Events – Page 3 – eMag Uni Augsburg

DIY stamped tea towels on Towel Day

– A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. –

( Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)

Today is 25 May, which means it’s Towel Day! Why should we celebrate towels? Well, I believe Douglas Adams could have given a more than satisfactory answer if he was still alive.

Actually, it’s thanks to him that Towel Day came into existence in the first place, as it’s celebrated as a tribute to the author’s famous book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The day was first celebrated two weeks after Adams’ death in 2001 and refers to the phrase that “a towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have”. Therefore, fans all over the world celebrate towel day by carrying a towel with them wherever they go that day. If you want to join in the celebrations and you want to have your own special towel, then here is a fun tutorial on how to make stamped tea towels:

You will need:

white bed linen (that you don’t need anymore)
foam sheet – use one of the thicker ones
fabric paint
carpet cutter
pencil
scissors
glue

Firstly, grab your bed linen and lay a tea towel on top. Then outline the shape of your towel and cut it out. Now draw your designs on the foam sheet and cut them out with your cutter. You can make whatever shapes you like, but if you’re as bad as drawing as I am, geometric shapes are just fine 😉

Then cut out a small piece of foam and glue it to the back of your cut outs as a handle for your stamp.

Now cover the stamp with paint and start stamping your towels.

Once you’re happy with your towels, allow the paint to dry and iron them afterwards in order to prevent the paint from coming off when they’re being washed.

Now you have your perfect towel for celebrating Towel Day, but of course, you can just use it as a regualar tea towel as well. I hope you have fun crafting and always bear in mind: don’t panic!

Author & Pictures: Ricarda Rosenbaum

Review Trend & Food and Street Food Festival 2016

Augsburg really seems to be becoming a food city. In 2016, the city had three food events. Trend & Food Augsburg, which took place at the Kongress am Park between April 15 and 17, was the first. It really had a lot to offer: bars, food trucks, candy, hors d’oeuvre, vegan options and much more. And even though the Kongresshalle isn’t that big, there were a lot of different booths and everybody seemed to enjoy themselves. Whiskey, liquor and moonshine tasting were some of the fun booze-related activities you could indulge in. How about some tiny but delicious cupcakes? Sure! At some – if not most – of the booths, you could use the vouchers you got for paying to get in. This way you basically got all your money back and theoretically the entrance was free (with the early bird ticket at least).

Trend & Food was pretty small, but the bigger event was the Street Food Markt, which took place in May and between September 23 and 25, 2016 at the Gögginger Festplatz. Compared to 2015, there were almost twice as many booths and almost no waiting time at all. Everybody seemed to be crazy about those potato spiral thingies – they were delicious, but we couldn’t figure out if there were bread crumbs on them or not. The smoothie booth was a nice touch. I actually ordered the first Green Bull of the day. The pies, a ton of different versions of hot dogs, BBQ, pizza, Israeli and vegan booths also gave visitors an opportunity to try something new. One of my favorites was definitely the donuts: they looked, smelled and tasted like heaven! And if you were there early, you could easily get a very nice spot on a deckchair and enjoy the sun while nibbling on something yummy and drinking a cocktail, beer, smoothie or just plain water.

So… you might like to consider going to one of those festivals. It’s definitely worth it!

Author & Pictures: Susi Tallmadge

Tout un symbole

A l’heure où certaines volontés de repli identitaire au niveau européen se font de plus en plus entendre, où certains responsables politiques, surfant sur les vagues de peurs engendrées par une soi-disant crise de l’immigration sur le sol européen, ont de plus en plus voix au chapitre, à l’heure où l’Union européenne connaît sa première crise identitaire, incarnée par le tout récent Brexit, l’eMAG a choisi de prendre le contre-pied en s’ouvrant aux autres langues. Tout un symbole : un geste d’ouverture, de partage, d’unité dans la diversité des langues du Sprachenzentrum.

Unis (pas uniformisés !) dans la diversité, c’est bien là le plus grand défi de l’Union européenne. Au sortir de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, la construction d’une union des États européens est apparue comme étant LA solution afin d’assurer la paix, la croissance économique, la promotion des libertés, et ce de manière durable. Mais l’union européenne devait se faire rapidement, et c’est la voie économico-politique qui a été préférée : la possibilité d’une union d’abord humaine, sociale et culturelle aurait demandé beaucoup trop de temps. Or, c’est de cette dernière dont, à mon avis, le manque se fait le plus sentir et dont l’UE a le plus besoin actuellement.

A eux seuls, les rapprochements économiques et politiques ne peuvent pas construire une identité européenne, même s’ils peuvent apporter un élan aux volontés de complémentarité et d’ententes. A mon sens, la construction d’une identité européenne a besoin de « temps long » couplé à des actions quotidiennes venant des citoyens européens eux-mêmes. L’identité européenne doit venir « du bas », de ses fondations : ainsi, les manifestations Pulse of Europe, par exemple, se multiplient.

Mouvement européen citoyen, au-dessus des partis, les manifestations Pulse of Europe, dont le but est de défendre les valeurs démocratiques et de promouvoir le projet d’une UE forte, ont lieu chaque dimanche dans de nombreuses villes européennes. Augsbourg a d’ailleurs accueilli Pulse of Europe le 2 avril, pour la première fois, et continuera à être le témoin de ces rassemblements tous les dimanches sur la place de l’Hôtel de ville. C’est, pour vous, Européens convaincus, l’occasion d’aller échanger et proposer vos solutions en prenant la parole publiquement : donner de la voix et manifester son attachement à l’UE, comme il est écrit sur le site pulseofeurope.eu.

Ouvrir l’eMAG aux autres langues et cultures du Sprachenzentrum contribue d’une certaine manière à construire l’Europe. Et si, à l’image du geste de l’eMAG, l’université devenait finalement le lieu privilégié de l’intégration et de la construction européenne ? Et si les 20 millions d’étudiants environ, actuellement sur les bancs des universités européennes, devenaient finalement 20 millions d’ambassadeurs potentiels des valeurs européennes à travers l’Espace européen de l’enseignement supérieur ?

Author: Christophe Lips

School’s not out in summer

You think summer and school can’t be combined? You’re wrong! Imagine the easiest combination and exactly this is what summer school means: It’s voluntarily attending a school or university during the summer break while your friends are lying on the beach or at a lido. Why did I choose to attend a summer school for teachers in Salzburg then? It was a new experience that I wanted to try and I think it was worth it, so here are some good reasons why you should at least take part in a summer school once in your life.

A meeting point for students, teachers and professors

The first reason to go to a summer school is that you meet a lot of nice people. Some of them are students like you, some of them are already teachers and some of them are even university lecturers. Everyone of them enjoys conversations and you can easily get a first impression about how other school systems and universities are structured. The participants during my time there came from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. So you can get different perspectives on teaching. The exchanges between the participants enrich your experience a lot and it often gives you some good new ideas for your own teaching practice.

Learn teaching by watching teaching

Secondly, the workshops are structured in a cool way. Most of them include active participation by the group members. The lecturers get you to try out different games, give feedback on your contributions and there’s a lot of talking and discussing in groups or with the whole course.

Explore a different world

Last but not least, you shouldn’t neglect to have a look at where the summer school takes place. In my situation it was one of the most beautiful cities in Austria, Salzburg. Although the courses did take place from the morning until the afternoon, you always had some time in the evening to explore the city. I was glad we stayed in a hostel near the centre, because that allowed us to have dinner and some after-work-drinks (I guess, you know what I mean). My friend, who joined me on this journey, and I really loved the old buildings. One of our personal highlights was the Hohensalzburg Fortress, which you can see from the roof terrace of the university building while drinking a cold beer with other course members. Just wandering around the historic centre in the evening was relaxing.

The summer school in Salzburg was a great experience and I got a lot of new impressions on all sorts of topics. As I took part in courses about English teaching and how to do small exercises during lesson breaks with your pupils, I guess my future teaching will focus on things I learned about these topics to keep my lessons alive. I hope I’ve been able to get across my passion and excitement for this kind of event. It was a cool trip, I met a lot of great people and I may be part of it again next year.

Author & Pictures: Alexander Gallwitz

Thoughts on the duration of exile

Don’t drive a nail into the wall,
Throw your coat on the chair.
Why plan for four days?
You will return tomorrow.

Leave the small tree without water.
Why plant another tree?
Before it grows as high as a step,
You will be glad to get away from here.

Pull your hat down tight when someone passes by!
Why browse a foreign grammar?
The letter that calls you home
Is written in a familiar language.

Just as chalk flakes off the ceiling
(Don’t fight it!)
The wall of violence
Erected at the border against justice
Will crumble.

II.

Look at the nail you have driven into the wall:
When do you think you will return?
Do you want to know what you believe inside?

Day after day
You work on your release,
Sitting in your room, writing.
Do you want to know what you think of your own work?
Look, the small chestnut tree in the corner of the courtyard
Which you heaved the can of water to!

Author: Yo Vogel
Picture: Brecht Festival, http://www.brechtfestival.de/index.php?id=39123

Are you a ‘Faschingsmuffel’?

I always feel like a stranger in my hometown Füssen in the Allgäu. The reason for this is simple: Fasching, the traditional carnival in southern Germany. But thankfully, the Fasching euphoria in Füssen is rather moderate compared to the villages surrounding it, like Buching, Hopferau and so on, which you most certainly don’t know if you’re not from the area.

Reasons to dislike Fasching

But why is that? I simply don’t get it. Okay, some of the costumes at the parades are in fact quite funny but – in my opinion – the majority aren’t. Most of the costumes are even worse! Hordes of badly-dressed cowboys and Indians! For every creative costume produced after hours and hours of work, there are hundreds of boring Wild West reenactments. And then there’s the horrible music. Every year, the same tasteless Schlager playlists penetrate my ears and leave me speech- and breathless (“Atemlos”…)! But for most people at Fasching, it doesn’t matter, since the majority of people just need a reason to get drunk and – even worse – they can’t cope with being drunk and behave aggressively.

Any chance of escape?

You might be wondering if it’s possible to escape from this madness. Well, if you’re living in one of these previously-mentioned Fasching strongholds, there’s only one way to do so: build yourself a soundproof air-raid shelter. Sorry. If you’re lucky and you live a safe distance away from these danger areas, take advantage – stay away and let the others have their fun. Tastes differ and so do ideas about what a good party looks like.

By the way, in case you have to hand in a seminar paper or something similar by the end of February, see the positive side of it: in the library, you’re safe from drunkards in fancy dress and Helene Fischer.

Authors: Thomas Kienast, Sebastian Reimann
Pictures: Noemi Hehl

New year, new me

You might think it’s a bit late for a New Year article, but is it really? It’s only one month into 2017 and I don’t know about you, but I’ve already ignored half of my New Year’s resolutions at least once. If experience in the past few years is anything to go by, though, I’ll have to wait until next year to give it a go again. But there’s a way to break the trend and still achieve your goals. Yes, even today!

Less chocolate, more sports

Judging from the commercials and articles I see around this time of the year, the top resolutions are: being healthier (including doing more sports, losing weight and downing smoothies for breakfast), as well as classics like quitting smoking. Being more organized is also a favorite, at least for me anyway. I don’t know how you feel, but the Christmas holidays, including New Year’s Eve, are (also) exceptional compared to other times of the year. So this might be the worst time to start working on goals that you want to continue to work on when you’re back in your normal routine. But that doesn’t mean
that you shouldn’t have them.

Start next Monday

Know the feeling when it’s 3:11 p.m. and you have to study, but you just can’t because 3:11 isn’t the right time? You have to wait until 4 p.m.! I think most of us struggle with our resolutions in a similar way. But here’s the good news: you don’t have to wait a whole year to achieve your goals. There are so many new beginnings: start in the next hour, next Monday, next month – whenever you feel like it!

Small steps

Needless to say, goals require a plan, and plans require to-do lists (written on pretty paper because that makes you more organized, of course). Instead of writing “Be a perfect student from next week on“, you might prefer “set aside fifteen minutes a day to keep track of assignments“. This not only sounds more doable and motivating, but actually ticking off things on your list will give you a good feeling.

Help!

Still thinking this won’t work for you? It’s time to look for someone you can tell what you’re about to do. Whenever I tell someone about my plans, I get motivated on the spot. The next time you see this person, you’ll obviously want to tell him or her about what you’ve done since you last saw each other. And answering “Hmm…nothing“ doesn’t feel too good, does it? Let’s try to achieve our goals together (in 2017, not 2018)!

Author & Pictures: Laura Annecca