’m glad I’m more aware. I find their story quite intriguing. Also, my ticket gets me into the inside of Schönbrunn which I think should definitely fulfill my Princess-fantasy requirements. So we all have that to look forward to. Thanks for reading, I hope you learned something!!

More Questions!

Since I am still meeting new students, I'm still presenting my introductory lesson, and therefore exposing myself to the fun yet dangerous Question and Answer time where the rules are: Ask me literally anything you can think of even if it's stupid, I just want to hear you speak English. Here are some more gems I received in the past two days:

1. Do you know George Clooney?
2. Do you know Justin Bieber?
3. McDonalds or Burger King?
4. Have you ever seen One Direction? (another snarky student replied--"They're from England, not California. DUH")
5. Have you ever seen the Hollywood sign?
6. Do you watch Sailor Moon?
7. McDonalds or Burger King?
8. What is your favorite TV Show? Do you like How I Met Your Mother? Who is Ted’s wife? When will we find out who his wife is?
9. Do hamburgers taste good?
10. McDonalds or Burger King? (No joke, I got this about 5 times. Apparently its a big debate)
11. Who is your favorite celebrity? Johnny Cash?
12. Do you know Gangam Style? Do you like it?

I hope teaching never gets old, because right now it's totally awesome.

Wanderung im Wienerwald: I have no idea where I am BUT IT IS BEAUTIFUL

I don’t teach on Mondays so I decided to go on a hike today. The trouble was, the two maps I have of trails surrounding Purkersdorf are horrible, and no matter how hard I tried to follow them, I kept losing my place. So I ended up using a combination of posted signs pointing out landmarks, a red and white trail marking painted on trees (no idea what trail it refers to, but I was following it), intuition with regards to direction, and an open-minded-lets-explore-even-if-we-get-lost attitude to make my way through the woods. The strategy worked surprisingly well, and I ended up stumbling upon some incredible views. Pictures to follow:

The best part of the hike was my decision to follow signs to the "Aussichtwarte" which I assumed would be a nice view point clearing kind of thing. What I found, however, was a HUGE tower (see below) that went up 126 steps to a platform with an unreal 360 degree view of the whole valley below. SO GREAT.

A few lessons I learned today:

1. When you hike through the woods the day after a full day of non-stop rain, there will be a lot of mud, and you will slip in it. Repeatedly.
2. When a path diverges, the correct direction to go is always up. More often than not, you will be rewarded with a beautiful view.
3. Do not let yourself get a One Direction song stuck in your head before hiking. It will drive you crazy by kilometer 2.

Back to the classroom tomorrow! I have to talk about violence on Wednesday...need to think about planning that one...

BONUS: A video of my view from the top of the tower!

Night at the Museums!

This weekend I went to Vienna to see some TA friends and take part in a really cool cultural event called Lange Nacht der Museen (long night of museums). Basically for one 11 Euro ticket you can get into any museum in the whole city, and they’re all open late, until 1 AM. The tickets also get you free rides on all public transportation within the city, including special night lines and shuttles to more remote museums. What a genius idea!! Three other TAs and I started off the night with dinner right in the city center (complete with a glass of Sturm, which is a special wine you can only get at this time of year and it is beyond delicious and I am so sad “Sturmzeit” is almost over). We then proceeded to Museum 1 for the night: Kuenstlerhaus, a modern art museum housed in a gorgeous old building. There was only one exhibit, called “Megacool 4.0,” which was a collection of photographs and visual-media pieces from at least 40 different artists, all portraying the youth of Europe. It was interesting, but mostly strange, and not the cool kind of strange, just the weird kind of strange. There was one room with glass bubbles filled with bizarre artifacts hanging from the ceiling at around the height of my head, and it just made me feel really anxious. We didn’t stay there long.

Gorgeous Stadtpark we walked through before dinner

After getting the classy, cultural stuff out of the way, we embraced our inner child and continued onto the Chocolate Museum, which sits far on the outskirts of the city. When we arrived there was a line out the door and around the corner. You would have thought there was a club opening or something. We were most definitely the oldest people there who were not parents, but the visit was WELL worth it. As soon as we entered, we got a free sample of truffles from a lady wearing a chocolate box as a hat, then followed the line through the “how to make chocolate” exhibit into a room with the world’s longest chestnut-chocolate candy. We got to have a sample piece of this too, and the lady giving out samples must have really liked us because she kept giving us more and more. It was awesome. There was also “chocolate art” on the walls, where people had painted with chocolate, information about chocolate specialties in Austria, a video about how Heindl (the Austrian chocolate company that runs the museum) makes their various types of chocolate, and lots of fun interactive exhibits. At the end there were still more samples, and one of those cut-out-head picture stations that I absolutely love of Emperor Franz Josef and his wife Sisi (the most beloved Austrian symbol). All in all, an awesome museum to visit, even if it was entirely Heindl propaganda. [Effective propaganda, I must admit. I now crave anything and everything Heindl]

 

Any museum that gives me chocolate upon my entrance is a winner in my book

That's one long piece of candy

Next, we matured about 15 years and headed to the Schnaps museum, which was a tiny building in a kind of sketchy area, but again had a line way out the door. We got a tour by the great-great-grandson of the founder, who spoke German about a mile a minute. I had a really hard time understanding him but what I did catch was absolutely hilarious, and super informative. He talked about the different kind of schnapps the company makes, how its made, and what makes the varieties different. Apparently the company recently decided to change the shape of their bottles, but his grandfather was not okay with it, so he has started sabotaging the labels on some of the bottles by putting them on crooked. So if you get a crooked label on your bottle, it’s grandpa’s fault. At the end of the tour we got to sample a shot-sized bit of one of their flavors. I had a hazelnut flavored crème thing and it was pretty good! Again, a super interesting, fun museum, that I probably would never had known about had it not been for this evening!

Our final stop of the night (sadly there was just too much to see and not enough hours in the night!) was the Foltermuseum. Yes, german speakers, your eyes are not deceiving you. This museum was about the history of torture. As if the topic alone wasn’t creepy enough, this museum was situated in an underground bunker from World War 2. Imagine descending stars into an underground torture museum at midnight—yeah. The museum itself was not set up very well, but it was super interesting. There were dioramas/mannequins demonstrating how these torture devices looked and worked, dating from the middle ages to the 1800s. There was also an addition to the exhibit about modern-day torture methods put on by Amnesty International, but by the time we got to that we had had enough. It was definitely an worth-while visit, especially because I would not have gone there randomly on my own.

By the time we were done with torture, it was almost 1 AM, which meant most museums were closing, and we were super exhausted, so we just headed home to one TA’s apartment, where we all spent the night. It was fun to finally see Vienna at night, though, and now that I have a comprehensive list of all the museums in the city, I’m excited to explore a lot more, at much more reasonable hours of the day, of course.

Go America!

The teacher for the 4^th Form class I was scheduled to teach in today (4^th Form generally means they are around 14 years old) told me on Tuesday that the class is discussing New York City, and she asked me to teach a lesson about 9/11. My first thought was, “This is the first time I’m meeting this group of 14 year olds, and you want me to cover this heavy topic? They’re going to think I’m super depressing and never want me in their class again.” But as I began to work on the presentation I actually found it to be a really great experience. Because I wanted to share about my personal experience and not just the facts of what happened, I found myself engaging in a lot of reflection and figuring out a lot about myself, particularly how that day has affected me. I guess I don’t do this kind of reflecting often, but I found it to be really meaningful and helped me pull together a much more interesting and special presentation. I focused most of the lesson on the American reaction and how the nation continues to pay tribute to the events in 2001, including the symbolism of the New World Trade Center and the monuments and memorials that have been created since. I talked a lot about hope and strength and perseverance and how these were and have in a new way become core American ideals. I think it was really good for me that I was forced to explain this in simple English to a non-American audience, because I had to really break it down and explain, from the beginning, how special the post-9/11 reaction has been in our country. I’m definitely not the most outwardly-patriotic person, in general. I don’t go around talking about how much I love America or American exceptionalism, and I don’t actually own an American flag, other than on a 1998 Old Navy 4^th of July tshirt. But I definitely got chills and teared up a bit while doing some research about 9/11 response and the number of financial donations, blood donations, etc. I really am so so proud of our country and the way it responded. Yes there were of course plenty of negative consequences, including anti-Muslim hate crimes, among others, but there is definitely something to be said for the American spirit and the way it bounced back after such a horrible tragedy. 

[Then again, this new wave of patriotic fervor I’m feeling might be directly related to the fact that I watched Captain America on the airplane over here, and you can’t help but feel uber patriotic after watching that movie. Also, I listened to Proud To Be An American about 18 times last night while looking for a tribute video to show the class—and that song has an unmatched powerful affect on me]

I think the students learned a lot from the lesson, and they had some good questions afterwards. I asked them what they would do with Ground Zero if they were in charge, and one person said build a park, the other said build a cemetery, so that was interesting. All in all though, it was interesting for me to see how preparing a lesson really forces me to understand some more about myself. Seeing American things from the perspective of Austrians is fascinating and I can’t wait to see what other revelations I have throughout the rest of the year! Yay America!

Let the molding of young minds begin!

I have survived my first three days of school, and first two days of teaching!! I have received my schedule for the semester, which includes about 11 classes per week plus a few hours of conversation time, where I will sit in the library and any students who want to come practice speaking with me can do so. I’m working with about 10 different English Teachers with students ranging in age from 11-18. Thus far I’ve only met with older kids, 14-18, so it will be interesting to see what speaking with first-year students is like! Thus far I’ve been presenting a pretty generic introductory lesson, just about me and my home state. I put together a little quiz about California, in both a true/false version and a multiple choice version, and the students have had a fun time with that, it seems. In general I’ll be talking about or teaching about whatever a given teacher asks me to prepare, sometimes related to what the students are studying at the time, and sometimes not. I’m hoping to prepare a few “master” lessons that I can use in multiple classes. These will mostly likely be on topics like the Presidential election, holidays, American sports, etc. All the teachers I have met so far have been lovely, and I'm really looking forward to working with them the rest of the year!

The best part of teaching so far has been hearing the ridiculous questions these kids come up with. Here are some samples:

What is your husbands name?
How old are your children? How many children do you have?
Do you know any celebrities?
Have you ever met any celebrities?
Do you know Arnold Schwarzenegger?
In Los Angeles do you see famous people and their houses?
If there are 100 people standing outside a celebrity’s house do they come out?
What if I camp outside the house for 3 days, will they come out then?
How do you feel about Justin Bieber?
Do you like Canada?
Do you like hipsters?
Are you a hipster?
Do you have a boyfriend?

I'm anxious to hear what the rest of the kids come up with. Here are some other notes/observations I've made about Austrian middle/high school kids so far:

1. They stay in the same class all day with the same people, and the teachers move around and come to them. 
2. The only time they switch classrooms is if they are older and have some electives, or gym class. They all stand up when the teacher walks into the classroom. I think it’s quite nice, actually, but I can’t see that ever happening in an American public school .
3. Apparently because there are no handicapped people at my school, they use the handicapped bathroom to store everyone’s scooters. A LOT of people ride scooters to school. It’s not uncommon to see middle aged or elderly people riding around on scooters. And these are not “scooter store” kinds of scooters. I’m talking razor scooters, or other similar styles. Its so great.
4.  A lot of people wear green. Maybe this is false, but I just feel like I’ve noticed a lot of kids wearing green. I don't know why.

I have some fun stuff planned for this weekend so hopefully I'll have more exciting news to share next week! Thanks for reading!!