Apfelstrudel

Apfelstrudel is a really typical viennise cake. It is (beside on hungarian cake) my favourite Austrian cake ( or Strudel, this is like a cake but rolled) and it is quite easy to make it on your own so I wrote down the recept here for you.

1 pack of strudel-dough ( or puff pastry)
1500g apples ( sour)
40g butter
80g breadcrumb
100g sugar
20g cinnamon
250g sour cream
80g chopped walnuts

First you cut the apples in thin little pieces and then you mix them with the nuts, the sour cream, the sugar and the cinnamon.
Then you roast the breadcrumbs in a pan until they have a gold-brown colour and then you also mix it with the other things.
Now you give your puff pastry on a work surface, where you have before given a bit of flour and then you roll the pastry very thin. Now you give the apple-mixture in the middle and just leave about 5 cm free on the broarders, where you give a bit of warm butter. After this you just roll the pastry carefully together and then you give it in the oven (190 degrees Celsius) for about 25 minutes.
TIPP: The best is now when you eat is hot with a bit of sugar on top and whipped cream!
I hope you'll like it!

word count: 225

The Secret Window

The secret window is one of my favourte movies. It is a psycho thriller, based on the corresponded book form Stephen King. The movie, starring Johnny Depp and John Turturro, was produced in 2004.

The main character is Mort Rainley, a writer who suffers because of a writing block and the divorce from his wife, when he discovers that she cheats on him.
In addition with all his problems, one day the mysterious John Shooter contacts Rainley and accuses him of plagiarism. Shooter claims that Rainley had published a story which he actually had published years ago and he gives Rainley the manuscript in question. After Shooter leaves, Rainley reads it and discovers that the story is nearly the same and there are just very little differences such as the names.
After same time, Shooter starts threatening Rainley, for example by killing his dog.
During the biggest part of the movie Railey tries to deal with Shooter's attacks and his problems with his wife.
I will not say more about the movie's plot because I don't want to anticipate the end. I just want to say that there are quite a few unexpected twists of the plot.
The movie is really a thriller and when you see it you really get involved in the story. For this you have to blame Johnny Depp and his terrific performance. From my point of view he is a great actor because he is able to plays the strangest characters really naturally.
Like in this movie the egocentric Mr Rainley with hair that looks like a mop. He has a delightfully slovenly appearance with which he mopes around the cabin, talks to his nearly blind dog, and tries to placate Mr. Shooter.

I would highly recommend this film, not only for fans of Johnny Depp, but also for everybody who wants a special movie and not just the Hollywood blockbuster.

Word count: 316

Horse Riding

Since I was little, practised many kinds of sport and I also learned different kinds of music instruments but with the time I gave everything up out of different reasons.
The only hobby I didn't give up is horse riding.
I started to practising horse riding when I was 6 years old because at that time my sister went to Scotland for a year and I was very sad about it. So my mother was looking for something to distract me. Inasmuch my sister practised horse riding too so it was obvious for my mother that I could practise it too, especially as I really loved all kinds of animals.
So in the last 10 years I was practising horse riding at many different places because I always changed the riding school after some time. Then 3 months before I left for Quebec I got to know a woman who had a horse and she told me I could ride it once if I want. When I first saw the horse, I instantly knew that it was the perfect horse for me. Luckily the horse, which was normally very particular and didn't like so many people, liked me too and so I could ride it 3 times a week because the owner didn't have the time to ride it every day.
So now I have a (nearly own) horse and she is great. She is a trotter whole blood which means that she is small but very agile and quick. She is also the best educated horse I have ever seen because she reacts to my voice very well and she is always attentive to me.
I am a bit sad that now I can't see her for a long time but I will be happy when I come back and see her again.
The horse on the picture is not her but I don't have her pictures on my laptop but this horse looks exactly like mine.
word count: 328

Things To DO Before I Die

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift; that is why they call it present- Kung Fu panda ;)

I always had the fear that when I am 70 years old and look back on my life that I will think "ok what have I done in the last 70 years?" and so I created my own list of things I really want to do before I die.
This is my personal list of things I want to do before I die. Some of them I already did but I wrote them nevertheless because I think that they are very important things to do.

1. Throw a huge party and invite every one of your friends.
2. Swim with a dolphin.
3. Skydive.
4. Have your portrait painted.
5. Learn to speak 5 languages and make sure you use them too.
   
6. Be an extra in a film.
7. Tell someone the story of your life, sparing no details.
8. Own a room with a view on the sea.
9. Buy a round-the-world air ticket and a backpack, and run away.
10. Send a message in a bottle.
11. Ride a camel into the desert.
12. Plant a tree.
13. Learn not to say yes when you really mean no.
14. Write a fan letter to your all-time favorite hero or heroine.
15. Learn to ballroom dance properly.
16. Be the boss.
17. Fall deeply in love -- helplessly and unconditionally.
18. Ride the Trans-Siberian Express across Asia.
19. Write the novel you know you have inside you.
20. Stay out all night dancing and go to work the next day without having gone home.
21. Shower in a waterfall.
22. Spend a night in a haunted house -- by yourself.
23. Spend New Year's in an exotic location.
24. Get passionate about a cause and spend time helping it, instead of just thinking about it.
25. Experience weightlessness.
26. Sing a great song in front of an audience.
27. Ask someone you've only just met to go on a date.
28. Drive across America from coast to coast.
29. Own one very expensive but absolutely wonderful business suit.
30. Sleep under the stars.
31. Learn how to complain effectively -- and do it!
32. Go wild in Rio during Carnival
33. Spend a whole day reading a great novel.
34. Learn to juggle with three balls.
35. Find a job you love.
36. Overcome your fear of failure.
37. Raft through the Grand Canyon.
38. Donate money and put your name on something: a college scholarship, a bench in the park.
39. Buy your own house and then spend time making it into exactly what you want.
40. Drive a convertible with the top down and music blaring.
41. Scuba dive off Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
42. Go up in a hot-air balloon.
43. Attend one really huge rock concert.
44. Attend a really huge festival ( at least 3 days).
    
45. Give to a charity -- anonymously.
46. Make yourself spend a half-day at a concentration camp and swear never to forget.
47. Create your Family Tree.
48. Run a marathon.
49. Reflect on your greatest weakness, and realize how it is your greatest strength.
50. Set a foot on each continent.
51. Trek through the jungle on an elephant.
52. Dive with sharks or whale sharks.
53. Dance tango in Argentina.
54. Publish an article about your travels.
55. Volunteer abroad for a month.
56. Visit the source of one of the world's greatest rivers.
    
57. Photograph an endangered species to see how fragil life can be.
58. Cross your country using public transportations.
59. Spend a night in an expensive 5-star hotel.
60. Visit every capital city in Europe.
61. Ride a gondola in Venice.
62. Visit Mona Lisa in the Louvre.
63. Learn how to waterski.
64. Learn fencing.
65. Learn to say HELLO in 50 different languages.
66. Learn to play piano so good to play For Elise and the Mondscheinsonate(Beethoven).
67. Own 1000 books and have an own room for them.
68. Learn to sing opera.
69. Be in a band.
70. Go rock climbing.
71. See the Northern Lights ( aurora).
72. Make a boot tour in the fjords.
73. Visit the Caribbean.
74. Visit New Orleans.
    
75. Go to the Oktoberfest.
76. Visit the Alhambra in Spain.
77. Visit the Pyramids in Egypt.
    
78. Visit Stonhedge.
79. Visit the Metropolitan Museum Of Arts in New York.
80. Walk on the Wall of China.
81. Visit Machu Picchu ( Peru).
82. See the Taj Mahal in India.
83. Go to the Universal Studios in Hollywood.
    
84. Finish university.
85. Learn to read Tarot cards.
86. Win against my friends in billiard.
87. Take up photography.
88. Discover what makes you truly happy.
89. Find my passion.
90. Eat just organic food for at least a week.
    
91. Don't use a car for a month.
    
92. Shop at Harrold's.
93. Charter a yacht.
94. Buy an unique art work in a gallery of a famous painter.
95. Make spontaneously a weekend trip to another country.
96. Go on a safari.
97. Hide all the clocks in your house.
    
98. Drink the sunset.
    
99. Make an absolutely ridicolous thing.
100. Photograph love and war.
101. Learn to meditate.
102. Work at a nightclub.
103. Have an unworldly love.
104. Visit the castle made of Ice.
105. Earn an absurd nickname.
106. Rent a Tree House for a night.
107. Write a song for someone.
108. Love someone you don't know.
109. Paint a Vw Van hippie style.
110. Give your parents their dream voyage.
111. Ride in a Helicopter.
112. 4-wheel the sand dunes.
113. Fly First Class wearing weird clothes.
114. Always pretend you know what your doing.
115. Swim in crystal clear water.
116. Hold a large snake.
117. Sing a song to make someone smile.
118. Play an instrument on the street.
119. Jump in a body of water fully clothed.
120. See the Cirque Du Soleil.
121. Yell at someone in a different language.
122. Get Dreads.
123. Camping with friends.
124. Sing random songs with friends in a supermarket.
125. Party and sleep on a roof.
126. Hug 100 people.
127. Do horse riding- blindfolded.
128. Kiss in the rain.
129. Dye my hair a bright colour.
130. Dance in the rain.
131. Stay up for 48 hours straight.
132. Get revenge on someone.
133. Get a tattoo (tasteful only!).
134. Donate blood.
135. Dye your hair green.
136. Milk a cow.
137. Ride in a limousine.
138. Book a flight with really short notice and just go.
139. Sign an autograph for a stranger.
140. Experience 24 hours of daylight.
141. Be brutally honest with someone.
142. Learn to say no and not feel guilty.
143. Slap someone when they deserve it.
144. Change someone's life.
145. Visit Japan.
146. Eat at a famous chef's restaurant.
147. Keep in touch with true friends.
148. Take a cooking class.
149. Own a piece of designer clothing.
150. Hug a tree.
151. Make 1,000 people smile.

Word count: 1190

The Discworld

My favourite author is Terry Pratchett. He writes fantastic novels which all set in the Discworld. I can't say which of his books I like the most, so instead of describing all of them, I will just describe the discworld to make you understand why I like Terry Pratchett's style. First of all the discworld is a slightly convexe, flat disc (complete with edge-of-the-world to drop-off and the obligated waterfall) resting on the backs of four huge elephants which are in turn standing on the back of an enormous turtle, named Great A'Tuin who slowly swims through space . The Disc is heavily influenced by magic.

Pratchett parodies in his novels the fantasy-genre and creates concurrently an own quite believable world, where he treats serious subjects with often dark humour. For this he applies all the popular fantasy figures. Wizards for example are known to be always smoking and therefore always breathless (from Tolkien). They fight against nameless things, which always try to come to the "real" world ( Lovecraft). There are female dwarfs, which are discriminated by traditional dwarfs ( because they say that there are just male dwarfs). There are heroes in pension age, abstinent vampires, a multi-ethnical police group, as well as witches, goblins, trolls, fairys, banshees and golems.

The business man with the name "Ruin-Myself" Snapper is famous for his strange business ideas. After every bankruptcy he sells again awfully tasting sausages to pay his depts. In the different books he comes again and again and one can find him in different forms in all parts o the Discworld.

The manlike personalised Grim Reaper is also nearly in all of the novels a popular minor character. There are also some novels where he is the main character. The special thing about the death is (beside his blue eyes) that he always talks in capital letters, which hints the uniqueness of his voice (the author describes it as if a coffin lid is slammed closed). It also leaves a lot of space for humour, for example when the Death is not explicit talked about in one novel but when someone bump into a person in a crowd and the other one excuses himself in capital letters which hints that they will soon see each other again in a job-related manner (for the Death). Another running gag, which is also mentioned in many books are the speech disorder, writing mistakes or special wording of several protagonists.

The Disc's nature is fundamentally teleological, which means that its basic composition is determined by what it is "meant" to be.The Discworld generally conforms to its own laws of narrative causality, which means that if a story or legend is told often enough and believed by enough people, it becomes true.

For example, characters in "Guards! Guards!" describe the marauding (noble) dragon as an "impossible" creature, yet it is able to fly and breathe fire because that is what dragons are expected to do. Similarly, a witch gone evil may meet a bad end after building a house of gingerbread. A hero will win only when outnumbered, since million-to-one chances are dramatic enough to "crop up nine times out of ten".

Knowledge of stories, their use and how to change them forms the basis of many forms of magical power. The habit of many Discworlders to take metaphor literally has combined with the power of belief to produce some very odd areas. The Place Where The Sun Does Not Shine, for instance, is a deep crevasse in Lancre, incidentally located between a rock and a hard place.

I absoloutly love Terry Pratchett's stories because they are not only funny but he also parodies issues such as music, movies, the autenticity of the medias, religion, philosophy, politics and many others. Not even computers are missing because there is a magical machine called HEX which works as a computer and for other technical things (such as cameras for example) you just take a box with goblins inside. For me it is also funny to meet again all the characters because if one character is a main character in one book it will most possibly also be a minor character in several others. So it like you already know how the world works and how the people think but you also have a new unbelievable story in each book.
World count: 770

Austria Tour

This summer, I made a tour through Austria with my friends because we have a ticket which is valid for all trains in our country for the whole summer. This is very useful for us because in Austria you have to be 18 years old to do your driving license because we don't really need it earlier because we are a small country and we have trains everywhere.
So on August 2nd, me and 5 of my best friends (2 girls and 3 boys) took the train at Vienna to go to one of the nicest lakes of Austria because we all love swimming. When we arrived at the small village "Weissenbach" the weather was nice and we went to the camping place to set up our tents. Actually we wanted to go to the lake on the next day but in the evening it started to rain cats and dogs (which means it rained very much). It would not have been that bad but the ground where our tents stood was not very flat and so the water came through the base of our tent inside and so at five in the morning the boys came and told us that everything was swimming in their tent. So we left earlier than we had planned and took the next train to Salzburg, one of the biggest cities in Austria. There we did a bit of shopping and went to a "Beisl" (that's a mixture of bar and restaurant and it is very typical for Austria) to watch soccer there because it was an important game for the soccer in Austria.
The rest of the week the weather was very nice and we swam every day in the lake and we had a lot of fun together.
After Salzburg we went to 2 other famous Austrian lakes; the Bodensee (which you can also see in the newest "James Bond" because there is a scene in Austria) and the Woerthersee.
I loved this week because we did all sorts of things such as shopping, sightseeing, relaxing and barbeque. It was very good for me because thus I had the possibility to spend one week with my closest friends before we had all the goodbye-parties and I left for Canada.


word count: 378 words

My Favourite Music

Music is very important for me. I listen to music all the time equaly in which mood I am I need my music and I need good music. This is the reason why I decided to write a text about my favourite and not so favourite music. I hope you enjoy reading it!

For me, it is very difficult to decide which is my favourite band . On my mp3-player I have more than 20 different groups and I like all of them. So I listen to them so often until it gets too much for me and I change the groups. I also listen to many different kinds and styles of music. I like rock music in all kinds and variations, metal, ska and a bit of German hip hop but I don't like techno and electronic. In general I also don't like female singers with little exceptions.
In the rock-genre I prefer the Scandinavian groups like Backyard Babies, and Gluecifer but I also like The Offspring, Fall Out Boy and Anti-Flag. I also like NOFX and Flogging Molly which are both quite cool Irish punk bands. The genre metal is I think one of the biggest genres because there are nearly as many sub-genres as metal bands. I don't like all of them just the best ones as In Flames, Darkmoor and HIM. Even if I don't speak Spanish I love one group which is called Ska-P and they really make amazing music where you really get this holiday-feeling and you have to smile.
Here the people often ask me which is my favourite Austrian group and I just can say that I don't have one because I don't listen to Austrian music. I just like one German group, called Die Aerzte because they are all-rounder. People who don't know them think that they are just an old punk band but they have songs from all genres and also the subjects of their songs are very different. One song can make you now shout in triumph and the next one now sink in despair. They have political and love songs as well as songs which have no sense and where you just have to laugh ( which can be pretty embarrassing when you listen to them the first time while you are in the subways and you stand there smiling and everybody stares at you but hey that is the funny thing about this group and the reason why they have so many fans). Twice I was on a concert of this group and both times were amazing because their concert have no relation to "normal rock concerts" because first they last at least 3 hours and second because the members of the band always make jokes and interact with the audience, between and even during the songs. And they will not just say, "now take your hands in the air and sing!" but they will make everybody sit down ( which is quite cool with 11000 people) and then jump at the chorus or they will make everybody repeat senseless but funny phrases. But the best about their concerts is that they always change the texts of their songs. For example one song which lasts 3,5 minutes on the album can last up to 10 minutes on the live version because the two singers spontaneously compose new verses which are good but sometimes just very senseless and you really have to laugh. But when you go home from their concerts everybody is happy and everybody had have fun.
I would highly recommend this group to everyone not important which kind of music this person listens to otherwise, but the problem is that their songs are just in German and the texts are the most important thing about them. You just don't understand why they make songs which are called Whole Milk, My Teddy or My Ex(ploded) Girlfriend. Let alone that you would not understand why their biography is called "An Oversized Guinea Pig Is Eating The World".
This is the only reason why the "best band in the world" as they call themselves, has not yet achieved the world supremacy.

word count: 689