我在奧地利的生活

Schach bedeutet Chess in English. Das ist ein gutes Spiel, weil es bracht viel Denken!

Deutsch--->English
So far, I know the name of each piece, the places they should be put in the beginning of a new game, and the rules of each piece. It is very interesting to see people playing this...especially when the players as well as the audiences concentrate on the strategies of playing the game.
The order for the positions of each piece would be like:

Tower Horse Jumper King Queen Jumper Horse Tower
Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer

There are many spanians in my german class. Spanians are very enthusiastic, warm and friendly, though there are still some cold spanians....but most of them are very nice. From my observations, spanians have the following traits:
1. Always be late
-- like most of the spanians in my german class. Actually they are much aware of their bad habit of arriving late. But whether they want to change the habit is another story.

2. Every spanish lady has ear rings
--My classmate Marebel told me that every spanish girl will have the ear holes right after they are born. That is why you'll always see spanish ladies wear dazzling earrings in the campus. Actually, not only the earrings....but all the decorative things on them are very dazzling.

3. Spanians crazy for parties
--According to my friend Mu-yun, you can always find spanians in the party...and sometimes they can be really crazy dancing or singing. The party with spanians will be never boring.

4. Spanians' english is a little hard to understand
--Like Austrian German, Spanians' english is hard to understand, probably because their accents are strong. However, after you talk with them more and more, you will gradually understand them.

What else?

The life here is very simple and routine. Morning is always for shopping or dealing with some daily chores, and then three consecutive hours of German course in the afternoon. In the evening we usually have more free time. For me, I usually browse some websites or read some german short articles....quite simple. But actually you can have another choice.....go to the party, as long as you can stand people smoking there !! There are many parties held in our dorm--Raab Heim; almost everyday there will be party which is held by different exchange students.
I am not a party animal, so today is my first time to join the party in the dorm. What I saw is like this: people sitting in the kitchen...(maybe today is not like usual..usually the party will be held in someone's room), chatting with each other, smoking .......and smoking....and smoking..., drinking wine or beer...drinking....and drinking...... You will find that smoking and drinking are the most effective ways to get to know new friends here. As for making foreign friends here, so far I have known some foreign friends , but not so many; sometimes I just feel.....people here are friendly...but still there is an invisible distance between you. Especially when there is big party, like the party REFI holds, Taiwanese students often sit together. If thinking positively, you have a lot to talk about, and...chatting in Chinese is always very easy. But the opposite thinking would be...we loose the chance to know more about foreign friends. Anyway, I'm still finding my own way...and I hope smoking is not the only way to make friends here. Maybe I should spend more time to know more about wines......?! We'll see~

Last night Martina invited us for dinner. So, after the german class, we hurried up to the supermarket to buy a white wine and a box of ice cream ...and went to her home.
The wine here in Austria is very well-known and cheap. Like the wine we bought last night..it only costed 2.79 euro. In Taiwan, if you wanna buy a good wine, I think at least have to pay 10 euro.
Martina is a very good cook. As the photo you see, it is the turkey..with some cheese and vegetables on it. The whole dish is the rice with boiling photatos and turkey. So far I'm getting to love the rice here. Although here the rice is not that soft and sticky as Taiwanese rice, but it is very easy to cook...according to Martina, it only took her 15 mins to cook the rice. Adding some salt insides would make it become more delicious. Also..boiling potatos are nice...very good taste, and I think she also put some salt when boiling them.
After the dinner, we had some hand-made snacks and cakes, with fresh hot coffee and milk. And after chatting for a while, Irene and her b.f. came... we went to the living room, drinking red wine, chatting, eating cookies, music......it was a very relaxing evening......

The feeling of Nr.2 is gone when I got here first few days, maybe it was because I didn't get used to the food here...or maybe it is because I felt a little nervous due to the new environment. Whenever this happens, the solutions for me would be---eating some apples, bananas, yogurts, etc. But here I have tried a new way which was suggested by my german friend--FLO. He suggested me to have Coca Cola+ chocolate, which is the home therapy of his mommy and he promised me that it will help me to have Nr.2 without any problem.
Although this guy is not that trustworthy, I took his suggestion and tried once. After drinking lots of Coca Cola and having many chocolate bars, magic things happened; my Nr. 2 feeling really came back........!! Anyway, I still have some doubts about this. So far I am not sure whether it is because I haven't had Nr.2 for too many days so that the feeling came back to me...or Coca Cola+ chocolate really works. Anyway, in the future there are still many chances to test this~~~

Staying in a whole new country--Austria, there are many interesting thing in the daily life, as long as you take care of the small things around you. For example, people here dump the toilet paper directly into the stool. I didn't know this in the beginning, so I took the trash can which was originally in the room into the toilet......and "collected" these waste paper. Anyway, now I get used to dump the paper into the stool directly.....I hope it won't do any harm to the environment. For the local people here, it is just very natural to do so, and their stool never get blocked~~

Am 13. September hatte ich den Deutschkurs. Die Klasse war nicht gross, ungefaehr 20 leute. Sie kommen aus verschiedenen Laendern, z.B. Polen, Finnland, Slowakei, Italien, Spanien, Frankreich, Kanada, Norwegen, Isreal, Panama und natuerlich Taiwan. Zuerst dachte ich, dass ich die Lehrerin nicht verstehe, aber heute finde ich es nicht so schwer. Ich hoffe mein Deutsch verbessert sich bald und ich glaube es ist moeglich.
Obwohl meine Klassenkameraden aus verschiedenen Laendern kommen, sind alle eigentlich sehr aehnlich. Weil wir diese zwei tage zusammen gelernt haben, sind wir uns naeher gekommen.

the end~~~

Insides the camp….many sad scenes and cruel facts of this historical tragedy….
However, the view outside is completely different…you’ll find the beautiful and nice scenery of countryside and you would never guess what was this place before.

The shoes and clothes of the persecuted.

“Krematorium” for burning the dead people….

People were imprisoned in this kind of houses. Some of the rooms were under grounded, and prisoners could barely see the outside world. (See the 1st photo)
The second photo was taken inside of the house. And the last two ones were“Gaskammer"--- poisonous gas room.

Now we've arrived at the concentration camp—Mauthausen! The first two photos were taken from the outside of the camp~
After buying the entrance tickets, we got inside of the camp. There are many memorials from different countries to mourn the innocent people dying because of Nazi.

From Linz to Mauthausen, it took only 20 minutes by train….then we transferred to the bus (because of the floods this year, otherwise we should take the train to the destination)…and then…took a walk about one hour to get to this place. The photos were taken along the way to the camp. See the first photo...people put some cute “Gartenzwerge” to decorate their gardens.

On September 7th, I went to Mauthausen, which was one of the most infamous concentration camps in Nazi period. The detail information about Mauthausen can be found in the following website.
http://www.remember.org/camps/mauthausen/mau-introduction.html

The transportation expense is pretty high in Austria. For the Strassenbahn here, there are three kinds of tickets (Fahrkarte). The cheapest one is Minikarte--50 cent, which is for 4 stations. Another one is Midi--1.5 euro and after you buy it, you can take it for as many stations as you want...but only for one way. The last one is Maxikarte---the most expensive one, which costs 3 euro to take the S-bahn for the whole day. 3 euro---still feel too expensive....!!

Martina came to see me. We went to a nice place not far from the dorm, where there was a very big grass field...with many people having sunbath there. Actually the grass field is very big.... in some region, people wear Bikini having the sunbath, while in other region, people simply wear nothing...naked for getting the sun-tanned!!
Later on, she brought me to a supermarket called Hofer, which sold things with cheapter prices. We bought some souses, instant Spaghetti, fruit, frozen potatoes there....
Next time show you guys the food we eat here~~

These days I spent some time getting to know the environment. Eventually I figured out the directions to get to the trams, the supermarkets, the university--Johannes Kepler Universitaet Linz. I really enjoyed the life here...the life pace is slow..and relaxing.
So far I only have the problem with cooking food, since materials for cooking are much different than those in Taiwan. Much more canned food, frozen food and instant products. My stomach still tries to get used to the food here....First few days it is not that ok and I had mild stomachache...but now..it is getting stronger..........he he he~~
The photos are taken in the campus. The campus is not big...but nice enough. See us.....everyone is happy~~

On September 2nd 2005, we arrived at the Vienna airport around six o'clock. The flight delayed a little bit, so Babse--the mentor and Florian have waited for a long time. Thanks to their coming, otherwise we would be crushed by our heavy luggages. First of all we took the tram(3 Euro) + subway (U-bahn, 1.5 Euro) to get to the Westbahnhof. At the train station, we bought a card called Vorteilscard(19.90Euro), which is the discount card for people younger than 26 years old to get train tickets 50% off. I heard that this card can also be used in other european countries, with 20% off. After that, we took the train (12.9 Euro) to the Hauptbahnhof in Linz, and right after that, transferred to the Strassenbahn to the dorm, which is located at the last station of the S-bahn. Anyway, everything was going well just as we expected, only except for the heavy luggages which really made us feel exhausted.
On the right photo are Florian and me; and the left one are Babse and 育妊.

It took so long to get to Austria, around 14 hours staying on the plane....doing nothing....only eating and sleeping. On the photo were 育妊 and me.

Today was the date for the flight, and the plane would be taken off at 10pm. Before that, 小眼、金多、宙達 came to see me. We went to see the 石門dam flooding out the storage water.......later on we went to eat the 桃園 special cuisine----石門活魚 .
Eventully, we arrived at the airport. My luggages were still overweight, even though I've tried my best to take the unnecessary stuffs out. At last, the flight attendent allowed me to bring37.5 kg on the plane...he he he..... So..I started my journey to the Austria...with two big luggages and two small handcarry, which were also very heavy. (I was really crazy...because I still insist to bring those two heavy shampoos with me........!! (Mod's Hair)
Thanks for Amy, steven, Jimmy, Panda and Cowbei to see me off.....
Also...my dearest 秀咪咪~~~after I come back to Taiwan...he can then walk and talk to me.....
And I'm also very looking forward to the new coming baby......
Everything will be different after I come back!!!!!! I hope I'll become different too~~

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