My Life In Graz. So Far.
It's another pretty ordinary day at the office. Well, not quite ordinary because it's Tuesday, and ordinarily on a Tuesday I would be sitting with my colleagues in the conference room for our fortnightly team meeting, nodding in fake understanding of their fast dialekt while tucking into an enormous breakfast of three types of bread (semmels, pumpkin seed loaf amd seeded rolls), pate, salami, cream cheese, camembert, melon, grapes, sweet peppers, horseradish, tomatoes, satsumas, yoghurt etc). Then at eleven we would begin an hour long Pilates class. The lady comes to us and goes around correcting our posture while we all twist ourselves into painful positions on the office floor, giggling a lot more than is appropriate - usually because the office's dog Samira (really Ines the Office Manager's) has decided to join in. Afterwards we would all return to our desks, many of us still in our tracksuit bottoms because we can't be bothered to change, and after a while of working I would notice Samira looking up at me, still not quite sure if she likes me or not, wagging her tail at me but backing away if I approach. She's a small, yappy type dog.
But this Tuesday happens to be a Tuesday that falls between a three day and a four day weekend (Austrians appear to like any excuse for a holiday), so the Boss has decided to take the three days off inbetween and have a positively enormous ten day holiday while only actually using up three days of his holiday allowance. Bloody brilliant if you ask me - if I had money, places to go and some semblence of a long-running routine here I'd do the same thing. Samira also isn't here because Ines's daughter, Sara, has this week off school, so Samira is keeping her company. I'm sure more work gets done without Sami here, but it's rather less fun. Nothing breaks up your afternoon like a dog's mad moment time.
Actually very ordinarily for me I am at a bit of a loose end. This is perfectly normal because, owing to the fact that I am a volunteer and they aren't paying me anything, my colleagues seem hesitant to burden me with too much. Now me, I like a full intray. Preferably not overflowing but I like to be able to look at it and see tasks to do. I feel like a complete slacker in this office. Today I have nothing to do because the project that I am working on - an application for funding to run a seminar in May on youth parliaments - is on my colleague's computer, which I can't access until she arrives and turns the blinking thing on. However she is coming to work via the lady who has patiently helped us through ever baby step of the application process to pick up her proofread copy so that we can make any final corrections to it. Once we finish this damn form, hopefully today, I will be back to the drawing board and sending out emails to my colleagues begging for jobs.
So, this evening I will cycle home as usual - a little early because I finished late last night - do some shopping (I need batteries for an electronic dictionary, ear warmers, waterproof leggings and some sort of food) and then make my way to the appartment of a lady called Sabine, her husband and her 14 year old daughter, Julia. I am tutoring Julia in English, chiefly because the poor soul seems to have the strictest teacher on the face of the earth with very complicated teaching methods. Now I am all about simplification. I'm a bear of little brain and I like things straightforward. In our last lesson together I basically pared down the concept of the past progressive and the simple past to the diference between (. . .) and (.). And guess what? She got the highest mark in the class on that test. So I must have done something right.
I have ended up tutoring Julia because she is friends in school with Sara, who Ines has asked me to tutor. Now Sara is a confidant, funny, bright girl and consequently a joy to teach because she isn't afraid to make mistakes. She's mastered rule number one of learning a foreign language: the most important thing is that you speak. I tend to feel a little bit guilty teaching Sara because I really don't think she needs me, but as we both really enjoy the time together I try not to let it bother me. I like to pretend to myself that they're just paying me in coffee and jaffa cakes, not also in money. But then hey, I need that money. With Julia I feel more like it's a job, and so I don't feel so bad being paid for it. Also, their appartment is gorgeous. They can easily afford it.
It's an odd thing that living in a block of flats is just normal here. I mean, I have begun to realise the awful assumptions that we have in the UK. I noticed it when I discovered that Jonathan's best friend Hannes lives in a block of flats. My first thought was that he might be 'poor'. Now, that didn't make me think any the less of him - please God never let me stoop to that - but It's shocking to discover new prejudices in yourself that you didn't even realise existed. Jonathan's family are moving into a flat because they'd actually prefer it. And God knows, they certainly aren't poor. The same goes here. Clearly the sixties didn't hit them around the head with the monstrosities that we were lumbered with in the UK. Maybe we should redefine our attitude to the block of flats in the UK. We certainly need the space.
So on Tuesday and Friday evenings I play tutor, and on Monday and Wednesday evenings I play student (as I am only allowed to work 35 hours a week in my project with language classes included, I finish work at 2:30 on these days. However my class is literally just down the road and my flat is a whole ten-15 minute bike ride away, so I have mastered the technique of staying at my desk drinking the free freshly ground coffee and doing my homework, neatly avoiding the trap of doing all of my homework on a Sunday evening (some habits from school never die)). My German class is interesting, chiefly because the majority of the people in it are immigrants looking to maybe spend the rest of their lives here. They sit in linguistic groups - there Bosnians, there Croatians etc - and I sit by myself, feeling a little bit like an imposter. I mean, ISOP's courses are specifically for immigrants I think (which is possibly why they's so reasonably priced - only 65 Euros for a semester at four hours of teaching time a week), and here am I the devil-may-care volunteer, working in an office where everybody speaks my language to one degree or another and studying German because I don't want to be another of those arrogant Englishmen that enters a restaurant and hollars 'EXCUSE ME MY GOOD MAN, MAY I SEE AN ENGLISH MENU?!' Not that I'm not speaking German. I'm quite chuffed with the amount that I'm speaking and learning every day. Also, my housemate has lent me a book of stories for people learning German as a foreign language, and I read two of them last night. I can feel myself getting better - although last night I learned that I had been addressing my boss in the wrong gender in my emails. Slightly embarrassing.
And that, really, is my working life. It's coming together, slowly. Finding a normal social life is taking a lot more time, but I'm not one to give up that easily. This is the first time in my life that friends haven't basically been handed to me on a plate. I'm beginning to realise just how easy it was to make my best friends before. Sitting next to them in school. Taking drama workshops with them. Living with them. Calling them to me with my faghag siren*. I'm having to work at it this time. It's an interesting and challenging experience, but I'm determined to be a better, stronger person at the end of it.
*I wonder if the reason I haven't called any gay men to me here yet is because I've inwardly switched off the siren. I've got the best gay man going, and a gaggle of almost as wonderful ones with him at home. Maybe it's the faghag relationship equivalent of when you get a boyfriend and people stop hitting on you. It's not that you're any less attractive - you're probably MORE attractive with all the contentment - but you're just not looking for it. I've turned my 'occupied taxi' light on.
But this Tuesday happens to be a Tuesday that falls between a three day and a four day weekend (Austrians appear to like any excuse for a holiday), so the Boss has decided to take the three days off inbetween and have a positively enormous ten day holiday while only actually using up three days of his holiday allowance. Bloody brilliant if you ask me - if I had money, places to go and some semblence of a long-running routine here I'd do the same thing. Samira also isn't here because Ines's daughter, Sara, has this week off school, so Samira is keeping her company. I'm sure more work gets done without Sami here, but it's rather less fun. Nothing breaks up your afternoon like a dog's mad moment time.
Actually very ordinarily for me I am at a bit of a loose end. This is perfectly normal because, owing to the fact that I am a volunteer and they aren't paying me anything, my colleagues seem hesitant to burden me with too much. Now me, I like a full intray. Preferably not overflowing but I like to be able to look at it and see tasks to do. I feel like a complete slacker in this office. Today I have nothing to do because the project that I am working on - an application for funding to run a seminar in May on youth parliaments - is on my colleague's computer, which I can't access until she arrives and turns the blinking thing on. However she is coming to work via the lady who has patiently helped us through ever baby step of the application process to pick up her proofread copy so that we can make any final corrections to it. Once we finish this damn form, hopefully today, I will be back to the drawing board and sending out emails to my colleagues begging for jobs.
So, this evening I will cycle home as usual - a little early because I finished late last night - do some shopping (I need batteries for an electronic dictionary, ear warmers, waterproof leggings and some sort of food) and then make my way to the appartment of a lady called Sabine, her husband and her 14 year old daughter, Julia. I am tutoring Julia in English, chiefly because the poor soul seems to have the strictest teacher on the face of the earth with very complicated teaching methods. Now I am all about simplification. I'm a bear of little brain and I like things straightforward. In our last lesson together I basically pared down the concept of the past progressive and the simple past to the diference between (. . .) and (.). And guess what? She got the highest mark in the class on that test. So I must have done something right.
I have ended up tutoring Julia because she is friends in school with Sara, who Ines has asked me to tutor. Now Sara is a confidant, funny, bright girl and consequently a joy to teach because she isn't afraid to make mistakes. She's mastered rule number one of learning a foreign language: the most important thing is that you speak. I tend to feel a little bit guilty teaching Sara because I really don't think she needs me, but as we both really enjoy the time together I try not to let it bother me. I like to pretend to myself that they're just paying me in coffee and jaffa cakes, not also in money. But then hey, I need that money. With Julia I feel more like it's a job, and so I don't feel so bad being paid for it. Also, their appartment is gorgeous. They can easily afford it.
It's an odd thing that living in a block of flats is just normal here. I mean, I have begun to realise the awful assumptions that we have in the UK. I noticed it when I discovered that Jonathan's best friend Hannes lives in a block of flats. My first thought was that he might be 'poor'. Now, that didn't make me think any the less of him - please God never let me stoop to that - but It's shocking to discover new prejudices in yourself that you didn't even realise existed. Jonathan's family are moving into a flat because they'd actually prefer it. And God knows, they certainly aren't poor. The same goes here. Clearly the sixties didn't hit them around the head with the monstrosities that we were lumbered with in the UK. Maybe we should redefine our attitude to the block of flats in the UK. We certainly need the space.
So on Tuesday and Friday evenings I play tutor, and on Monday and Wednesday evenings I play student (as I am only allowed to work 35 hours a week in my project with language classes included, I finish work at 2:30 on these days. However my class is literally just down the road and my flat is a whole ten-15 minute bike ride away, so I have mastered the technique of staying at my desk drinking the free freshly ground coffee and doing my homework, neatly avoiding the trap of doing all of my homework on a Sunday evening (some habits from school never die)). My German class is interesting, chiefly because the majority of the people in it are immigrants looking to maybe spend the rest of their lives here. They sit in linguistic groups - there Bosnians, there Croatians etc - and I sit by myself, feeling a little bit like an imposter. I mean, ISOP's courses are specifically for immigrants I think (which is possibly why they's so reasonably priced - only 65 Euros for a semester at four hours of teaching time a week), and here am I the devil-may-care volunteer, working in an office where everybody speaks my language to one degree or another and studying German because I don't want to be another of those arrogant Englishmen that enters a restaurant and hollars 'EXCUSE ME MY GOOD MAN, MAY I SEE AN ENGLISH MENU?!' Not that I'm not speaking German. I'm quite chuffed with the amount that I'm speaking and learning every day. Also, my housemate has lent me a book of stories for people learning German as a foreign language, and I read two of them last night. I can feel myself getting better - although last night I learned that I had been addressing my boss in the wrong gender in my emails. Slightly embarrassing.
And that, really, is my working life. It's coming together, slowly. Finding a normal social life is taking a lot more time, but I'm not one to give up that easily. This is the first time in my life that friends haven't basically been handed to me on a plate. I'm beginning to realise just how easy it was to make my best friends before. Sitting next to them in school. Taking drama workshops with them. Living with them. Calling them to me with my faghag siren*. I'm having to work at it this time. It's an interesting and challenging experience, but I'm determined to be a better, stronger person at the end of it.
*I wonder if the reason I haven't called any gay men to me here yet is because I've inwardly switched off the siren. I've got the best gay man going, and a gaggle of almost as wonderful ones with him at home. Maybe it's the faghag relationship equivalent of when you get a boyfriend and people stop hitting on you. It's not that you're any less attractive - you're probably MORE attractive with all the contentment - but you're just not looking for it. I've turned my 'occupied taxi' light on.