24.06.2012
And here
comes the next peculiarity of Austrians that is concerned with their love to
the language. Having heard from me my standard phrase «Guten Tag. Entschuldigen Sie, bitte. Können Sie uns helfen?“, they smiled and after saying ”Oh, du sprichst Deutsch!” started to explain me the thing I
was asking about (usually it was a direction) in the superquick mode, some of
them even talked on dialect. They weren’t slowed down even by my eyes that were
desperately getting three times bigger and more desperate by the end of their speech.
And this was the day when I heard their favourite direction
that followed me till the end of my trip for the first time. The direction was «Entlang die Straße und links!“ Just to note: I had an impression
that all people in Austria go only straight and then left :) But I enjoyed listening
to native speakers.
A big
comfortable bus. 7pm. 33 travellers and 3 times more seeing offs. Everyone had
taken his seat and now was waving with a white napkin. We all set off. We’d
just started enjoying being on the road and landscapes around when our bus
stopped near Chop border, where it stayed for 3 more hours. After chatting,
singing, playing games we got tired, but, luckily, we crossed the border. Finally….It
wasn’t late but our guys started falling asleep. I was one of the luckiest – I opened
my eyes in time…in time to see Budapest at night. At that moment we were just
crossing one of the main bridges over Danube, that binds Buda and Pest parts
together. The lanterns were shining, casting beautiful patterns along the
river. The city squares at night became more mysterious. But just in a 10
minutes time of watching this scenery, architecture changed, range of houses became range of fields and my eyes closed for a longer time.
25.06.2012
We stopped in Graz. After the inconvenient sleep and
the conditioner we couldn’t switch off, my back was singing a requiem for a
bed. We managed to come out, but the weather was far from being nice. That’s
why a very neat and clean city was covered with a greyish mist that seemed to deprive
the city of its soul and vital energy. Everything seemed to be deadly static. To
be honest, it oppressed us a bit. With a quick pace we somehow managed to find
the city centre. The architecture here was better and we found even a few
colourful and patterned buildings that raised our morning spirit. We stopped
for coffee at one of the central cafes and I as the only interpreter had to
order everything.
Having recharged our energy with drinks we headed
towards the main street and eventually I saw that the city was very beautiful,
indeed, the thing that really spoiled the first impression was the
weather. We liked their signs at the bus
stops «Haltestelle»,cause their big “H” itself looked like the sign of our Ukrainian national
New TV Channel. The time flew by and we had to continue our journey.
Just
in a few hours we reached Villach, where we quickly registered our team for the
championship. When we approached “Congress” – the big glass building in modern
style, we saw national teams of Italy and Germany. They were dressed in their
national uniforms, waved their flags and painted each other’s face in national
colours too. What can I say – it impressed us a lot.
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| "Congress" |
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| Our House |
How beautiful
is the nature here! When I saw the Alps for the first time, I wanted to go out
of the bus and check whether everything I saw in front of myself was real. I
also had an imposing feeling that in a few seconds we’d see a violet cow from “Milka”
commercial going out of the nearest corner. That was ridiculous but I was looking
at the road attentively:) Finally, we reached a little town where we
were to live, called Ledenitzen.
We lived in
little wooden houses of the hostel named “Der Forellenhof“. And again, I was deeply
impressed by the scenery there. The hostel had its own little lake which had a
breathtaking view on the summits of the mountains. Just in a few minutes after
our settling some curious German kids decided to visit us. The funny thing was that
they left a note for our children’s room, on which a word was written. The word
was of a feminine gender and started with “die”. And guess what our kids, that
knew only basic English thought? Right, they were scared to hell.
But
what I’ve noticed there is a big love of Austrians to their language. I haven’t
seen people who’d be that pleased if you try to express your thoughts on their
broken language before. That amused me a lot.
When the
rain was over, the sun dived out of the clouds we decided to find the nearest
supermarket and just look around the area. We were naïve by that time and didn’t
know “the main secret” of Austria. We were living on the hill surrounded by the
mountains as though we were in a fairytale. When going down we saw an amazing
scene of the river of clouds that was softly flowing down the Alps. The green
colour of the nature was bursting around. Here we also saw an epic sign “Faaker
See” which we liked the most. Having walked for some half a kilometer we
noticed that there’s nothing except for lonely scattered houses and big
landscapes. We entered the nearest café and I inquired about the shop.
And here
comes the next peculiarity of Austrians that is concerned with their love to
the language. Having heard from me my standard phrase «Guten Tag. Entschuldigen Sie, bitte. Können Sie uns helfen?“, they smiled and after saying ”Oh, du sprichst Deutsch!” started to explain me the thing I
was asking about (usually it was a direction) in the superquick mode, some of
them even talked on dialect. They weren’t slowed down even by my eyes that were
desperately getting three times bigger and more desperate by the end of their speech.
And this was the day when I heard their favourite direction
that followed me till the end of my trip for the first time. The direction was «Entlang die Straße und links!“ Just to note: I had an impression
that all people in Austria go only straight and then left :) But I enjoyed listening
to native speakers.
When
we walked another kilometer according to the advice of the guys from the cafe
we didn’t find anything. We found another old man –cycler, though. When I asked
him the same question about the supermarket he revealed that epic “secret” :
the shops usually closed at 6-7pm. And they did not work on Sundays. And anyway,
if we wanted to bump into some kind of a shop, if it was not yet closed, we
should have walked another kilometer.
Having
dealt with our first culture shock, if that can be called so, we looked at the
watch: 9pm. Of course, everything should have been closed by that time. We
found a little café nearby, where we met a very interesting master-polyglot,
who could speak 7 languages. At the same time I thought about myself as a philologist
and the number of languages I knew and gave up that idea in order not to upset
myself. The master turned out to be half-Hungarian ,half-Italian and he was
very hospitable, having invited all of us for his birthday party. It was more
difficult to return back “home”, because we had to go up the hill, but the
scene was marvelous: the sun had almost set and the summits of the mountains
were lit up by the last rays of the pink sun. That was our first day in Austria.
