Seeing as most of my posts seem to be about the time which I spent outside of Vienna, I thought I'd write about some of the things which I did within the city itself.
Of course, there was the teaching, also known as the reason I was there in the first place. With the Royal Wedding drawing ever closer, it became the main topic of conversation in many of my classes. I then caught upon a foolproof time-filler - making the students plan their own wedding. This kept classes amused for entire lessons, and also provided some very interesting vocabulary requests, from 'chocolate fountain' to 'wasted life'. In return for these thoroughly English lessons, they taught me a little about Austrian culture, specifically things which you aren't meant to do in Austria. One of these is making the Hitler salute, another is drawing the swastika, and the teacher demonstrated this by making the salute and drawing a swastika on the board. Now why were we discussing this again?
My students also proved to be talented actors, and one day I had the pleasure of having students ask for me in the staffroom (most of the teachers hate it because it means extra work, but it just made me feel important). They were in Klasse 4 (about the equivalent of Year 9) and they wanted my help in rehearsing a play which they'd written themselves. My first job was to check the script. Expecting a few lines of dialogue of the kind that I'd have been able to produce in German at their age, I was shocked when they handed me a hefty notebook: they'd rewritten and modernised Twelfth Night!
In the same week, I went to see some of the older students from the English Drama Club performing Blythe Spirit. This was an opportunity to show off my school to Hannah, who had agreed to come too, and also to show her that the trams were not as confusing as she thought (the tram network in Vienna is rather extensive and not particularly well documented). Unfortunately, the trams let me down, as the number 58 (which I took to work every morning without the slightest hint of a problem) decided that today it wanted to be a number 52, necessitating a long walk, a metro ride, and a change onto a tram which wasn't having an identity crisis. Luckily the English Drama Club didn't let me down like the trams, and gave an excellent performance, leaving us amazed as always at the quality of English.
At the weekend we let our hair down after all that terribly hard work by visiting Schönbrunn Zoo like the children we are, then walking to the Rathaus (which was slightly further than Christina had predicted) to go to the Steiermark Festival. Steiermark (or Styria) is a Land in the south of Austria, and its festival was about as stereotypically Austrian as it is possible to be. People were drinking beer, wearing Lederhosen, eating sausages, and listening to an oompah band. Christina's boyfriend, who had been brought along to see everything that is wonderful about Austria, went to the toilet and emerged in hysterics. "There was a man in there," he explained, "playing two trumpets! At the same time! In the men's toilets!"
As if we hadn't had enough Austrian stereotypes, that night Hannah and I decided to watch the Sound of Music. With beer. And singing. The next morning my flatmate was positively gleeful as she poured us coffee, rightly assuming that we needed it. Oh the shame...
Of course, there was the teaching, also known as the reason I was there in the first place. With the Royal Wedding drawing ever closer, it became the main topic of conversation in many of my classes. I then caught upon a foolproof time-filler - making the students plan their own wedding. This kept classes amused for entire lessons, and also provided some very interesting vocabulary requests, from 'chocolate fountain' to 'wasted life'. In return for these thoroughly English lessons, they taught me a little about Austrian culture, specifically things which you aren't meant to do in Austria. One of these is making the Hitler salute, another is drawing the swastika, and the teacher demonstrated this by making the salute and drawing a swastika on the board. Now why were we discussing this again?
My students also proved to be talented actors, and one day I had the pleasure of having students ask for me in the staffroom (most of the teachers hate it because it means extra work, but it just made me feel important). They were in Klasse 4 (about the equivalent of Year 9) and they wanted my help in rehearsing a play which they'd written themselves. My first job was to check the script. Expecting a few lines of dialogue of the kind that I'd have been able to produce in German at their age, I was shocked when they handed me a hefty notebook: they'd rewritten and modernised Twelfth Night!
In the same week, I went to see some of the older students from the English Drama Club performing Blythe Spirit. This was an opportunity to show off my school to Hannah, who had agreed to come too, and also to show her that the trams were not as confusing as she thought (the tram network in Vienna is rather extensive and not particularly well documented). Unfortunately, the trams let me down, as the number 58 (which I took to work every morning without the slightest hint of a problem) decided that today it wanted to be a number 52, necessitating a long walk, a metro ride, and a change onto a tram which wasn't having an identity crisis. Luckily the English Drama Club didn't let me down like the trams, and gave an excellent performance, leaving us amazed as always at the quality of English.
At the weekend we let our hair down after all that terribly hard work by visiting Schönbrunn Zoo like the children we are, then walking to the Rathaus (which was slightly further than Christina had predicted) to go to the Steiermark Festival. Steiermark (or Styria) is a Land in the south of Austria, and its festival was about as stereotypically Austrian as it is possible to be. People were drinking beer, wearing Lederhosen, eating sausages, and listening to an oompah band. Christina's boyfriend, who had been brought along to see everything that is wonderful about Austria, went to the toilet and emerged in hysterics. "There was a man in there," he explained, "playing two trumpets! At the same time! In the men's toilets!"
As if we hadn't had enough Austrian stereotypes, that night Hannah and I decided to watch the Sound of Music. With beer. And singing. The next morning my flatmate was positively gleeful as she poured us coffee, rightly assuming that we needed it. Oh the shame...
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