"Study hard and you will be rewarded. Fail to do so and the consequences may be… severe."

Even though, I hate Umbirdge as much any other Harry Potter fan does, I cannot deny this statement. You cannot run away from your responsibilities because they’ll track you down in your free time, sleep… And you'll be in bigger problems than you're now.

I decided to write a free post for all of you who have just seen what our next months will look like. Well, I'm extremely bad with time management and during the exams is the smartest idea to practise it! Before „that time of the year“ begins (I'm not talking about Christmas though), I decided to make a study plan for upcoming months. I was almost shocked when I saw how many exams are ahead of me. I started panicking a bit because I wasn't sure where to start or how to organize my time. So, I sat down, took a sheet of paper wrote down some tips that may help: 

You should be studying  

Draw a calendar (or use Word, whatever suits you best) and mark all of the important dates like exams, presentations, culture days, concerts (you cannot study all the time, you need a break too)…For each subject write down what topics will be covered in an exam so you already know what your stronger and weaker topics are. For example, you know your mother tongue better than a foreign language, so you’ll need more time, practice and patience to master it.

After you've familiarized yourself with exam stuff, divide them into smaller sections. Every day do a little bit of everything. In that way, there's no chance you'll find yourself in June with a pile of books to read or countless pages to learn.

Make sure you take breaks every now and then. You're not a robot and you need a break. Make some coffee, go out for a walk, play games, run or go to gym, draw, do something that relaxes you. By all means. Do not work the whole day or you'll go crazy.

This sounds perfect so far, does it? And it sounds relatively easy to accomplish and you feel enthusiastic: "Yes, I can do it and I will do it!" Good job, that's the spirit. But, as it usually happens, excitement that you have now doesn't really last. Usually, when things get slightly harsh, students tend to surrender and leave all the work until the very last minute. Don't do that to yourself. Be a bit more determined.

When it gets harsh and you want to give up, remind yourself how lucky you actually are. Be thankful that you have the chance to go to college and to be buried under a pile of books and papers. Not everyone in this world has that chance.  Knowing that I have a chance to live a decent life and help other people who don’t, pushes me beyond my mental limits and gives me strength to go on.

    

An International Cuisine Dinner

As we were recommended to make our experience for the food blog as fun as possible, we decided to do this work as a group of four and have an international cuisine dinner. Each course we had came from another country which turned out to be an interesting idea. Why is there so much garlic in the Greek Tzatziki? Who would ever make handmade puff pastry except for Alma’s mum? All in all, we sure had a lot of fun and full bellies afterwards.

Starter: Tzatziki (Marlene)

Tzatziki is fairly easy to make. All you need is (no, not love…) yoghurt, cucumber, garlic, lemon, salt and pepper. You can add a dash of olive oil or some herbs like chives or dill for extra flavour, if you like, but those are the most important ingredients. How much of each ingredient you need depends on your personal taste and on how much Tzatziki you want to make. For mine I used…

• 1 cup (500 g) of plain yoghurt
• half a cucumber
• 2 cloves of garlic
• roughly 1 teaspoon of fresh lemon juice

...and then I seasoned it with salt and pepper until I deemed it tasty enough.

First, I poured the yoghurt into a bowl. I then added salt, pepper, and a splash of lemon juice to refine its taste.

My next step was to add the garlic to the mixture. I recommend you use a garlic crusher for that, but since I don't have one, I just used a knife to cut two cloves of garlic into tiny little pieces. I tried to make them as fine as possible, so there wouldn't be any garlic chunks. The thing with garlic is that the intensity of its taste can vary a lot. I was originally told to add 5 cloves to the Tzatziki by a reliable source (aka my mum). I added two and it was already verging on too much. So I suggest you just taste the yoghurt-mixture after every clove you add to make sure you don't end up having made Tzatziki that's either tasteless or far too garlic-y.

After I'd added the garlic, I chopped half a cucumber up into small squares, whisked them together with the rest, and just like that my Tzatziki was finished. Took me a grand total of about 15 minutes max. So if you ever need a quick and simple side dish or starter, Tzatziki is the way to go! Just... Be careful with the garlic... Less really is more sometimes, I learned that the hard way...

Main Course: Cheese Pita (Alma)

Pita is a traditional Bosnian dish, best served fresh from the oven. Pita is light, healthy and easy to make. Depending on what type of pita you prefer, it can be a gateway drug to moreish and healthy eating. If you don’t insist on making the pastry yourself, it can be referred to fast food as well.

What you need:

• flaky/puff pastry
• natural yoghurt
• eggs, yolk
• salt
• pepper
• feta cheese

Mostly, there are no measurements needed when cooking this, because it is a rather long lasting dish and therefore you can make as much as you want to.

At first you have to take the yoghurt, eggs, yolk, spices and the crumbled feta and mix everything together until you have a thick mixture. After that you roll the flaky pastry into a long and thin dough. Then you place the mixture alongside two opposing edges of the pastry. When this is done, you have to roll it over so the filling is fully surrounded by the pastry. Then you have to grease the baking plate and put the pita in the oven for about 45 minutes at 200°C. The last step before taking it out of the oven is to pour melted butter over it to intensify its taste. This amazingly tasty dish is best served with yoghurt and tomato salad. While eating with cutlery is considered as boring, Bosnians declare it as finger food. You may or may not wash your hands afterwards.

Pita can also contain other fillings such as: potatoes, zucchini, spinach and meat.

I would, of course, add the original names of them, but they are unspeakable for those who don’t speak any of the slavic languages.

Dessert No. 1: Mousse au  chocolat (Ines)

There is no dessert more typically French than mousse au chocolat: It’s a bit too much of everything and still manages to stay classy. Every look at it seems to gain you a tiny piece of fat on your hips while every spoon of it makes you crave for more. That’s probably the kind of food they invented the adjective ‘moreish’ for.

Many people do not seem to realise how fast you can make such a mouth-watering dessert. Of course I’m not French, but I tried my best to create the impression that I know how mousse au chocolat is supposed to taste.  All you need is three eggs, about 250 grams of cream, 200 grams of chocolate and some sugar. I usually add between 20 and 40 grams. Depending on your personal preferences, you can either use milk chocolate, which makes the mousse more sweet and tender, or dark chocolate to make it taste more interesting. For at least half of the chocolate mass, I would just use plain chocolate as it’s much cheaper and tastes superb as well.

Basically you just have to whisk the egg whites until it becomes a solid but fluffy white mass. Whisk the egg yolks with the sugar. Do the same with the cream while you heat the chocolate. If you do it in the microwave make sure you don’t burn the chocolate. That has happened to me so many times before. Now slowly and carefully mix the liquid chocolate with the egg yolks. Then let the whipped cream and the egg-yolk-chocolate-mixture unite. As a very last step gently fold in the whisked egg whites. Then put the whole thing into the fridge for at least three hours. If you want it to look really nice when you serve it, I’d recommend at least five hours. Well, I didn’t have that time, so this is why it was still a bit too creamy when we ate it. We enjoyed our mousse with a strawberry on top so that we could convince ourselves that there were vitamins in the dessert.

Dessert No. 2: Mor Monsen’s Kaker (Norwegian) = Mother Monsen’s Cake  (Tabitha)

I decided on baking something for our dinner, because my cooking skills are very poor and I am better at baking cakes and cookies than cooking. My baking skills are not that good either, though, so I had to not only look  for a cake from a foreign country, but also a cake that wouldn’t be too hard to bake.
After some research in my mother’s cookbooks, I finally stumbled across a Norwegian cake, which is typically made there during Christmas time. The Mother Monsen’s Cake. In Norwegian: Mor Monsen’s Kaker.

As the instructions did not seem to be very hard to follow, I decided to take up the challenge and just give it a try. No risk, no fun.

So, I got together all the ingredients:

• 400 grams of butter (O.O seriously? Yep, I double checked it)
• 200 grams of sugar (This cake is a real calorie bomb)
• 1 package of vanilla sugar
• 4 eggs
• 250 grams of flour
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• 100 grams of almond flakes
• 100 grams of raisins
  

The first step is to stir the butter till creamy. This took a little while and my fingers got pretty greasy, while struggling with the blender. (I really am a beginner ;))

Then, with the butter being nice and creamy, slowly add the sugar, vanilla sugar and the eggs and blend everything together.

After, more or less, successfully doing that, stir in the baking powder and the flour.
And that’s the whole batter. Pretty easy, right?

The only thing left to do now is to spread the dough evenly on the baking tray and sprinkle it with the almond flakes and raisins.

Now a piece of advice: There are people who don’t like raisins, so it might be a good idea to leave a part without raisins. I did not do it and regretted that later.

Then bake it in the oven at about 150 – 170 degrees for 35- 40 minutes until it has a golden yellow color. Aaaaaaand done!

As I had never baked this cake before, I was really curious about how it would taste. It felt like a little experiment when I took my first bite, but luckily it tasted really good. Well, it has to. There are 400 grams of butter in there!!!!

So, if you ever need or want to bake an easy cake and brag about it, that is the right cake. But beware… it surely is a calorie bomb!

OUR RESUMÉ

After we'd eaten all that the general consensus was to never move again. Ever. All four of us had our stomachs filled to the brim. Turns out four courses are a lot of food... Still, we had a good time preparing and eating said four courses, and agreed that we’d really like to stuff ourselves with randomly chosen and haphazardly made international dishes again sometime soon!

Vegan Nut Wedges

When I was younger, my mother used to buy nut wedges nearly every weekend as a special treat. It is a typical German dessert that consists of a sweet dough and a nut topping with chocolate edges. I always loved them but as I left my parents and moved to Austria I couldn't afford to buy them that often. Moreover I went vegan last year and it is nearly impossible to find vegan nut wedges anywhere.

Therefore I decided to change the basic recipe, replacing eggs, milk chocolate and butter. After some tries and some errors, now I know the perfect ingredients for delicious vegan nut wedges. The main trick is to replace the eggs with a mixture of flax seed and water. It provides a perfect consistency and doesn't falsify the taste. Moreover flax seeds are very healthy as they contain a huge ammount of omega-3 fatty acids. You can buy them in any supermarket.

I made a video in which I present my recipe for those vegan nut wedges. As you'll see they're very easy to make. If you decide to try this recipe let me know how you liked it and what the result was like. Did you notice a difference to regular nut wedges? All the ingredients are listed below the video.

Ingredients:

for the dough:

300g flour

80g sugar

1 package vanilla sugar

2 Tbsp flax seed

3 Tbsp water

150g margarine

1 tsp baking powder

for the topping:

10 Tbsp apricot jam

150g sugar

200g margarine

2 packages vanilla sugar

5 Tbsp water

100g whole almonds

300g whole hazelnuts

for the chocolate edges:
100g baking chocolate

Who am I?

For those who don't already know, since I've been around ITAT for quite a while now already: Hey, I'm Martin, 26 years old, about 6 feet tall and 143 lbs. heavy (which I suppose is rather skinny for that height).

As a person, I'd label myself a "fun-loving dirt bag" all in all. That doesn't necessarily mean I feel particularly comfortable when not having showered for days, yet it occasionally happens when being on tour with a punk rock band. And the "fun" aspect of that definitely outweighs the hygienic one in most cases. (Hey, at least you may still brush your teeth at weigh stations and clean yourself a little with baby wipes in between shows) :)

For the majority of the day my head is filled with music. I'd see it as a universal language with little to no room for potential misinterpretation (as it might occur when two individuals engage in chatting online e.g). Even allegedly simple things such as chord progressions on the guitar could get me in a melancholic, contemplative mood, but also fuel my enthusiasm in order to face certain challenges of life. (Like focusing on university tasks) All this happens without me even hearing the lyrics, which eventually just add to the whole picture by giving the song a more distinctive meaning.

Moreover, I'd consider myself to be blessed with a very bad sense of humor (graphic, immature, but hopefully not as offending and annoying as I see it myself at times), tendencies of martyrdom and a big potty mouth. Even so, I also try to be considerate when it comes down a serious dialogue or debate, since I'm really interested in communication between people.

So please feel free to leave comments about my posts and call me on my shit. I will most definitely call you on yours too if I strongly disagree with your opinion.

I've attached some pictures from a UK tour I've participated in two weeks ago as well as a song by the amazing Ani DiFranco here in order to give an overall impression of "who I am, what I do and what I say. If you like it, let me be. If you don't, please do the same" :)

Cheers and beers! (Photo: (C) Irena Udovič from the Slovenian DIY network/record label Giljotina)

My Colorful Life

My name is Verena Hemling and these little pots say more about me than you might think. They are filled with the vibrant colors that you can see on my hair. Often people claim that I am just in a ‘punky phase’, but my hair color is an expression of my personality. In this post, I will explain why.

Two of my favorite hobbies combined:
photography and music

I love creativity and I hate emptiness, so I dye my hair over and over again. When there is silence I need to fill it with music. Blank papers and my skin get filled with paintings. As I can’t accept boredom I’m a bit of a workaholic.  I also visit an evening school for photography and multimedia art. AND I dye my hair because I get bored of my natural hair color very often. I’m always looking forward to my ‘hair-coloring days’. I take my time for it and I really enjoy the dyeing itself. It is one of my favorite hobbies.

Colourful hair can also be very useful as I only get to know the most friendly and open-minded people. Why? Because all the superficial people that judge me only by my appearance just stay away from me. Therefore I don’t need to waste my time on them. Of course there are sometimes bad reactions when strangers see my hair, but I learned to ignore them.

At last my hair color is a clear sign of the fact that I’m not afraid to be different. That was not always the case. I have always been a shy person and when I was younger, I generally tried to go with the stream. Look at this picture. Can you believe that this was me? I’m glad that I gained enough self-confidence to wear whatever I like. And this doesn’t only relate to my appearance. I also learned to openly speak my mind, without being afraid of the reactions. I think that this is very important.

Of course there is more to know about me than what I have written here. But it is very hard to explain a character in a blogpost. So if you want to know more about me, just ask. I’m the girl with the colorful hair ;)

Who Am I?

Hey Guys :)

Being born and raised in the beautiful South of Styria, and possessing an Austrian passport technically means that I am Austrian. Nevertheless, I never called myself Austrian. My parents were refugees of the Bosnian War when they came to Austria in 1992. That means that I am Bosnian, but somehow, I do not consider myself an fully Bosnian as well. So, who am I? A question, I often asked myself and others my entire life. The answers to my question did not simplify anything, on the contrary, they even increased my confusion:

Austrians used to call me names such as Jugo or Kanake, which are used to insult people of former Yugoslavian origin. Actually, many people do not know that Jugo is rather a common expression, than a swear word in those Southern countries. Jug means South in Bosnian, Croatian or Serbian. Therefore means Jugo: The man of the South. Whatever.

Opinions of  Bosnians, even of some of my family members, did not make it easier for me to understand who I really am. They used to call me Švabo because they have always considered me an Austrian, rather than a Bosnian. Švabo means Schwabe in German and Swabian in English. Swabian is a historical and political expression for people from a certain geographical part of Germany. People from former Yugoslavia erroneously use this word for both, Austrians and German people, and, apparently, for me!

But that is still not all: For reasons of history and religion, Serbs, for instance, call me Balija. This term used to describe descendants of Turks of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans. In most cases, this word is used in a derogatory way.

Turks in turn, at least a number of them, do not consider Bosnians one of them. Perhaps this is because of the language. Although Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian contain a huge number of Turkish elements in their languages, they are still Slavic. That means, that Bosnians who never learned Turkish only understand a few words. Additionally, just like many Arabic people, some Turkish people do not regard Bosnians as being real Muslims, because they do not seem as strict as Turkish people do. - Believe me, they are! At least some of them. I think that every country has its firm believers, regardless of what religion!  

Finally, after a long time of asking who I really am and getting these answers, I decided to consider myself all of that what people called me. I am a Jugo, a Švabo, a Balija and even more! I am an open-minded girl who does not judge anyone because of his belief or nationality. I love travelling. I have been to Asia, Africa, North America and many countries in Europe before. I loved it everywhere and I want to explore even more!

In conclusion, who cares where you are from? It is about who you are. And Guess what! Now I know who I am! ;)

Hmmm… quite kitschy ending, isn’t it? whatever :D

Good Bye

Who am I?

Hello there! For those who don’t know me .. My name is Alma. I am 21 years old and came to Graz to study. I am originally from Carinthia, beautiful little area in the south of Austria.

Where do I begin? Firstly, family is one of the most important things in my life. I can’t go a day without calling my mum or my brothers. Some people say, I look exactly like my mum when she was younger, but actually I don’t see any resemblence ;-).

But one thing for sure is that I inherited most of my characteristic features from my mother. Some are good and some are bad. For example I am a bad liar. I cannot lie and wouldn’t even want to. (Probably a good feature?) And something not so advantageous about me is, that I am lazy as hell (I bet Frank already noticed). I try really hard to get rid of this bad habit, but sometimes eating candy and watching movies seems a lot more interesting to me…(Definitely inherited from my dad.)

Second place is for my friends. These are two of my best friends. I have known them since kindergarden and we are still really close. They practically know EVERYTHING about me. And they know me better than I do. This is actually frightening, but hey, it’s a two-way situation so I got that going for me ;-)

the early teens

I love going to concerts and festivals! I have seen so many artists and bands, that I lost count. However, I still think, I haven’t seen enough, so whenever I have the opportunity to got to a concert nothing else matters to me.

What else? Right .. I love to read, mostly thrillers or crime novels. I try to stay fit as good as I can, but there is just too much food ready to be eaten and one has to make sacrifices.

People say I am crazy and I totally agree with that! I am shy at first, but after some time I get comfortable and start opening up. I can be annoying sometimes, especially when I am hungry or exhausted. What I really dislike is smalltalk. I don't why, but I find smalltalk rather boring and pointless. That is probably one of the reasons, why hardly meet new people.

I have nothing left to say, so I'll end my post with a song. Enjoy!

About Me

Hello everyone!

Today I want to tell you something about me. I am an Austrian female student who simply hates introducing herself. Anyways, I will give you some quick facts and then I will show you the few things that probably describe me best. 
Well, I was born in Vienna, Austria, to a german mom and a carinthian dad. When I was 5 years old we moved to a tiny village near the Semmering. I went to school there and now I'm here in Graz and study translating and interpreting at the ITAT.

 One of my passions is MUSIC. I love singing, I love song writing, composing, recording and editing songs.
I need music to calm down. I especially enjoy listening to Romanian pop music and Latin American reggaeton and also pop music. I write most of my songs in either Spanish or English but NEVER in German because I think it's hard to not make it sound like Volksmusik or even rap.
I have my own little studio at home which consists of a professional microphone, a mixing desk and an editing software of my computer.

Another big passion of mine is fashion. I really do think that fashion is a way to express yourself. I do mostly use it to express myself. But when it comes to school I prefer wearing cozy clothes and nothing too fancy. My sister and I share a youtube account where we like to upload fashion videos and lookbooks. The video next to this text was our first fashion video ever. It is not the best one, though.  




I also love acting! I've been in a theater course for several years now and in September I wanna join the TAO Theaterwerkstätte and also a Spanish theater club. I've been in a few of my friends' short movies but, unfortunately those are not available online.

Some of my books are missing because I couldn't find them
since I am such a chaotic person

Another passion of mine are languages. I'm currently studying Spanish, German and English at university and at home I'm trynna learn Romanian, Portuguese, Italian, Latvian, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish. I'm an aspiring polyglot and can't wait to visit all the countries that I'm learning the languages of. 








And last but not least: I ADORE EVERYTHING THAT HAS TO DO WITH ARGENTINA! It's my favorite country in the world, I love the people, I love their language, I have several friends over there and I am obsessed with a teenie series from there that's called Aliados.

This is the cast (source: Wikipedia)

It's basically about troubled teen human beings whose "light being" come down to earth to help them get on the right track. Many people think the whole plot is exaggerated but I find it quite relatable so I think that tv series kind of describes me, too.

I'm planning on going to Buenos Aires in September or December to visit my friends there and to maybe feel "home".

I hope this introduction wasn't too boring and I'm looking forward to having you as a reader of my next posts.

WHO AM I?

I´m Hannah. My middle name is Barendina – quite unusual name for an Austrian person? Well, I´m named after my grandmother, who is Dutch. All my relatives from the mother´s side are from the Netherlands, and some of them (including my mother) now live in Austria. Unfortunately I wasn´t brought up bilingually since my parents only spoke German with me.

 

Every summer my family and I go to the Netherlands. There we spend the days on the sea. The beaches are extremely broad and full of beautiful seashells. When I was a child I looked for the most extraordinary ones to take them with me.

 

We used to go there in summer since I was very little, and maybe that´s the reason why I love the sea! I love sunbathing and taking a dip in the cool water. While strolling along the beach and feeling the fresh sea breeze I easily can get away from it all. I can relax and forget everything for a moment which is absolutely necessary for me. Otherwise life would get far too stressful…

I have two sisters and they mean everything to me! They are like my best friends. I can count on them because they never let me down. It´s important to me to stay in touch with all those who mean a lot to me. People are the ones that make my world, not things. I´m not a materialist. Material things come and go, but family and good relationships last forever.