Small-town charm and sun in Ireland

As I’ve recently posted an entry about the importance of travelling, I started thinking about the places I’ve already travelled to, and those I definitely have to see one day. Unfortunately the list of places I’ve been to was a lot shorter than the one with the cities or countries I haven’t been lucky to visit yet. Some places crossed my mind that I didn’t enjoy much visiting, but there were also many I really liked. A place that I can still picture very well, although I was only there for a couple of hours, is a friendly Irish seaside town called Bray.

Like almost every Austrian teenager does at least once during the time they go to school, I went on a language trip when I was about the age of fifteen. Whereas most students chose England as their destination because they want to hear what we call ‘proper English’, I insisted on going to the Emerald Isle. My trip took me to the capital, also known as Baile Átha Cliath.

One beautiful morning (it was indeed a beautiful morning for Irish weather conditions) we were taken on a day trip to Bray, which is located South of Dublin. I remember that my first thought when getting off the bus was that I’d never seen such a charming place. While we were walking towards the beach I spotted satisfied children walking home from the amusement park located on the beach joyfully. I passed by smiling tourists who were amazed by the cloudless sky. Young and elderly people walked by and all of them seemed to do nothing but enjoy the lively atmosphere on the beach promenade.

When we entered a welcoming beachside cafe, after having spent some time on the beach, I didn’t feel like being a tourist at all. All kinds of people, locals meeting up for coffee and talk, Dubliners taking a break from hectic city life, and, of course, tourists like us, were enjoying their coffee and company like they were sitting in their own living room. The atmosphere was different than in most Dublin-based café where you always felt stressed because somebody else was already waiting for your table.

Bray is what I would call a typical small-town. Nobody seems to be stressed or have any worries. Or maybe was it just the weather that made this place seem so perfect to me?

famous blog vs. good blog

I’ve never been the person who reads blogs on a regular basis. But, when I was a teenager I spent a lot of time (it was way too much time I wasted) on YouTube. I think these two forms of media have quite a lot in common, and therefore I’d use the same criteria for rating them.

What makes a good blog?
When asking myself this question, the first thing I had in mind was to search for some famous bloggers, read a few of their posts and find out what all of them have in common that makes them as well-known as they are. Well, I could also admit that I was simply too lazy for going through so many blogs. But, as an excuse for my laziness I began to think about whether a famous blog automatically has to be a good one.

This thought crossed my mind because I know how it is with people making Youtube-videos, and they have quite a lot in common with bloggers, sometimes even write blogs themselves. A great part of them were really worth watching at the beginning of their ‘career’, when nobody knew them. As they became more and more famous, their videos turned less entertaining. People in the blogosphere and the Youtube-world are mostly very natural and therefore entertaining when they start with their business. The more professional they become, the more their personal touch fades.

We are living in a lazy society. The majority of people don’t really care about facts, or well-documented experiences others made. What people want, is to know the people they read about. Personal information is the best one can give them, which sometimes makes the life of a well-known blogger a bit hard. More or less you could say that a famous blogger only has to sell themselves. 

A good blog, or let's call it a blog of high quality, whereas, should focus more on a certain topic. That does not mean that the blogger always has to write about the same kind of stuff. But, every blog post, whatever it is about, should be focused on the experience they've made, the interesting news they've heard about, the product they want to recommend to their readers,...not only on the person blogging. Also does a good blog need some pictures or videos that make it more lively.

I don’t find all famous blogs bad, although it might have sounded like this. There are, of course, a lot of famous blogs that deserve their popularity. I only wanted to reveal that not all of them are as well-written as we expect them to be. But, everyone has to find their own definition of a good blog. This often depends on a person’s interests and is therefore hard to agree on.

Cheer up! - How to fight a bad day

I’m sure all of you know the these days when you want to do nothing but shout out in anger and kick all your aggressions into a punchbag. Everyone knows this feeling, wouldn’t be human if you didn’t. Keeping thinking about who or what made you go mad won’t do them any harm and you won’t feel any better by doing this. Letting off the steam or distracting yourself doing things you enjoy is always better than bottling up your emotions. People have discovered their personal ways to do this. I want to tell you what I do to blow the cobwebs away. Maybe you’ll find something useful for yourself.

As you may know from my previous blog posts, I am a huge music-lover. So, it’s obvious that I’d feel much better after listening to an incredible piece of music. When I am extremely outraged, I usually turn on a Rock or Punk-Rock song at high volume. I also enjoy sitting down at the piano to play some anger-influenced music myself (No, you don’t need drums or a bass guitar to abreact, a piano does the job as well.) It always surprises me at what speed anger can make my fingers fly across the keys. But not only fast or a little bit aggressive music can help you let out your anger. If a calm or melancholic song is more the type of music that puts a smile upon your face, go for that!

Many people say the best thing one can do to cool off is doing sports. Since I’m not really into kick boxing or push-ups, I’d choose to go for a walk instead. The fresh air will refresh your mind and if you’re lucky the sun might even be there to broaden your smile. Put in your headphones and switch off the world around you.

We tend to tell ourselves not to eat too much unhealthy stuff, smoke, or consume large amounts of coffee. Why always be so strict with ourselves? Will eating a bigmac or smoking a cigarette once in a while really affect our health that much? It shouldn’t become a habit, but in some situations even small things like that make us feel a little better.

The worst mistake one could make on a bad day like this is to bolt themselves in and avoid any contact with people. Afraid you could bother your friends, boyfriend/girlfriend, or family too much with your problems? You’re wrong! Let’s be honest, we are all not big fans of listening to our beloved ones complaining about their hard lives. But, we do it because we love them and therefore don’t mind. Everybody has their bad days.

So, instead of thinking how unfair life is, call a friend, cuddle your pet, or scarf down a whole chocolate bar. And if nothing else helps making your life seem a little brighter, open the paper and see that there are millions of people out there who are worse off than you.

Do we have to travel?

At the moment it’s all about travelling. Everybody seems to be talking about their travel plans. It makes me want to pack my suitcase and catch the next train or plane to whatever place. I guess the time when you have all the important exams coming up is not the best time for itchy feet…

Unfortunately, unlike many other people my age I cannot say that I’ve travelled the world. I have seen some places in Europe, but never had the chance to leave our continent yet. Anyway, I believe in the importance of travelling and there are still many places on my to-visit list.

Nowadays we are always told how important it is for a young person to travel. Teachers told us in school, out parents tell us, and also politicians do in some way when they commit themselves to exchange programmes for students. It is also important for me, but I wouldn’t say that travelling is necessary for everyone. I know a few people for whom getting to see other places is a torture. That does not mean that they are lazy people, just because they want to save themselves from all the struggles at airports, with languages, or different currencies, that you have to go through when you are on a journey. These people are simply happier when they’re at home and shouldn’t be blamed for that. I know a woman who is in her sixties and has never left her hometown, not once in her life. This sounds very shocking to us at an age of mobility and globalisation. But this woman has never felt the desire to see other parts of the world (or even her own country). She seems to be absolutely satisfied with her life.

Travelling is not for everyone, but if you want to work in a certain job, it is necessary, I think. Not because of all the business trips you might have to take, but because you need to have a certain understanding of cultural differences and global disparities. In my opinion a politician who has never left their country can’t really be a good one. They should have seen countries that are not as wealthy or peaceful as we know it from ours, in order to be able to prevent similar situations in their own country. A businessperson who trades with other countries has to know how people live there, how the conditions are, so as not to damage anybody.

Also for intolerant, narrow-minded, mostly racist people, travelling would be a good treatment I suppose. What often makes them hold such views is the fear of the unknown. Travelling may help them to get a better understanding of other cultures. Sometimes you don’t even have to go far to experience and see something completely different.

Charlie Hebdo - it's not only the attack that should make us wory

Even it is Sunday and I should probably write about something nice and peaceful, I’ve decided to come up with a subject today that is exactly the opposite of peace. It’s about the attack on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine which happened four days ago. The actual shooting at the office in which eleven journalists and one policeman have been killed was not all that happened. The consequences of the event also include a shooting at a kosher supermarket and the death of a young police woman.

What is Charlie Hebdo?

Charlie Hebdo is known as a left-wing magazine that mostly criticizes religion and politics. Their staff included Jews and people of Arabic origin. Islamic extremists mistake it for a magazine that only makes fun of their religion. But it isn’t. Charlie Hebdo mistrusts all religions, not only the Islam. Their columnists and caricaturists pass criticism on our capitalist consumer society and also create funny caricatures of their own president.

Cartoonophobia

The attack at the beginning of the new year isn’t the first one the magazine has to deal with. Hebdo’s office has already been fire-bombed by extremists once in 2011 for publishing cartoons featuring the prophet Muhammad. People call this the ‘Islamic Cartoonophobia’ and are now fighting against it reposting the magazine’s caricatures. 

'False Muslims'

I think the ones who are annoyed by the attack the most are French Muslims. Most of them lead a normal life and work and attend schools like their French-descending fellow citizens. Some people have reacted to the killing in Paris by a grenade-attack on a mosque and an explosion in a kebab shop beside a mosque. This makes it hard for peaceful Muslims to practise and stand to their religion. According to Malek Merabet, the brother of the killed policeman who was Muslim too, Chérif and Said Kouachi, the brothers who performed the shooting, are ‘false Muslims’. People like them are maniacs who have neither colour or religion.

How a mistreated hero saved his customers

Not only the Kouachi brothers, but also a guy called Amedy Coulibali who is from Mali and called himself a Muslim, fought for ‘their religion’ over the last days. Only two days after the office-attack, Coulibaly stormed into a Jewish supermarket in Paris with two Kalashnikovs. He took people hostage for hours before elite forces finally stormed the supermarket. The shopkeeper had managed to hide a small group of shoppers in a cold storage room in the basement and risked his own life for them. He somehow managed to escape the building using an elevator. The shopkeeper’s name is Lassana Bathily, from Mali and Muslim too. When he left the building in order to give the police further information about what was going on inside, they did not thank him for what he had done. No, the first thing the police did was to cuff and hold him for an hour because they thought he was involved into the crime somehow. That’s just another example of how lunatic extremists bedevil ordinary Muslims’ lifes.

Is there anything we can do?

I could go on about this topic for hours now because there’s so much that extremists like these people have already done to the world or are going to do. The Islamic State that keeps killing ‘disbelievers’ in Iraq and Syria, Boko Haram who are killing in Nigeria, terrorist attacks in European and American cities,…they are all bound together. None of us can really understand why there are lunatics like the Paris-killers or IS-combatants and it’s hard to stop their number from increasing. But, there is something we can do. We can stop mixing up Muslim extremists and Muslims. It is only a small and simple action. But isn’t making a small step better than leaving things as they are?

A person i admire

Today I want to introduce a very admirable person to you. It’s an Austrian person who has been honoured a lot recently. No, it’s not Conchita, even though she would be worth a blog post too for being one of the most inspiring Austrians. Who I want to talk about today is Michael Haneke.

Why him?
I’ve always been impressed by his work. Recently I watched a movie called ‘My Life’ on Youtube, in which he, his wife and actors from his movies talk about his way of proceeding. Furthermore, he tells some anecdotes of his life, and extracts from Haneke-movies are shown. I didn’t know anything about his personality before, maybe even thought that he’s a little vain because of the Oscar and his fame. But, he’s nothing like that. After the presentation of the Oscar in 2013, while all the other stars went partying, Michael Haneke took his wife out for dinner. She is his biggest critic and the one who keeps him down-on-Earth.

Keep it simple

I think most of you had already known the director before he finally received his Oscar nearly two years ago. The film he is probably most famous for is The White Ribbon, which is a black-and-white drama film set in Germany at the time shortly before World War I. I have to admit that I’ve never seen this one, but I’ve seen a few others of Haneke’s movies, so I know the style of his work. There are some things that most of his films have in common, the typical Haneke-features.

What a viewer notices while watching, also what actors say who have worked with the Austrian, is, that nothing in his movies happens accidentally. Every step the characters take and every single move they make has been planned into detail. Haneke isn’t the kind of producer that needs many different versions of a scene to choose from. He sees the whole film in his head before the scenes have even been shot. This may all sound extremely difficult, to me it does, but in ‘My Life’ the director says that his films are more difficult for the audience to watch than they are for him and the actors to make. Sounds quite hard to believe, but actually it’s true. When you watch a Haneke movie you will notice that everything is kept simple. You won’t find any vast effects or dramatic melodies. Haneke shows pure reality.

The cruel reality

Has a Haneke movie ever shocked you more than a thriller or horror film? It wouldn’t be surprising. The secret behind it is reality. A horror movie never really causes the fear that the situation we see on the screen could also happen to us. A movie by Michael Haneke, whether it deals with a shooting spree or with one of two marriage partners suddenly incurring an apoplexy, always raises the question: ‘What if this happened to me?’.

Violence - a regular feature of his work

In a lot of the movies violence plays a major part. From ‘small outrages’ like beating a child to ‘big outrages’ like a shooting spree, almost any act of violence is to be seen. Don’t think of Michael Haneke as a violently obsessed person now. In truth he is afraid of violence intensely, even though he never was a victim of it. All he wants to do is to show us how the world is. He also wants to point out that any person could be able to practise any kind of violence if they were in the right situation. When we hear about terrible crimes people committed we always automatically think of them as terrible people. But, do we know what has made them become like that?

If you have seen a few of Haneke’s movies and liked them, I can only recommend ‘My Life’. It’s interesting because it’s not what one expects from an Oscar-winner. If you don’t know anything of his work yet, try out something completely new and watch one of the films. It’s not for everyone, and don’t expect any fairytale-like, or clear endings. But it's worth it. Go and find out for yourself!

humorous history?

Chaos on the Emerald Isle 

In my Sunday-caused laziness I was absentmindedly scrolling through Instagram on my phone this afternoon, when a picture of the Famine Memorial in Dublin caught my eye. An Irish blogger had posted it in order to encourage people to sign an online petition. Like 9,000 other people she seemed to be really upset about what was going on and that made me curious.

What I found out was that Channel 4, a British television broadcaster, has made plans to launch a new comedy series named ‘Hungry’, based on the Irish potato famine.

The Great Famine

Before talking about the current issue, I would like to give you some short background information. It’s only the main facts of the great famine, which might help you to understand people’s anger a bit better.

Potatoes have always been the staple diet of the Irish (nowadays more frequently appearing in the form of fries). When crop failures afflicted the country, which, back then, formed a part of the British Empire, the base of their diet was suddenly gone. Ireland didn’t cultivate enormous amounts of crop, but the crop they had could have saved the lives of a large number of people. It could’ve done so, if they hadn’t been forced to export the only nourishments left to their ‘caring’ neighbours, the English.

The time between 1846 and 1849 reduced the number of inhabitants from 8,5 million to six million people. Most of them died and those who could afford it emigrated, mostly to the USA. Today the Irish population still makes up a quarter of the people living in Massachusetts, even they were not always received with open arms in the states. Irish had the ‘right’ skin colour, but were often treated as if they had a black skin.

The Dublin Famine Memorial

Too serious to be humorous? 

People are not only angry about the project in general, but also about the plans to make it a ‘New Shameless’, also referred to as ‘Shameless in famine Ireland’. Shameless is another British TV series, which tells the story of a wasteful alcoholic and his family.

The main character of the British Shameless

One of those who are strongly opposing the project is the Dublin Councillor David McGuinness. He wants people to show solidarity with their ancestors, giving the example that a Jewish person would never dare to make a comedy of the mass extermination of their ancestors by the Nazis. McGuinness adds that a television outlet starting such a project can only be a British one. This, once again, introduces the question whether there will entirely be peace between the two nations one day.

The author of the sitcom defends his project against all the criticism it already has to face, despite not even having been aired, by saying that Ireland has always been good at black humour. Well, black humour can be entertaining to some extent, but I agree with the 9,000 people who think that in this case it’s inappropriate. There are some topics that should only be shown in a historical context. Might be less amusing, but respect for these historical events shouldn’t disappear completely.