A Sarcasm and Two Sugar guide to: Austria

It was with a heavy heart (and some horrible flu symptoms) that I bid farewell to rainy England and hopped on a two hour flight to Munich in February half term. I was leaving a potentially lively week of nights out and Come Dine With Me-e

sque dinner parties, but in retrospect I don’t regret spending my week away from college in beautiful, snow-engulfed Fügen. Having been to Austria twice before, I wasn’t expecting to discover anything new about the country, but this time I made some observations that I just could not keep to myself.

FOOD

There seems t be an unofficial law in Austria, dictating that every dish consumed must either contain copious amounts of cheese or meat. Austrians don’t really seem to grasp the concept of vegetarians, let alone poor vegans. Luckily I quite happily drowned myself in cheese for the entire trip.

Sick in a pan with herbs? This was the saltiest dish I have ever eaten. Looks rank, was delicious.

This looks suspiciously like fried hair. I think it was dumplings and onions but to be honest, I don't think I will ever know what I ate that night.

On my first visit to Austria we stayed in this odd, kind of cheap hotel where a huge red-faced woman served our food to us, and got angry if we didn't devour every morsel. On the night that all the meat-eaters got fried chicken and chips, the hotel staff saw it only fit to serve us veggies up the next best thing – fried cheese and chips. Otherwise known as a heart attack on a plate. I thought this was the only time I would have the honour of eating battered cheese but again this year it was served up to me. Oddly satisfying, but not quite worth the food coma that only cheese coated in batter with chips can induce.

BOOZE

My two previous trips to Austria were with my secondary school, so we weren't exactly able to go on a wild, aprés-ski rampage. We managed to somehow acquire a could of 6% beers, but this is all I saw of Austrian alcohol. How I was missing out...

Beer

Austrian beer is really really good! If you're into beer (I'm usually not because one glass kind of makes me feel like I ate a loaf of bread). It's much more bubbly and has a certain ZING to it (I'm not really up on the whole food/wine critic lingo, sorry).

Schnapps Tee

A shot of Schnapps and a mug of black tea. I wasn't really sure whether this was supposed to be consumed á la Jagerbomb, but this combination is supposedly good for a cold.

Jager Tee

This is the strangest drink I have ever consumed. It smells strong enough to knock a small child out and tastes a bit like nail varnish remover. My mum was unable to move after one small cup.

dad before consuming jagertee/after

ACTIVITIES

So, what to Austrians do for fun, I hear you ask? A lot of pretty crazy shit, I answer. You've got the conventional winter sports including skiing, snowboarding and that weird 'cross country' skiing on really tiny skis that I've never really seen the point of. As far as I have experienced, Austrian and German skiers and snowboarders are on another level of crazy when it comes to winter sports. There is no slope to steep, no off piste route too horrific and no velocity too speedy for these guys. But when they're off the slopes, traditional Austrian hobbies are also kind of baffling. I've played 'skittles' in Austria twice, on both occasions without much luck as the alleyways always seem kind of sloped and the skittles are attached to string and seem very reluctant to fall over. Apart from this, I tried tobogganing, which definitely goes in the top ten most terrifying experiences. A toboggan is essentially two mini skis stuck to a bit of wood, with a big of string for you to hold onto as you hurtle down a fairly steep path. There is no one to guide you or check you're not dead so I don't really blame my mum for dragging her feet and screaming like there was no tomorrow the whole way down. I would recommend tobogganing to those who don't mind the occasional near death experience.

DÉCOR

The Austries might be pros at turning an innocent cuppa into a deadly lashing of booze, rocketing your cholesterol through the roof and doing anything death-threatening involving snow, but I am guessing all this left little time to focus on their décor. My particular favourite place was home to all of the following:

An ant on a casual plant pot adventure

w00000h it's like Hawaii in the middle of Austria! Somebody get me a pinna colada and a hula skirt

Hey my name's Sammy bear. My owners used to love me and my sad but kind of sweet pajamas and my stupid sleeping cap but eventually they got sick of me and stuck me up here to give the place a more 'homely' feel.

Just so that our customers never feel too at ease, we stuck a creepy golden cherub by every table to watch them eat.

We thought too much gold was too flash so in some cases the cherubs had to be marble. But don't worry, we made up for it by making sure this one was in a gollum-esque position for uptimum creepiness.

Although this one place was particularly... mismatched to say the least, most places ran along a sort of 'Christmas' theme all winter long, including lots of tinsel and sometimes fern trees too. Ah well, when you're eating a plate of deep fried cheese, the you kind of stop caring.

All in all, the whole trip was pretty successful. I'm glad we went away as it was probably the last family holiday I will have, until I have to start dragging the geriatrics along on my own family shenanigons (if I ever decide children are worth my while). Would I reccomend Austria to a friend? Yes, yes I would indeed. Although I'd suggest learning some German phrases - 'yes', 'no', 'please', 'sorry I didn't mean to ski into you, are you alive?' etc., although I managed to pick up a few phrases along the way - 'apfelsaft bitte' means 'apple juice, please' (it wasn't the wildest of holidays). Just bare in mind that Austrian people love to stare and you'll get a very negative reaction if you loudly say 'the only German words I know are 'volksgemeinschaft' and 'reich'.

Isn't Life Just Gr18?

-My first night out since the big 18. Tears, a lost phone, a very drunk friend and 30 pounds blown

It seems from the age of about fourteen, my entire existence has been spent waiting to be eighteen years old. I foolishly spent many a birthday praying for a remote so I could slice off a few years of the waiting game. There were sneaky uses of others’ Ids, even an attempt to order decent fake ones off the internet, and of course the brave trying your luck at the corner shop method, but usually laughed away by the shop owner. The novelty of having my ID checked and verified by a cashier wore off pretty quickly, especially as it has lead me to discover that many people these days don’t actually know what year it is, or indeed can’t do a simple sum and have to count pain-stakingly slowly from 1993 to 2011. Also the fact that I look like a fucking angry corpse or something doesn’t do much for my confidence in ID checking situations, I’m not about to march right in there and say ‘well hello there young vender sir, could I have a bottle of your cheapest martini’, and wack out the old provisional licence when I look like my face is melting in the photo which is supposed to represent my face.

Being eighteen has been a little disappointing. I’m not sure if I expected a some fairy godmother to pop up out the ground and give me a money-free makeover, a driver, loads of energy and tons of friends who are always up for doing anything the second I turned eighteen. The fact of the matter is I’m still sat in my house, Snooki slippers on, on Wednesday night with no offers to hit the town and approximately 2p to finance me even if I wanted to.

Even if I do go out on the rampage, I’m so used to having to sneak a five pound bottle of vodka out of the house, or downing someone’s mum’s wine, or just asking for a little sippy of whatever everyone at the party is drinking that I don’t even know what to ask for when I’m out. Beer is too manly and boat-y, wine just makes me want to puke/sleep and shots usually rinse my purse and really aren’t exactly a whale of a time. Even Jägerbombs, the only nice, cheap and tipsy-making drink I can think of, are a mystery to me. For those of you who live under a rock or something, Jägerbombs are supposed to be a shot of Jägermister, bobbing around in a glass of red bull. You’re basically supposed to drink both the shot and the red bull at the same time by tipping both into your mouth at once, but queen of the dumbasses over here can’t manage that, so I pretty much just tip the shot in the glass most of the time. Often this is met with remarks of ‘CLAIRE YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG’. Cool story bro. I really don’t care.

So on the month’s anniversary of my eighteenth birthday, I’m kind of disappointed to be sat in a sleeping bag staring at my computer, just like I have spent every other evening for the last four years. No fairy godmother here. Hopefully I’ll enjoy my new eighteen-year-old status more on Friday, when I finally stop being a hermit and brave the world again.

Black Swan: Worth a watch, but not for the faint-hearted.

Starring Natalie Portman, who spends the vast majority of the film looking constipated, having people creep up on her and having very painful-looking and blood producing accidents, Black Swan is not for those with a weak stomach. The film follows the story of a young and dedicated dancer, Nina Sayers (Portman) in New York, who is finally gets her big break when her creepy ballet teacher Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) gives her the role of both the Black and White swan in Swan Lake. Nina has, thus far in her dancing career, been poised and exact, so Thomas urges her to get in touch with her ‘dark side’ and become more of a black swan, as she is pitched against her alternate, Lily (Mila Kunis), who coincidentally keeps popping up in Nina’s dreams. Through her attempts to become more in touch with her own ‘Black Swan’, Nina becomes more and more shrouded in mental illness and her perception becomes increasingly unhinged from reality.



The majority of Black Swan should be watched through one’s fingers. There are some truly cringeworthily gruesome moments and this film is not for the squeamish, nor is it for young budding ballerinas or homophobes. It has its perks – the film cleverly follows the plot of the actual Swan Lake, in which the White Swan’s prince falls in love with her twin, and there’s this whole ‘oh my gosh that makes sense now’ moment where Lily and Nina go to a bar and a guy asks if they’re sisters. But overall, the film was just too nightmarishly odd for me, and it’s hard to know when there will be a nice bit of ballet or whether someone will suddenly fork out their eyeball or something. Not for the squeamish or weak-hearted, and a definite no-go for family viewing, unless your parents are cool about racy lesbian sex. If not, it’ll make a very awkward watch.