50 Years ago, the First Woman Went to Space

Yesterday morning, when my radio alarm went off, the first words I heard were "today is the 50th anniversary of the first woman ever being in space". I was still quite sleepy and impressed at the same time, when I realized that they were referring to the soviet cosmonaut I'm having a presentation about next week in Russian class. Her name is Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova and -- you might have guessed it already -- she was the first (official) woman ever being in space.

It was the period of the space race in which America and the Soviet Union competed about the most developed space program, which resulted in the most ridiculous and dangerous experiments. Almost everybody knows about, for example, the Russian dog Laika that was sent to space but never came back. There were a huge amount of failed experiments on both sides which would be made public only several years later. After all, neither America nor Russia would have admitted mistakes or failure.

Interestingly, Tereshkova was not a "real" cosmonaut. She was working in a textile factory and parachuted for in her free time. When main space engineer Sergej Koroljov formed plans on sending a woman into space -- after the soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin successfully became the first man being and returning from space -- Tereshkova was chosen over 500 female candidates for her knowledge about parachuting and for deriving from a proletarian heritage. She underwent intensive cosmonaut training, including weightless flights, rocket theory, spacecraft engineering and many more.

On 13th June 1963, Vostok 6 launched into space. She orbited the earth 48 times and stayed in space for almost 3 days, which was the longest stay in outer space at that time. Unfortunately, she experienced nausea for most of the flight, which main engineer Koroljov was not pleased about. It is said that this was the reason why her flight was not made public immediately. Furthermore, it took further 19 years until the next woman would be send to space.

Today, Tereshkova is 76 years old. When she was invited by Vladimir Putin for her 70th birthday, she stated that she would love to go to Mars, even if it would mean to never come back to earth. This among several other reasons is why I think she must be an incredible person. Her life story is very impressive and she seems to be a strong woman which we never can have too few of.

Movie: Hunger (2008)

Sometimes, when I want to get into a certain topic that I am interested in (or at least should be for university), I like to start getting into it by watching a documentary or video adaption about/of the topic. This is also what I did when I had started researching about the Irishman Bobby Sands for my culture essay for English class. I felt that the political issues that surrounded his actions were a bit hard to understand. So I hoped that I would get the grasp of a basic image about these when I would be watching a movie or documentary about it.

The most recent and popular adaption of Bobby Sands' hunger strike in 1981 is the movie "Hunger" (2008), directed by Steve McQueen. It describes the hunger strikes in an unpolitical way, showing pain and fear on both sides (in this case: by both the guards and the hunger strikers) equally with using only a few words throughout the whole movie. McQueen rather focuses on delivering the right atmosphere by using strong images. A good example for such are the scenes in which fully-armed guards and naked prisoners fight each other brutally, both trying to gain control over the other. In contrast, a dialogue of 20 minutes between Bobby Sands (portrayed by Michael Fassbender) and a priest is shown in the middle of the movie, which, by the way, was filmed in one single take without changing the perspective of the camera. It is the exact opposite of the first third of the movie and mostly consists of skirmish between these two. The last third of the movie is showing the process of Sands' turning more and more into skin and bones, by using again strong and depressing images, this time ones of a broken man. The movie ends with Sands' death, not showing the aftermath and political consequences.


In my opinion, "Hunger" is not only the best adaption of the Irish hunger strikes, it is also an outstanding movie in general. The movie does not go for the heartstrings, but sticks to simply showing strong and disturbing images. Every further spoken word would be one too much, because the uncommented pictures speak for themselves. Even the dialogue between Sands and the priest requires to look at the picture itself and not focusing what they actually say, rather focusing on what they do not say. Creating an atmosphere and emotions in this quite theatrical way is what really astonished and touched me about this movie. It might not have cleared the fog about the political background in my head, but it left me incredibly impressed.

Learning Languages Online - Busuu

We all know that learning a new language is not as easy as it seems. Studying a language at university might be one of the most effective ways to do that, however, there are of course many more ways to accomplish that. People want to learn languages faster, easier and without much effort. For those, books like "Learn Russian in 30 Days!" or "Becoming the Master of the Spanish Language in less than 14 Days!" are written and published, although most of these look more promising than they are in reality.

And then there is Buusu. I heard about it in a commercial on television and they instantly got my curiosity. Basically, it's a community connects native speakers with language learners. People can share their texts or audio recordings and get these corrected by native speakers.

I have tested it for about a week with Russian as my learning target as an additional exercise to university. As soon as I had signed up, I had access to several lessons relating to basic topics such as family or emotions. For each lesson, I could choose between watching a slide-show of pictures with topic-related vocabulary on them, reading and writing dialogues and -- most exciting -- chatting with native speakers.

Unfortunately, it is the most basic thing about this community that had disappointed me: their lessons, which are supposed to take you step by step to a higher language level, are translated by and therefore dependent on the online dictionary PONS. Their dependence on PONS is one of the major reasons why their computer-generated lessons are hardly helpful, because the vocabulary is often taken out of context, often providing a wrong translation.

I decided to take the opportunity to interact with native speakers instead. When I had shared a little introduction text with my Russian knowledge from university, I almost instantly got several suggestions and corrections on my text which were incredibly helpful. In the end, I had even found a tandem-partner who wants to study German while being a Russian native-speaker.

All in all, Busuu might not be the place to learn a new language starting by zero, but definitely the right place to find language-interested people from around the world who are very happy to help you on your way of learning their native language.

Tasty Search Engines and Asparagus

I can't remember how I stumbled upon Yummly.com. But what I know is that it was a good thing, because it makes life in the kitchen so much easier. Why, you ask? Because this page is a search engine dedicated to food. You type in one random ingredient and it delights you with the most delicious recipes from other pages around the world. As soon as you've typed in your ingredient, you can limit the results by choosing further ingredients or ingredients that should be avoided, choose which holiday the recipe should suit, which taste it should have (e.g. salty or spicy), which allergies you have or which diet you stick to, which techniques should be used (e.g. stir-fried or baked), which cuisine it derives from and even more.

I tested it a while ago when I had bought a bunch of asparagus. I had never prepared asparagus before, so I was pleased when I found this recipe for oven-roasted asparagus. It is really simple as it mostly consists of washing, cutting and putting the asparagus into the oven, however, the result was a very tasty snack. And, furthermore, I learned some new vocabulary from this recipe:

to lop off (to chop/cut off)
to pat something dry (to hit lightly -- e.g. with a cloth -- until it's dry)
to drizzle, e.g. with oil (to moisten)
Don't skimp! (Don't use too less!)

I am very happy that there is a search engine for recipes, because I usually tend to buy food without thinking of how to prepare them afterwards. So this is definitely a good way to avoid throwing away food because it gets bad before you think of what to do with it and it most certainly helps finding new recipes and techniques.

Movie: Soldaat van Oranje

Yesterday night I chose to watch a DVD that has been hiding unwatched in my shelf for far too long: Soldaat van Oranje (engl.: Soldier of Orange) - a Dutch film from 1977. It portraits the life of six Dutch college students and the paths they follow during the Nazi occupation of Holland during WWII. The film is based on the autobiography of Dutch war hero Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema (portrayed by Rutger Hauer). It is, until today, one of the most successful and known Dutch movies. Although it is set in the dark times of the World War and follows a serious storyline, it is mostly not gloomy or depressing - sometimes, the movie even makes you laugh.



On a more linguistic side, it was also interesting to follow the switches between languages. Obviously, most of the time they spoke Dutch, but also German when talking to Nazis and English when they cooperated with the British government. 

Nonetheless, I enjoyed watching Soldaat van Oranje, especially because they managed to lighten up such a serious topic in a very charming way.