School 2 - BORG Straßwalchen

My month living in Salzburg was very very very long. My whole experience there is a mystery to basically everyone, including myself sometimes, because I was so miserable I didn't write in my diary for 2 weeks! But that's not what I'm here to write about just now. Onto school number 2!

By the end of my stay, school was the best thing while I was living in Salzburg. I think there's always a place for exchange students (at least at some point) which is so much better than anywhere else. A place where they feel a bit more comfortable than anywhere else and they can escape there - something to look forward to and that was kind of school for me. Even though it still wasn't amazingly great and pretty difficult, it was a way in which to be distracted from brooding in my own thoughts and as I mentioned in my last school post, an easy way to meet people.

So there I was, living in my little village Henndorf am Wallersee. The city of Salzburg is about 15km south and the town of Straßwalchen is about 11km north, which is where I went to school for the month or so I was living there. Getting myself out of bed every morning was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. Because every morning I had to wake up between 5:30-5:45am to get ready for school. Horrible. Now, I never really considered myself a 'morning' or 'night' person, but by being here I've come to realise I'm definitely more of a night person. I used to adore mornings, especially getting up at sparrow's fart to go on some exciting adventure (i.e. band tours, school trips, balloon festival, travelling), but the thing is that wasn't EVERY DAY and I was generally in a wonderful mood! Anyway. Here I would drag myself out of bed, groggily cursing at the unfairness of it all but always managing to get ready in time to crunch my way through the snow in order to catch the bus at 6:30am. BECAUSE SCHOOL STARTED AT 7:30 (and finished at 1pm - MADNESS!), and the next bus was (supposedly) too late. Twas a long month. It was always dark (and note: I love and live for sun), it was always cold (see previous) and there was always someone smoking at the bus stop. But it wasn't all bad. I would appreciate the drive to school, listening to music, staring out the window into the strangely dark recesses of snow and fog. It was definitely a thing of beauty.

My afternoon bus stop

No photos of mystery and fog, but this was on my way home from school :)

My school was BORG Straßwalchen. BORG Straßwalchen is also a Gymnasium (Austrian/German Secondary College) and has two streams within it - arts and natural sciences. I was in the arts stream and was initially very excited about it because I thought "WOW an arts school in Austria must be super awesome!!" But it turned out just to be a pretty normal school which happened to have arts subjects. I have come to understand that all students in Austria have roughly the same curriculum, consisting of subjects such as Maths, German, History, Chemistry and English, but then depending on the stream in the Gymnasium they also have extra subjects. So in this case my normal classes were: Maths, English, Physics, Psychology, Philosophy, History, Chemistry, German, Geography and Sport, but also Music, Art and Latin in addition. Latin was definitely my favourite subject and I looked forward to it more than anything else. Gosh I'm such a nerd! But I will explain myself.

I have always been fascinated with languages, a love I caught from my mother! Learning German has been challenging, but I always find the similarities it and English amazing. English is a Germanic language, so really they are quite similar, and both of them have large parts derived from Latin. So by learning Latin I could see the similarities a lot more clearly and the history behind certain words! For example: "Servus" in Austria is a casual greeting to say "hello" or "goodbye" obviously depending which context you use it in. But "Servus" in Latin is the equivalent of the English "slave" or "servant". So essentially this greeting originated in Austria by people offering their services - "I am your servant". Just something I found really fascinating. Plus most people in Australia don't learn any Latin! The other classes were reasonable, but I generally kept to myself quite a bit and would just try my best to get through the day. My class was full of girls - with only four boys out of about 20 of us - and they were all really lovely and welcoming. They were interested in me straight away and wanted to include me in everything they did. I now realise how special that was, because it's often hard to find a group of people so willing to include you so quickly. And now I actually miss that school and the friends I made there!

Straßwalchen, nearing the end of Winter

MY SCHOOL! At the beginning, there was lots of snow around... But this was taken on my last day (end of Feb)

I have one last funny story. On the last day we were meant to have sport, instead of going to the gym, we went out as a class to breakfast. The sport classes were split into separate girls and boys classes which I found kind of strange, seeing as that stopped for me in year 8. We went to one of the local cafés - which was always really wonderfully yum! At this point, I still wasn't too great at German, but I was good enough to get the general jist of what was in the menu. I decided to order the "Lady's Breakfast" which consisted of toast with ham, cream cheese, salmon and a bit of capsicum and onion on the side, a hot chocolate (or coffee - but hot chocolates in Austria are heaven), a pastry and to my great surprise:

A glass of champagne...

Not one of my best photos, but you get the general idea!

 I was so unbelievably shocked because I was not expecting that AT ALL. And as far as I know, you don't get anything like that in Australia (at least not in my experiences...!). Everyone thought it was absolutely hilarious, and although I was a little taken aback and embarrassed at the time, looking back it's just one of those moments which makes you laugh! A wise friend here once told me that often the hardest and most horrible things to go through here are the ones you remember the most and look back in the greatest amusement. This is just an example of how sometimes language can really get the better of you!

And yes, I drank it :)

My Home Town is a Wedding

I've been getting quite a few questions lately about how I'm going with my new language and whether I'm fluent yet (HAH!), so I thought I'd do a post on it! A note to all those people: I think it is basically impossible to learn a language fluently in essentially two and a half months - especially without having any great amount of previous teaching.

For an exchange student, once you settle down into the general routine of life as it will be for the next however long - your new family, house, culture - the next big thing to actually LEARN is the language. I think considering all the ups and downs (particularly the downs) that I've been through the last few months, I'm doing quite a reasonable job. I'm no where NEAR fluent (like, really no where), but I'm starting to get to the point where I don't have to resort to English in heaps of situations, or ask everyone what on earth they're talking about. Of course, it still happens but I'm starting to feel like it's actually getting better. I've had a few brief very happy points this week though! On Tuesday my host Mum came upstairs and we had a decent conversation about how school was, the fact that the buses are stupid and I should just catch a later one to school, and that I needed to pick up Carl on Friday. Sure - it wasn't perfect German and I undoubtedly chose some of the wrong words - but speaking another language is essentially about communication (as a friend or two and my Mum have reminded me...) and that's what I'm doing. It's a nice feeling being able to sit at the dinner table and actually understand a little bit about what's going on.

Have a laugh.

We've all been there. Those amusing moments where you might be thinking of a particular word, then accidently let it slip out, even if you're talking about something completely different. Maybe you've just said a word that SOUNDS similar to the one you were thinking of - but has a completely different meaning... Well. To put it simply, this is SO much more likely to happen while you're learning another language. I just think it's hilarious though and often the people you're talking with will too! For example some time last week I was sitting at the dinner table with Carl, and we were naming absolutely anything that came into our heads. I ended up saying 'kuhschrank' instead of 'kühlschrank' - which translates to 'cow cupboard' instead of 'fridge' so it was no wonder Carl was laughing so much! It was pretty funny! Then there was the time where I had to explain that where Canberra is and that it's the capital city of Australia (this was a few weeks ago). I had heard the word before and was just grappling for anything I could remember, but ended up saying the word for 'wedding' (Hochzeit) instead of 'capital city' (Hauptstadt). Wonderful!

So speaking is hard. It's probably the hardest part (at least in German). For me I find that writing is pretty good, because German is written phonetically and so it's usually pretty easy to guess the correct spelling of a word (or to look things up in the dictionary!) But speaking is a whole new level of difficulty. It's amazing how much you can understand, but then to only respond with short answers gets really frustrating really quickly. There are so many emotions and feelings and opinions running through your head, which you simply just can't express. It can be as simple as going to the gelatissimo and wanting to order your ice-cream in a cup instead of a cone (I've learnt that now!). Then there are dialects. Don't get me started! I've grown up with my Mama, Oma and Opa speaking 'Hochdeutsch' (which is like the Queen's English), although never actually learnt any myself. With my ear accustomed to this, I then moved to Austria. The Viennese dialect is very, VERY different from anything spoken in Germany, and is either horribly grating or wonderfully lyrical - depending on whom you ask and/or where they're from! The family I live with are from Northeast Germany, and so have a reasonably 'clean' dialect, which is always nice to come home to, but I've also started to get used to the Viennese dialect. I couldn't say which I prefer - I love both. I think the way the Austrians talk is more fun though! 

To put another step into my learning process, in Salzburg the dialect was very different again. I found the dialect a lot 'stronger' and that they swing their words a lot more - I suppose kind of like the Scottish equivalent to English! It took at least 2 weeks there before I could understand even the most BASIC words on a regular basis. However hopefully this means I'll become more accustomed to understanding a wider variety of dialects. It's funny, because even the Austrians don't understand each other from one side of the country to the next! It will definitely be interesting to see what kind of German I end up speaking!

Ouch. Well That Hurts.

Three words: new neural pathways. It's proven that when you're younger (I'm talking around 5 years of age) it's a lot easier to learn a new language. Because I can't explain it in better words, here's a quote (yay!):

"Another reason it gets harder to learn a language as we get older is something called “neural commitment.” The idea here is that when our brain is first exposed to language, learning occurs by strengthening and weakening connections between neurons. With years of using our first language (or languages), these connections become more hard-wired and therefore harder to change later when learning a new language. Learning new languages essentially competes for some of those same neural pathways, and it’s hard to re-wire the pathways."

That's sourced from here. So basically, my brain is changing. Learning a new language is painful - literally and metaphorically. Being submersed in a new language day-in and day-out is a very difficult thing to deal with. There's no real escape and you just have to learn to cope. I am surrounded by so many new words a day, and it's impossible to remember them all. I feel stupid a lot of the time. I get headaches. I'm really tired. My brain is just simply working overtime. But the thing is, each new word I learn is one more I DON'T have to learn at another point. I'm picking up new words each day and remembering them. And that's a pretty good feeling!

Verstehst du?

One last point. Do you understand? No. But never mind. I swear I'm asked this question about 20 million times a day. People ask so many times if you understand, that you kind of get to the point where even if you have NO idea what they're talking about, you'll just say yes. Because even if someone tries to explain whatever they're talking about, it may very well just go in one ear and out the other. Something I learnt very quickly was, that at this stage I'll NEVER understand everything that someone says, so there's things you just have to let go. Understanding the main topic of conversation is the most important thing, and it just builds from there.

So that's my first post on language. I'm sure there'll be more some time, because I've always got more to talk about!