Home is where the mountains are

Although I would say that travelling and exploring other places is my passion, I am always looking forward to coming home to my native town Lienz. Lienz isn´t a special city, it doesn´t have a lot of shops or a various range of free time possibilities, but what makes it so outstanding is that it is surrounded by mountains. You can reach the foot of a mountain in a few minutes and enjoy the hiking trails, slopes, dazzling landscapes.. of the Lienz Dolomites. Drinking tea with rum and eating “Käsespätzle” in a comfortable ski lodge, after having reached the peak of a mountain with cross country skis is my idea of relaxing. There is no better feeling than finally having descended the summit, having a stunning view over valleys and more mountains and being able to forget the everyday stress. The mountains make my hometown to my place of refuge, and that´s why I appreciate coming home to Lienz.  

Child Soldiers

I recently read the book A long way gone about Ishmael Beah, who became an unwilling child soldier during civil war in Sierra Leone. The story is based on a ture story and let me thought about child soldiers in general. I think that this topic is often swept under the map and in generelly we don't know a lot about child soldiers, that's why I've made a little research and want to share the information with you.

A child soldier is considered as any person below the age of 18, who is a member of or attached to government armed forces or any other regular or irregular armed force or armed political group, whether or not an armed conflict exists.

Like other, normal soldiers, child soldiers participate in combat, lay mines, scout, spy, act as decoys and so on. Besides they are often subjected to sexual slavery or other forms of sexual abuse.

At a rough estimate about 300 000 children suffer from wars and violence. Some are victims of the violence; others are forced to participate or have to protect themselves to survive.

Especially in areas where civil war or other conflicts rule the country, children are more likely to join the army, to get the feeling of security. For many children their combat group replaces their families and gives them a little sense of togetherness back.

Some children join the soldiers, because it is their only alternative to extreme poverty, insecurity others are press-ganged, they are manipulated or abducted and forced to serve a combat group.

In some cases children get alcohol or other drugs to reduce their fear of military actions. If they refuse to execute an order, they are punished or killed in front of the others.

Some children are successful by fleeing from the group; others are lucky and are discharged if their work is no longer needed. Afterwards the children take part in programs which help them to demobilize and reintegrate age. It could last for ages till a former child soldier is able to live his normal life again and to reintegrate in society again.

I hoped that with this post, I could make you a little bit more aware of what's going on in other parts of the world. In my opinion it is important to grapple with such topics and maybe try to find a way to make a contribution for a better world.

18 unbelievable ways you can bathe an elephant indoors

First of all, you need to measure the height and the weight of the elephant, then.. Did you really think that I am going to/I am able to advise you how to bathe an elephant indoors? :P Of course I am not. Actually I wanted to give you an insight into my daily life, but I couldn´t think of a catching headline. So I informed myself how to capture the readers’ attention and instead of writing about my daily tasks I want to share my new gained knowledge with you. Besides using interesting adjectives, researches have shown that numbers, for which reason ever, attract the readers and make a headline more impressive. Question words like how, when, or why and trigger words like way, fact, reason,.. grab the readers’ attention as well. Another good way to enhance your headline is to convince your audience with a promise to read through the whole article, text,... You could tell them that you will teach them how to do a specific thing for instance. All in all the following formula is recommended on several websites to create a thrilling headline: Number or Trigger word + Adjective + Keyword + Promise.  And, as you see, it did work out, because if you are reading this, you were definitely captured by my headline. I hope it was worth the effort ;) Bye for now.