In Memoriam - Lotu - 2003 (2004) - 27.07.2017

With a bleeding heart I have to tell, that my beloved dog, Lotu, passed away yesterday after a stroke and massive seizures that forced us to call in a vet to help him go to dogs' paradise. It came like a very bad lightning strike, because, even though he had...

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Special Olympics World Winter Games 2017 in Austria, from the diary kept during the games

Special Olympics 14-25.03 2017; Delegation Assistant Liaison (DAL) 14.03 Arrival of the Estonian delegation Went to Graz airport to pick up and welcome the Estonian delegation. Had to be in the airport around 1,5 hrs earlier. Met Marco (the other DAL...

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How is that possible that you live in Austria and have never gone mountain skiing?

Because it's madly expensive, that's why! But when one has a chance, then one has to grab it. That is exactly what happened after 3,5 years in Austria. I have made many great friends here, mostly couples. You know- Estonian girl, Austrian guy. The family of...

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How does it feel to share a life between two (or actually even three) countries?

Last week, when a friend of mine, who is from Estonia, had her leaving party here, I started to think deeper about my life which is currently divided between three countries and two out of those countries have grown so close to me, that imagining leaving one of them for the other would be a very hard task. I don't know what it is, but amongst almost all my good Estonian friends come and go deep and...

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The perks of working with people with Autism

I had to do a bit different working shift today, where I had to take one guy home to the other end of the county from a social group he attends in Graz. It was an unexpected shift in thay sense that I found out about it two days before and had to change my work schedule for that. Was all worth it, because....  I got into a following situation: I went to pick my client up and along with him came...

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Elfriede Ott a'la Austrian (or Croatian) neighbours

When we were living in our very first flat in Graz, we once watched an Austrian movie called "Elfriede Ott" with my German-speaking friends. It was supposed to be a comedy in the style of "Siin me oleme". The activities took place in Graz and the movie had the best Austrian actors and actresses playing in it, who meant nothing to me. The language of the movie was Austrian German with deep influences...

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The birthplace of Terminator

Once in my language course in Austria, we were discussing about all the famous people that come from Austria. A few names were named: Fritzl (yeah, people tend to have heard of him a lot); You-Know-Who (at least we should not say his name out loud- he was a very...

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When I got home to find out there had been no electricity for couple of days.

I'm not gonna start off this post with the reason, why I'm absolutely (still) pissed, but will talk first of all about my week. So, I had a mini-holiday from work and went to South-Tyrol. As usually, one needs a holiday to recover from a holiday :) First of all-...

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Going to a public sauna in Austria

I've been wanting to write here about sauna-culture in Austria since three weeks but just havent had the time and motivation. So, couple of weeks ago, an Estonian friend of mine (Annika) asked me and Hannes, whether we would be interested in checking out the biggest sauna complex in Graz, called Auster, which happens to be just 3min walk from our new flat. Me and Hannes decided to give it a go, as...

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