Author Archives: Hidenobu Niwa

German Language Changes Your Life!!

DSC_0217 After one month of DeutschAkademie Wien course, I feel little more confident about speaking German than before. It is good that I can communicate with people here with their own language. In Vienna, many people speak English because here is like very international place. Not only Austrian but so many from other country are living together in this city so using English is kind of easy way of communication as first step. Yet, surely German is needed language. It is not about you really need for living (it is actually good to know definitely), but people are expecting you to speak. And also some people does not speak even a little English. For example, when the guy for heating came to my flat to fix someting, I needed to speak with them for a little thing. But because they didn’t speak English and I couldn’t talk any German, it was a bit wired situation.. I was just trying to be nice and that was it lol That is all what I could do before. However now I am different. I can integrate with people in German at least better than before! I can also communicate with a heating guy for a little thing. At last, I just want to express my feeling that being able to communicate with people here with their own language is giving me so much fun and confidence, going to new dimension. Good luck with your study!!

lange nacht der kirchen

In Vienna, there are many fancy events like party, clubbing, Skating, Opera and more and more. But today I want to point out this event called „lange nacht der kirchen“. It was actually yesterday though I am writing this for next year.

Vienna has many churches in the city. And during the night, they open their church for everyone who wants to come. And they make their church very nice and some of them do some event. For instance when I went to one church last night, there was dance group performing in the church. They were creating sort of spiritual atmosphere.

Usually the big famous churches like Stephansdom or Karlskirche offer lighting. So it is really recommended event for everyone including not so church people.

I also write here about sommernachtskonzert 2014 which is on 29th of May. Philharmoniker that is very famous Orchestra plays music. It is free of charge and looks really really nice! I definitely recommend you to enjoy the night.

https://www.wienerphilharmoniker.at/sommernachtskonzert-main

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Where to live in Vienna?

Vienna is the great city that has both traditional and modan style faces. And I can say it also has the faces that are both traditional austrian and mulitinational aspect. We have a fabulous Oper and first distric where you can rally enjoy the city centor that has histrical view points. If you go to the market like Nashmarkt and  Brunnenmarkt, you will be able to see a lot of food and stuffs from out side of this country that gives the mixture of many culture specially middle
east erea which I love.

Over Donau river, we have UN biliding (if you are interested in internatioanl relations, you can go there as tour member. I enjoyed very much!) and near there is like new fasion. You will see the lot of contemporal builiding.
And near there, these is a big shopping centor „Kagran“. Specially the winter time, so many people go there. There is also a big shopping centoer located closed to U6 line station named „Hander sky“ and also near meidling „SCS (shopping centor sud)“. You will definetely
spend time for shopping, eating and so on!

Why am I writing there becasue I just moved lately. I moved to 23 district from 17! 17 district, we had a lot of fun. Over there is alive. People are going and coming so it has more the tase of the „city“. I liked living there very much.Yet for a job transfer convinience, we moved to the 23th where is little more quite and people can live more „slow life“.
It is the place of less stress and… I dont know it yet actually. Since I was thinking I am the city guy so I don’t know how I feel living here. But I will discover soon and I feel already quite nice!

Hope you will have a great flat and place to enjoy your stay in Vienna! There are many opportunity waiting for you.

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What I like about the learning Things..

The exercise I liked most was the discussion about different culture and what the individual thinks about the specific topic. Student can talk freely their opinion and with in the time, the teacher can fix the words and grammars that are a bit misused. This is one the best way of learning a language I think. You have to speak and try to get used to it! No need to be shy. And I can also understand what people think and it was a great thing for me.

And I also liked studying new grammar because I know that I can speak more sophisticated level of the language. I literally feel that I’m getting better. So I am very simple guy at this point l0l  Reading the text book is also fun for me because the text book we use like B1level has interesting topics and history. You can learn many other things while you learn German.

DeutschAkademie has relatively small group. It means not one or two but enough amount of people to integrate with German. You learn from teacher, text book and also your colleagues. So this is the opportunity we are given and I hope that we can improve our German more and more!!

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After the class around 9pm! This building above is the one that has deutschacademi inside. It’s just in front of Opera!!

 

Restaurants in Vienna!

Today I want to write about a little bit of a tip for good restaurant in Vienna. Like I wrote last time, Vienna has a lot of international restaurant which has nice test.

For Japanese restaurant (as I am Japanese)… „Sakai“ and „Neko“ are good. Specially Neko is reasonable but the quality and atmosphere are good. It is located in the first district near DeutschaAademie actually „Mahlerstrasse“. And „Sakai“ is run by Japanese owner and its foods are very „japanese quality“ but it costs a bit more. You can definitely enjoy it!

Other international restaurant I like are „Aming Dim Sum Profi“ which is Chinese restaurant and Iranian one „Pars“. Chinese one tastes very good and I recommend people to order Dim Sum pork. It is amazing! You can also enjoy the special rice from „Pars“. You can enjoy the every meal there.

If you are young student and tight with money, „Deewan“ is the place to go. I mean many adults go there too. It is basically a buffer style pakistani curry restaurant. What is amazing for this is that you usually can decide how much you pay for the meal. It sounds unbelievable but it is true. Anyway you can try first and can know the great system there! You can try different kind of taste.

Ofcourse there are many other places I want to write here (today it was all asian resaurant..) or the places I do not know..but for today I want to finish till here. I want you to try many place and find out the good place and let me know it!

Mahlzeit!!

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Oh the picture was from one of „Heurige“ near Schönbrunn. Heurige is always good to go! It is a traditional restaurant with kind of a pub in Austria. You can drink a good wine!

Stadtpark in Vienna

Today I went out with my wife to the city center. In April and Summer, Vienna gets very beautiful. With shiny sunshine, you can enjoy a relaxed city in a park. We have a couple of parks, and the one that is very nice and famous is called „Stadtpark“.

People can get there very easily because there is subway station called „Stadtpark“ \ It is on U4 green line. The park is quite big and it has a lake, a river and some play space for children (so there are many families there). I like sitting in bench in front of a like and watching ducks. During the summer time, many people are sitting and laying down on grasses having chat and doing some sport.

If you you new here and not yet being there, It is really worth going especially when the weather is great like today! You can even study there!!

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I LOVE VIENNA! //Let’s take a Night Walk in the First District!!

I love Vienna……..

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Because it is a very beautiful city. Especially I like this season. The night is becoming brighter and brighter so you can enjoy the night life as well as the european style buildings with lighting up both natural and made light. If you are first time in Vienna, I definitely recommend you to take a walk in first district. Because it is awesome. Many old buildings are kept and organized nicely. There are many shops around there too.

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Kärntner Straße for sure, and you can go into a small path to get to Hofburg Palace. You will see a carriage sometime and all of historic architecture that makes you feel as if you are living in the old time. Churches are nicely lighted up. I like the night walk. If you are food person and like sweet thing, you can also go down to Schwerdenplatz from the one of the mail church called Stephansdom. Over there, there are couple of cafe you can go. In Vienna, people eat many ice cream and cake so it is really worth trying!!

Our city hall is not only the roll of city hall. In front of city hall, there are often some event going on. From now on, I think there is gonna be musical and opera place that you can see famous group or people’s video with a huge screen and there are a lot of international restaurant coming there. The atmosphere is like a big night club. So it is good to check up before heading there.

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Mein freier Tag in WIEN! l0l

Mein freier Tag war ein Entspannungstag wenn ich mit einem Wort sagen kann. Ich bin nicht viel raus gegangen und naturlich habe ich keine Reise gemacht. Aber ich hatte viele Freizeit mit meiner Frau in Wien und zu Hause.

Das war nett weil wir viel sprechen konnte. Eigentlich sind wir am Freitagabend ins Kino gegangen. Wir haben „Captain America“ gesehen. Der Film war toller als was ich dachte. Ich mag Action Film und der hat viele gute Actionszenen.

Freie Tage sind wichtig damit man von Stress entspannen kann und reflektieren kann.

Ich denke schon jetzt an meinem freien Tag im nächsten Woche!

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No Need to be afraid of Mistake! // Keine Angst!

These two days, we focused on learning grammar. I want to summarize a bit of them here as I do not want to forget about it:

da, weil… because/ obwohl… even or even though/ sodass… for result like „so that“

trotzdem… never the less/ deshalb, darum, deswegen… because of that

And also the way people compare stuff like „groß, größer als, am größten“                                       „genauso groß wie, so groß wie“ are also a part of them. In English, it is big, bigger than, the biggest and etc.

The tense is also important when you speak the language. German has a couple of them. For now, I want to just shortly write it down.

Present… Ich lese/   Future 1… Ich werde lesen/ Future 2… Ich werde gelesen haben                        Perfekt… Ich habe gelesen/ Past… Ich las/ Plusquamperfekt… Ich hatte gelesen

So they are quite complex. Yet it shows that German is sophisticated language. I am sure that I am not able to use this „manner“ at the moment but in one day, I want to be able to speak like this.

Writing and reading are easy than speaking I think. When it comes to talk, the grammar becomes messed up even though I know how actually I should say correctly. So practice, practice, practice!

No need to be afraid of mistakes! (so maybe I should start off writing this in German from next time?)….

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German Class // New Friends

As I said earlier, one of the best thing for taking a language class for me is to meet new people. And we can be a good friend. For example, I still keep meeting a friend from the class I took last year. Because we have same interest like learning German and also similar situation such as coming to abroad, it is easy for us to become a friend I think.

For instance, we went out for cafe a couple of time to talk about living in abroad and sharing the feeling and opinion for that. We also took a walk at downtown. It was amazing time to many different stuff. I could widen my insight toward the world because they were from many places in the world.

For the course now, sadly though because I started working full time and taking evening class from 6 to 9pm, we have not been able to hung out yet. However we have already exchanged our name on facebook and I think we can go out in near future. If something happen, we can always contact and help each other!

Learning German is a challenge and it makes your life more beautiful like this „Cafe Maschine“…in DeutschAkademie!

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My Colleagues! Gemeinsam Deutsch lernen!

My colleagues in the German class are from many country. For example, I am from Japan. And my classmates are from Spain, Jordan, Hungary as well as African continent. They actually „we“ came to Austria for study and finding a job. So we really need to learn German in order to achieve our purpose of coming here.

Learning German is like a first step for us. And I feel that some of them are already able to speak well. I mean with „intermediate“ German, they can point out what they want to point out to people. That is what we at least need and of course we need to practice more.

During the class, we often discuss about a different situation in a different country. So this is very interesting for me to participate. We can widen our thought and feelings.

Small class and easy to integrate!!

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