Dienstag, 12. November 2013

Sissi..oh, Sissi...


Since I wrote a blog entry on Rudolf's life, I thought I could also write about other members of his family. A couple of years ago I saw the musical "Elisabeth". That's actually where it all started. When I first watched "Elisabeth", I didn't really know anything about the Habsburger family. Afterwards, I started looking up the family's history on the Internet. Also, I bought and read "Marie Valerie's Diary" written by Elisabeth's youngest daughter (I'm going to write about her later). So let's begin our journey through Elisabeth's life:

Elisabeth was born in Munich, Bavaria, as the second daughter of duke Max Joseph of the house of Wittelsbach. When Elisabeth was 15 years old, her aunt Sophie, mother of emperor Franz Joseph, decided to marry Franz Joseph to one of the two daughters of the house of Wittelsbach. Elisabeth and her older sister had to meet the 23-year-old emperor in Bad Ischl, where he decided to take his 15-year-old cousin Elisabeth to his wife.
Elisabeth,now 17 years old, gave birth to her first daughter Sophie soon  followed by Gisela, the second daughter. Franz Joseph's mother decided that Elisabeth was too young to raise her children and took them away from her. When Sissi wanted to see the chlildren, she had to ask for permission. Franz Joseph was never able to contradict his mother until the emperor's daughters got very sick on a journey and Sophie, the oldest, died in Sissi's arms. Afterwards, he promised Sissi the regular contact to her children and the right to raise them. Soon afterwards, Sissi gave birth to crown prince Rudolf. However, after Sophie's death, the mother didn't show much interest in her children anymore and after Rudolf's death, Elisabeth decided to only wear black.
Later in Hungary, she gave birth to her youngest daughter, Marie Valerie. Marie Valerie was said to be Sissi's favorite child - the only she really took care of. They tried to spent as much time together as possible - one reason why Marie was called "the only one".

Throughout her lifetime, Elisabeth was obsessed with traveling. She spend more time traveling than taking care of political manners and hardly kept contact to her family at home. Marie Valerie was the only one who got to accompany her mother.
As she got older, the emperor's wife repeatedly suffered from various diseases. Accoring to Marie Valerie's diary, her mother more and more often talked about death. Sometimes she said how much she wanted to die, and that death is beautiful. Experts say that depression and mental diseases were genetically handed down in the house of Wittelsbach. This would also explain why Rudolf suffered from depression.
Also, Elisabeth became continually more obsessed with her beauty. In Marie Valerie's diary, one can read that Elisabeth frequently had her hair combed by one of her servants. When Elisabeth saw only one hair in the comb, she refused to eat for days. That's why the servants usually took the hair out of the comb before Elisabeth could see it. But even without any proof of lost hair, she frequently decided to go on diets. That's how she managed to keep her weight of less than 50 kg with a height of 172 cm. She was literally starving herself, which led to various edemata. Nevertheless, she wanted to keep her weight by hardly eating anything and working out everyday.

In 1898 Elisabeth was staying in Bad Nauheim to cure a heart disease. However, she left the city in a hurry without any package. On her way to a ship, she got stabbed in her heart by an anarchist called Luigi Lucheni. The wound was so small that nobody could see it and everyone thought he just punched her. She went on the ship, talked to some people about the incident and suddenly collapsed saying "what happened to me?". Soon afterwards she died in a hotel room.


I don't know what exactly is fascinating me so much about the life of this family. I think it's the fact that when you are a child you always think "wow, those princesses, and emperors..they had a great life..I'd like to be one too". Then you grow up and in school you only hear about the major events in history. You never really hear about the life's of those who were in charge. Marie Valerie's diary gives you the opportunity to dive into this world, and get a taste of what being an emperor, or his wife, daughter etc. really meant. Even though they had everything they wanted, their life's were more than miserable. Once you read about how desperate Elisabeth was, about the cold relationship between her and Franz Joseph, about how the children suffered under the pressure, you realize that this is the best proof that might and money can't make you happy.

-> I highly recommend this book to all of you who are interested in Sissi's life. Her daughter as a secret observer offers the best insight. :)

Montag, 11. November 2013

Crown Prince Rudolf....Truth or Myth?


Yesterday I watched the musical "Rudolf" with my friend Julia. The musical is about the Austrian crown prince Rudolf, who killed himself  with a girl named Mary Vetsera in a castle named Mayerling. It is not so much about their love to each other, but more about the failing system of the monarchy and the problems between this regime and Rudolf's more liberal attitude. Moreover, it is about the gap between the generation of his conservative father and Rudolf's own gerneration, who called for more freedom and justice.

Although the musical doesn't show the reality, but only the myth, it is more than beautiful. Wonderful songs, nice scenery and absolutely brilliant singers - especially Drew Sarich, who is playing Rudolf.

 Drew Sarich is an American, who moved to Austria and has already had all of the "big" roles, like Jean Valjean in "Les Miserables", Rocky in "Rocky- The Musical", Death in "Elisabeth", Judas and Jesus in "Jesus
Christ Superstar" and the Phantom of the Opera in "Love Never Dies". What is absolutely fascinating about Drew Sarich, is the fact that he speaks perfect German although he hasn't been in Austria for long.
For musicals like "Rudolf" he had to pronounce words especially clearly since he should sound like an Austrian monarch. In an interview he said that once he had gotten the role, he had to study really hard to memorize all those fancy old words that are rarely used nowadays. Since Americans have difficulties uttering sounds like "r, ü, or ö" he had to practice several hours every day and learn in what way you have to shape your mouth and move your tongue so that it sounds Austrian. -> hard work I bet!
The hard work definitely paid off though, because now he pronounces everything perfectly fine. In a former interview you can hear that he learned German via learning texts of musicals because he uses words or pronounces them the way people in the 19th century did...veeerry funny haha : D. Yesterday I watched a recently done interview, and he really improved. Now he doesn't sound like a guy from the 19th century anymore, but more like a German : D - he can't really do the Austrian accent : P.


 I've already seen "Rudolf" a couple of times and afterwards I always start thinking about the Habsburger era and the truth behind the myth. So I always end up googling crown prince Rudolf or his parents on the Internet. And this story is indeed a very interesting one:

Crown prince Rudolf was the third of four children of emperor Franz Joseph and his wife Elisabeth, also known as "Sissi". The oldest sibling died at a very young age (2 years). The other children -except Marie Valerie -  were taken away from Sissi and brought up by Franz Joseph's mother and very strict educators. Rudolf, as he was the heir to the throne, had an especially tough childhood. He had to study several hours a day, work out, and had to know how to use various weapons. Rudolf was -llike his mother- a very sensitive child and to make him braver one of the educators once left him in the woods for a whole night and sometimes he was waken up with gun shots. Rudolf grew up but because of his liberal attitude he was kept away from any political decisions. The young man composed anonym letters, in which he critized the monarchy and his father, and had them published under a pseudonym in the press. Rudolf had to marry princess Stephanie, who was also blood related to him, and a couple of years later his only daughter was born. And now the myth begins:

Rudolf, now 30 years old, got to know Mary Vetsera, a 17 year old girl who fell desperately in love with the crown prince. In the night of June 29, 1889 they, according to the historical documents of the monarchy, committed suicide in the castle of Mayerling. Today nobody really knows what happened because witness statements contradict each other. What we do know is the fact that, in order to keep Vetsera's death a secret, she was dressed, bound fast in a carriage (so that it lookes like she's alive) and transported out of Mayerling. Doctors performed an autopsy on Rudolf's body and, so that he could be burried in the family's tomb, it was stated that by looking at his brain one could see that he had been mentally dazed and therefore shot himself.
File:Mayerling01.jpgSome people said that one day Rudolf  had gone to his cousin, given her a box with documents, and told her to keep them safe and to not tell anyone - if she did, this would mean treason and he would be killed. After Rudolf's death those documents were apparently given to count Taaffee, his father's political advisor. Nobody knows where they are, or what they were about and why it would have meant treason, but there's a myth saying that Rudolf was part of the "Steinmaurer" and that they wanted to topple the regime. This would fit to the last emperor Zita's statement that this was not suicide, but brutal murder. She claimed that the "Steinmaurer" wanted to bring down emperor Franz Joseph by using Rudolf, but when Rudolf refused to help they killed him.


After Rudolf's death, his father had the room where they died converted into a chapel.  According to his youngest sister, his mother, Sissi, afterwards only wore black- expressing her grief.

Donnerstag, 7. November 2013

I love my kitchen < 3

Italian cuisine...gotta love it.

 

Since Julia, the girl who is living with me in our apartment, is from South Tyrol, we decided to cook something Italian : P. It didn't take long until we agreed on what to cook: lasagna. 
Jealous? I'd be! it was delicious!!

Cooking in our kitchen is always a lot of fun. The good thing about living in a dorm is that you have always so many people around you. We are a group of 12-15 people who regularly use the kitchen. I don't know what or where the other people eat- but nobody has ever seen them in the kitchen. Sometimes my friends and I arrange to meet there so that we can have lunch or dinner together. At the beginning of the semester there were always so many people, that you had to wait until the oven was free. Throughout the semester less and less people take the time to prepare a healthy meal. So you see more and more people rushing in, putting a frozen pizza into the oven, rushing out, coming back and eating it as fast as they can. 
Julia and I love food so much that we don't want to give up cooking and just eat fast food. We prefer a delicious, well-prepared, self-made meal. 

A couple of weeks ago we made a "Scheiterhaufen", which is an Austrian meal consisting of bread, apples, milk, egg, sugar and cinemon. Some people who saw it even wanted to have a try because they had never seen it. People those days just forget how to use a recipe book and thus forget the especially delicious meals.
Sad...kind of... because they will never be able to enjoy something like this: 

Studying, studying... aaaand... exactly : studying! :D



Yesterday Sowannry and Jennifer came to my place. We studied English together for the upcoming "Progress Check 1". We learned a lot by testing each other on vocabulary and trying to give synonyms, antonyms, collocations and common phrases for every single word in the glossary. Since there will be a main focus on writing paragraphs in PC1, each of us wrote a paragraph on being a student. We even set an alarm, so that we only had 50 minutes to finish our perfect version of the paragraph. Afterwards we corrected them together and gave each other advice on how to improve. We learned a lot and still had soooo much fun! I’d say this is the perfect way of studying- combining work and fun. When we couldn’t keep a word or a phrase in mind we just came up with really weird sentences like: “Paul Wesley, of ‘Vampire Diaries’ fame.” And tadadadaaaaa…memorizing certain words was not that hard after all.
Thank you girls, this was so much fun! I’m looking forward to repeating it
:)
 

*yaaay* improvement *yay*

So I got my last homework on paragraphing back and it waaas a....  *drum roll*.... two...(minus : P). So much better than my last homework. So I guess (or I hope) that I've learned from my mistakes - at least from some of them : P.

As always we have to write an improved version..so here it is:



"Having looked at a number of monolingual print dictionaries in class this week, I have decided that such dictionaries are not for me. Even the smaller print dictionaries are very heavy and too bulky to carry them with me all the time. I’m not always at home when I need a dictionary- so if I needed one, for example when I’m in the Office Pub talking English with my friends and I can’t think of a certain word, I wouldn’t have one at hand. Also, compared to Internet search it takes quite some time to look for a word in a book that consists of so many pages, even if it’s alphabetically organized. Once you’ve found the word you were looking for, the explanations and example sentences are certainly very helpful, but I’d still rather use my favorite online dictionary than buy something expensive which offers the same information. I do agree that investing in print dictionaries will never be in vain; but why pay money for something that is unpractical and expensive if you have other options as well."

Freitag, 1. November 2013

"Don't waste a good mistake....Learn form it"

So today I received my first English homework and I can tell you it was as if I had never changed my field of studies. I remember when I was still a student in Innsbruck and I got back homeworks in English... it was always sooo depressing. Going from an excellent English student in school to a hardly passing student in university is tough. And even though I'm used to all the marked mistakes now, it was still shocking to experience this aaaall over again :D. But other than last year, this year I'll see it as an opportunity to improve my English writing skills. I'll learn from my mistakes and won't make them again...hopefully :P.

 Anyway.. here is my corrected homework:

 "Dear Fiona,

Ever since I started learning English in primary school I’ve taken great pleasure in communicating with people from other countries. That's why I, after I finished school, decided to study Russian and English at the University of Innsbruck. During my studies I found out that in the following years there would be a cut-back on language courses and an increase of literary courses. I, however, find language more interesting than literature, which is why I eventually opted to move to Graz and study Transcultural Communication.
In high school, I had one of those teachers who think that their sole purpose in life is to teach children. His passion about the English language influenced me and I started to consider English my favorite subject. My interest in the USA grew and when I got an invitation to visit our family’s friends, who live in Houston, I gladly accepted the offer and stayed there for three weeks.
I would consider speaking and listening comprehension as my strengths in the English language while I do still have some difficulties with tenses. I’ve already bought some English grammar books and hope to eventually get over those problems, because my aim is to someday write and speak without making any mistakes.
I hope that by working really hard and with the help of my teachers I might one day be able to use Russian as well as English in a professional manner either as a translator or as a teacher for adults. However, in the end it doesn’t really matter what professional path I end up with. What matters is the fact that I love languages and that I’m now doing something that gives me the chance to accomplish all the goals I’ve set regarding English and Russian.
Kind regards, Eva Egger"

 So what have I learned by looking at my mistakes?
--> don't write "eventually" at the beginning of a sentence
--> don't capitalize words like "high school" or "primary school"
--> avoid word repetition --> No matter what kind of text you have to write..keep paragraphing in mind!
--> after you wrote your text read through it again. Does everything you wrote make sense?