Rainy - cloudy - cold.
It was like that in the first week of our vacation, but fortunately we were in Kärnten, Austria, and even though we didn't have mediterranean temps there, we did have mostly good weather.
Kärnten is absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous. We lived in Rosental, not too far from Villach, in a spacey, comfortable holiday apartment that we rented from an austrian lady, Sonja. It used to be her dads house, and he built everything there. He died a few years ago, though, and now it's been turned into a place people like us can stay :) You have the valley to one side of the house, and the mountains on the other - and when you walk just 5 minutes uphill, you hit a hiking trail that will take you up on the mountain.
We speak a bit of german - and the austrians like that. Actually, once you've said a few sentences in german, they decide you are fluent, and they chatter like there was not going to be tomorrow. If you've ever heard austrians - particularly from the south - speak german, you'll know that the accent differs A LOT from regular german. So we were straining our ears trying to get what people were trying to say to us :)
I've decided to work on my german, as a result of this trip. So I bought a crime novel (by american writer Karin Slaughter, actually) in german, that I plan on reading when I finish the book I am reading right now. I'll keep my dictionary close at hand, but if I manage to finish and understand the german book, I'll get my hands on more of them. In my experience, that is probably one of the best ways to keep updated in a language you've allready learned.
I have most of my vocabulary in english from reading novels, news stories, blogs and bunches of other stuff in english. So I have great hopes for improving my german this way.
Well, we came back to Denmark after a week in Austria, and it was RAINING and RAINING ... but only for a few days. Then it cleared up, got warmer - and now we are enjoying a spot of wonderful, warm summer. It is supposed to stay nice all of next week, and that is what remains of our vacation.
This will probably be bad for the work we won't be doing on our room with the bay window - the one we are restoring - but hey! You have to be out to enjoy the weather!
Another full week of spare time, summer and the company of those I love - life is good!
2 comments:
Hi Liselotte,
Like you I sometimes try to improve my foreign languages (French, German and Latin) by reading in them. I've got lazy about thumbing through a paper dictionary, so I try to get something in electronic format. If you have Babylon, you can just Ctrl right click on a word and your dictionary pops up. Another approach is to use an ereader like the Amazon Kindle, and you can get a dictionary for that. I don't know what's available in the way of German-Danish electronic dictionaries--there's probably something--but there are certainly German-English dictionaries available.
All the best
Hi Vic, my friend :)
I have been thinking A LOT about getting some kind of electronic device instead of my paper dictionary!! I did a chapter today, and there was quite a bit of page-turning involved in it.
It is strange - sometimes I read several long passages without a problem, and suddenly I will have to find 2 - 3 words in the next sentence .... oh boy my german is SO rusty!
I will check out what I can do about it - thanks for the advice :)
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