What a waste!

Monday was a holiday in Austria, commemorating the day the last occupying Russian soldier left the country in 1955. We spent the weekend in Tirol with my mother-in-law. We had Friday off too, which we spent driving all over creation to gather yet more paperwork and then hand it in to apply for my so-called [...]

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Of eyeliner and cars

I am fed up with my eyeliner pencil. The flipping thing needs to be sharpened fairly regularly, otherwise I look like I’m headed to some kind of heavy metal concert and not to work. But the “lead” is kinda sticky, and it coats the inside of the pencil sharpener. Result: the next time you go to sharpen the [...]

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Just one thing that I’ve been meaning to post.  An announcement from an American airport, I think O’Hare.  I listened to it for hours and the boarding call came just in time to prevent me from finding the author and doing something evil to him.  I mean, it’s different when these are Native English Speakers.  [...]

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Public transit etiquette

Hello again ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to another edition of, “How the world would be run if Sabine were in charge”. Today: “How to ride public transit in Vienna without pissing me off” 1. The U-bahn (subway)– boarding, exiting. When the train comes to a halt, the people inside need to get off first. So [...]

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Finally, the weekend

It’s been another long week of explaining the Present Perfect (two words bound to send a chill down the spine of any student of English or English Language teacher). But I’ve done it pretty often now, and have overheard comments like, “Oh, well nobody ever explained it to me like that before”.  I think this [...]

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News?

So my parents came to visit me in Vienna for 2 days. It was nice, and now they’ve left and I’m kind of sad, because I won’t see them before Christmas, if then. Hopefully then. I feel like I’ve gotten some much-needed distance from home and I’m now able to appreciate it more. Anyway, my [...]

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Idiocy abounds

Sometimes, when I read something on BBC about how some pharmacists won’t fill prescriptions for birth control pills (though of course they stock condoms and viagra), or for the emergency morning-after pill because it encourages female promiscuity, I feel bad. First, I feel like I’ve traveled back in time. Second, I feel like this isn’t [...]

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Visa visum, full of words with 29 letters each

The search continues. I think one could make a pretty good movie out of the circus that is the visa system of this country. Finally though, I got some good advice after finding the branch of the government responsible for immigrants. I found this place via the internet, none of the other places we have [...]

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A clubbing of baby seals

Now, because English has unfortunatly become the default international language, it has also become cool. And by cool, I don’t mean that the kids want to learn it voluntarily. But I mean that English words keep popping into the language and becoming more common than their often more economical and more sensical German translations. Personally, [...]

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While I’m on the subject

Come to think of it, talking with my students about politics (ignorant about politics, emotional, shouting, telling me I am stupid) is a lot like what talking to the College Republicans was like, only our positions are reversed. Here, I am on the stupid end of “What was President Bush thinking”, and they are the [...]

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