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 :)

School 1 - Ödenburger Straße

Ödenburger Straße was my first school in Vienna. If you've read my first couple of blog posts you will know that I spent one of my first days in Vienna in hospital (which you can read more about here), so I didn't actually get to start school with the new term. But that was ok really, because I was going to be the new girl no matter what!

Here's a brief overview of the Austrian School System. It may be boring so you can skip this paragraph if you like!
It is compulsory for all children who are permanent residents of Austria to go to school from the school year following their sixth birthday, with their education lasting at least nine years. Primary education (Volksschule) lasts for 4 years. Lower secondary education lasts for another four years and at this level there are two streams of schooling to choose from - Hauptschule or Allgemeinbildende Höhere Schule (or AHS-Unterstufe). Both the lower secondary branches offer basic general education preparing students for their transfer to their final years of schooling in upper secondary education, however Hauptschule (as far as I can tell) teaches at a slower pace. Upper secondary school has a lot of options! Students start there when they're about 14, and education goes for another four to five years. At this point, students from the Hauptschule have the choice to study VET (Vocational Education and Training) programs with apprenticeship training and students attending AHS-Unterstufe will often branch into different specialist Gymnasiums (Yes, high school is called 'Gymnasium'!) preparing them for university study. Gymnasiums have focuses such as Languages (inc. Latin and Ancient Greek), Maths and Geometry or Economics (among other things). So now you are knowledgeable!

Ödenburger Straße is one of the biggest schools in Vienna and has 3 different streams within it - Languages, Arts and Maths/Science. I was in the Arts stream but I only attended this school for three very very cold, foggy weeks before moving!

A typical afternoon - my bus stop outside school

Every morning I had to catch the bus at 7:40am - still in the dark - which was about the same time I had to in Australia. School went from 8:10 until 1pm everyday which meant it usually went quite quickly and I always free afternoons! It is AMAZING the amount of subjects students must attend here and I found it quite strange because school hours were a lot shorter than in Australia and yet I had eleven different classes. Yes. ELEVEN. They were German, Geography, Psychology, Physics, Chemistry, English, History, Maths, Italian, Music and Religion. Students don't get a choice in which subjects they have, and the majority of subjects were only 2-3 hours a week.

A typical, foggy walk home from the bus stop

Now onto the general school and class. As I think most people know, it is very daunting starting at a new school. Everything feels so big and confusing and you don't know where anything is. Well, let me just tell you this: it is absolutely TERRIFYING starting at a new school, in a new language, with thousands of students, all the ones in your class having known eachother for the last 10 years or so, and with everyone you know on the other side of the world. The first day I started school I was totally bewildered with where I was and what I was doing. But to be honest this feeling stayed for the three weeks I was there! The first day I walked into the class with my new teacher and was announced to the class. I don't actually remember much about it and I didn't write in my diary that day (which I do regret now) because I was so overwhelmed. I know that from that day though, I was pretty well ignored by the teachers because I understood very little of what they were saying. I spent most of my days trying to catch words out of the air and pin them down in my memory after translating them. So. Many. Words.

My first (and crazy) proper snow fall! Walking up my street, home from school.

The class was ok. It seemed to me that none of the students really payed all that much attention to the teachers and would often do their own thing - playing on their phones or iPods, talking, doodling... but after thinking about it, there's always students doing that and even more so in the back row, which was where my seat was! I was incredibly shy so didn't really make any friends, plus they all always had work to do. That's another thing - we had only one 15 minute break between 9:50 and 10:05 in which I would usually just stare into space, scared out of my wits. A very productive use of time, even if I do say so myself! But by the end of the three weeks I was starting to settle in a little more and found some people in the class who were more like myself (rather than the outgoing back-row smokers, which of course are good in their own way... but who wants to go out into the snow to smoke every break?). And then there were the teachers. I don't remember all of them but here goes. My German teacher was also my 'class' teacher (like tutor group) and was the first one I met. She gave me her email address and phone number straight away (which seems to be pretty normal here!) so if I had any problems I could talk to her. She was pretty nice.
My English teacher was a bit of an old fart (sorry, but it's true!) and always came up really close to talk to you. He always had lots of questions for me which were often difficult to answer (such as how my school and grades worked EXACTLY. That's hard enough to explain to people living in Australia!). I remember a particularly interesting conversation with him one lesson while the rest of the class was taking a test. He was determined to try and teach me some German, which was very nice of him but his method of doing it wasn't really the best. This consisted of him asking me questions very slowly in German in a whisper, which made it even more impossible for me to understand! He wanted to know all about my life, and this particular exchange was about what I want to do next year at university. We resorted to English and I told him that I wasn't really sure what I wanted, but maybe visual arts, music, science or historical conservation. I told him I'd already been accepted into ceramics and glass making, to which he wanted to know what the point of that was. The cheek! His argument was that there is absolutely no purpose in being a glass artist and it gives no contribution to the world so why on Earth do it? I told him it's like any art, and all for the enjoyment of others. I asked him if he thought the same about music. His answer was no, that music actually contributed to society in a greater way and that we wouldn't be able to live without it. "But why?" I asked. I pointed out to him that we live with glass around us every day - windows, jars, glasses, computers, bottles... That everything we see was originally someone's art. I was getting really pretentious at this point but I would not back down! In the end I don't think he was really convinced with my argument and it never really got resolved, but after that point I would keep looking forward to English classes just so I could talk my native tongue, and maybe just wind him up a little...
The last teacher I remember was my physics teacher and was the EPITOME of mad scientist. He had this absolutely hilarious Austrian dialect and spoke really really slowly. He wore crazy woollen jumpers (sweatshirts or pullovers for those who don't understand Australian!), huge round glasses and pulled the craziest faces. He seemed to hold a certain delight in demonstrating crazy and dangerous pracs, and there was one particular lesson which he just spent blowing bubbles... I'm sure there was a point to it all, but as an outsider looking in without understanding a word, it was simply hilarious.

A beautiful, unusually clear sunrise at my bus stop one morning

So there you have it. My first school. I didn't get an overly large impression of it because it was really big and I only attended there for three weeks. New schools are always hard, but I was looking forward to leaving and starting at the next one... who knew what would face me there?

That Small Thing Called School

Judging by all my previous blog posts, it would appear that all I do here is whine, travel around and celebrate various occasions - and never actually go to school. But on the contrary, that is how most of my time is occupied and of course, I wouldn't be an exchange student without it! The main reason I AM an exchange student is to go to school and experience the life of an average teenager in Austria. Plus going to school gives me something to do every day - a way to get out the house, but most importantly provides me an easy environment to meet people my own age and to learn lots of German in a HUGE variety of subjects! So as I'm sure you're all able to guess, this is going to be a post about one of the biggest aspects of my life here.


Because I've moved around quite a bit, I am already at my third school within four months, and they haven't been easy transitions. I'll start with this.
I always wanted to be the new girl. You watch all these American movies or TV shows about the new girl going to high school. Sure, she may have some difficulties at first, but it's always exciting. She's interesting, no one knows where she came from, where she fits in. I always thought it would be an exciting adventure to be "the new girl" as they always make it out to be (yes, you may think I'm a little ridiculous). And I think in some ways it IS (and has been) exciting, but once again I may have had a few over-the-top expectations, and a few things that were not expected, or simply didn't exist:

•  I'm not going to an English-speaking school. In a lot of ways that makes me MORE interesting, but it also makes it REALLY hard to make friends. You're of interest to people for the first couple of days, maybe weeks, but then it becomes normal, they have better things to do than try and strike up conversations. YOU have to talk to people. And when you literally don't know how to talk to people, that gives you a great disadvantage.
  I thought I would be the same person when I came here. I would have called myself happy, positive, outgoing and friendly. Ready to talk to people if they wanted to, and ready to strike up a conversation. When I left I realised just how many people cared for me though, and started wondering why I was actually leaving. But then I remembered: I've watched exchange students before - being the centre of attention, supposedly so happy, surrounded by 'friends' - and I'm sure some of them were! But some of them were probably just crying inside wishing for their own friends, their own school, their own language. It's amazing how well some people can hide their emotions.
• Too much of a good thing. Being the new girl once was pretty exciting. Very daunting at the same time, but still exciting. Twice was pretty good because I knew more of what to expect, but it was really hard to do everything all over again. Three times was horrible. I knew I wouldn't make instantaneous friends, I'd already made friends in my last school and didn't want to leave them and the comfort I was just starting to find with them. It's not fun.
• I never realised just how much of an impact being a twin would make on my life. I was never the girl alone in the corner - I always had Tim. I never had to figure out how to make friends quickly - I always had Tim to wait with me until the time came. And it's simply a lot easier when EVERYONE'S new (i.e. Primary School [but as if that even counts] and High School). So I never really formed this survival technique of making friends for myself without the support of another. And that's been the hardest part for me.
  I've never spent so much time "on my own" before. I've never had to catch the bus home without knowing there was someone to share my day with somewhere. I've always had someone to laugh at teachers or fellow students with, to help with homework, to just be there. And that's a huge thing to be without so suddenly after 18 years, when I now need to speak German with everyone and when all of my family is on the other side of the world. I know that having to experience that all by yourself is just totally normal life for basically everyone else my age - and I am well aware that we wouldn't have spent the rest of our lives together, but that doesn't mean it's not hard!

This blog post could go on forever. But I'm going to end it there as an introduction, and do separate ones for each of my schools:

• School One: BG Ödenburger Straße
• School Two: BORG Straßwalchen
• School Three: BORG 20 Brigittenauer Gymnasium

Woooooooooooooooooooooo School!