Miss Euro Blogger - Bursting the Bubble

Made in Styria - Improved in California I participated in a Writing for the Web-workshop recently and one of the exercises was to write an exaggerated 'About Me' for my product/services website. The class was in German and therefore, so is the result. Let me know what you think!  Mein Name ist Cornelia, aber seit der dritten Klasse Volksschule nennt mich jeder Connie, weil wir damals 'coole' englische Namen von unserer Englischlehrerin bekamen. Ich bin zu 100% aus steirischem Fleisch mit ungarischer Gewürzmischung hergestellt, jedoch wurde meine Fleischqualität unter der teilwiesen Aufsicht von Governeur Arnold Schwarzenegger über 10 Jahre lang in Kalifornien aufgebessert. Made in Styria - improved in California. Dort bekam ich auch das Qualitätssiegel der University of California-Los Angeles verliehen. Dieses Qualitätssiegel ist auch der Grund warum ich trotz meiner Kompaktheit im Hochpreissegment verkauft werde. Neben meiner Expertise im zweisprachigen Texte...

Sietar Austria invited me to hold a reading of my book LAlien-From the Austrian Alps to the Hollywood Hills at the Vienna Expat center on January 21. And so I did. Check out the Press Release by MyMorawa summarizing the fantatic evening: https://www.mymorawa.com/neuigkeiten/pressemitteilung-nachlese-zur-buchpraesentation-lalien-von-cornelia-e-miedler/

  via GIPHY I know I'm late to the game of watching the movie Wonder Woman . I had heard good things about it but I was reluctant because I feared it would end like all female-centered heroine movies end: with a wedding or with a baby - or both. (I'm looking at you Hunger Games). No matter how often a woman saves the day in the end, she is always reduced to the role of the love interest or the mother, as if to say "yeah, we know you can kick ass and have brains but don't forget your place in society: by a man's side and in the nursery". Gag. At about the midway point of the movie, Wonder Woman seemed to go the same direction. Gal Gadot looks - of course - amazing in every shot. A flawless body and perfect hair at all times - just how we would have looked on the battle fields of World War I. I really envied her for her amazing outfit - who wouldn't want bullet proof bracelets. She is trained and raised by a lot of strong women in order to save the world...

I recently read an article about someone who 'repatriated' after six months of traveling. The writer talked about how difficult it was to reconnect with friends after she (or he - not sure) had been gone for so long. First, I think that if you lose your friends after you have been gone only for six month, they may not have been real friends anyway. So... good ridance. Second, try reconnecting with friends from school after you have been gone for over a decade! When I made it known on social media that I was about to move back to my home country, I had a lot of people from school reconnect with me and wanting to meet up as soon as I got there. I was excited that so many of them were interested in what I had been up to. The first friend I met up with is someone I went to kindergarden and school with. We had brunch and talked about the old days and the new days. Over the course of eating some scrambled eggs and drinking a cappuccino, it became pretty clear that this frie...

Photo by Michelle Mock Photography Available at https://www.mymorawa.com/self-publishing/gestaltung/publizieren/?books/ID47439/LAlien

Today, my book-baby turned one year old! To celebrate LAlien 's first birthday, I was interviewed by fellow writer E. Rachael Hardcastle . Check out the interview here: http://www.erachaelhardcastle.com/single-post/2017/04/12/The-Author-Interviews-Round-Cornelia-E-Miedler

Watching the U.S. election with a non-American, in my case European, perspective leaves one to wonder about what goes on in the minds of Americans. From an outside view, it is very clear that Donald Trump has the mental capacity of a five year old who had his candy taken away from him after throwing his own feces at his siblings. He pouts when he doesn't get what he wants. He interrupts and yells when he is exposed as lying. And he masks his insecurities (especially about his small hands and lack of business skills) by 'adjusting' the facts and repeating over and over how great and rich he is. He called Mexican rapists and is the poster child of misogyny. He is the crazy uncle you only need to see at Christmas and the reason why you get wasted on eggnog before Christmas brunch was even served. via GIPHY However, there is a 50:50 chance that we - and by 'we' I mean the entire world - will have to see the crazy uncle all year round. Earlier this week, I watched ...

Fifteen years ago today, I woke up at my new 'home' in Santa Monica, California, USA. I was still jet lagged. It felt odd to see palm trees when I looked out the window. It was also much warmer than I was used to this time of the year. Helicopters circled over the buildings and along the beach looking for anyone and anything suspicious as the terror attacks of 9/11 only happened 11 days earlier. I was confronted with a lot of unknowns: Will I like living here? Will terrorists attack Los Angeles? Will I find new friends soon? Will I get very homesick? Will I be able to get into and through university? Will I stay here forever or will I go back to Europe in a few years? All of these questions plagued me for weeks after moving to California. I felt very lonely most of the time. Yes, I spoke and understood English. Yes, I lived in an amazing neighborhood just a five minute walk from the beach. However, all of that doesn't automatically make you feel happy and...

http://www.huffingtonpost.de/cornelia-miedler/buchtipp-lalien-from-the-_b_11760058.html

The title of this post could also have been '5 weeks vs. 2 weeks'. Once you are used to having five weeks vacation (or even six weeks when I lived in Germany) it is very hard to drop down to two weeks of paid vacation. via GIPHY How do you not go insane on only two weeks of vacation? You plan your time off work very carefully and strategically - especially when you want to do trips overseas, which for me meant 'going home' to Europe. When you live abroad, going home is essential for not feeling gutted and not suddenly crying non-stop due to homesickness. It is one of the worst emotions I have ever felt. Yes, it gets better over the years but especially in the beginning those trips back home are necessary for the expat's/emigrant's well-being. Some companies that I worked for didn't even allow its employees to take these two weeks at once. Flying to Europe for a week is possible but very exhausting. Coming back and feeling relaxed after a one week trip ...

Nice is a lovely, touristy beach town in Southern France. Graz is Austria's second largest city and very quaint. Santa Monica is the representation of the California lifestyle. I've lived in two of those places and visted one several times as a tourist. And all three have one thing in common: they all were locations where vehicles were used as weapons. The incident in Santa Monica was the one that made me realize that this can happen anywhere. This is how I experienced it:   I heard the fluttering for the first time while sitting in front of my computer to do some research for a paper for college. It was around lunchtime on a regular sunny summer Wednesday in Santa Monica. The noise grew louder and louder by the second. I looked out the window in my home office but didn’t see anything. I walked into the living room where the windows were facing the city center. There, I saw the source of the fluttering noise. A cluster of several helicopters was hovering o...

Check it out! http://neuh.com/die-oesterreicherin-cornelia-miedler-beschreibt-ihr-leben-in-la-im-buch-lalien/

I must admit: I am happy to not live in the U.S. this year. 2016 is a presidential election year, which means that the circus started about 1 1/2 years ago. Anyone who has every experienced the full two years before a presidential election in the U.S. will know what I mean. Your entire surroundings are consumed by election news, paranoia and propaganda. You suddenly see your neighbor in a new, unfavorable light because he put a sticker supporting 'the other party' on his car. You realize you work in a company filled with voters for 'the other guy'. Everyone is cautious not to say the wrong thing trying to avoid starting a political debate about why their candidate is the right one. In 2004, when Bush was re-elected, I was a student at UCLA and experienced the presidential elections as a fairly new arrival in the U.S. for the first time. I was glued to the couch watching TV in fear of missing something. I was captivated by the aggressive, dirty politics. In 2008, ...

http://www.amazon.de/LAlien-Austrian-Alps-Hollywood-Hills/dp/3990498703/ref=sr_1_1?s=books-intl-de&ie=UTF8&qid=1461402343&sr=1-1

A week from today is Valentine's Day. Most women in relationships look forward to it, most single women dread it. Why is this one day every year stirring up so many emotions for so many women? Men only have one emotion when it comes to Valentine's Day: annoyance. They have to buy a present and they have to book a table at a restaurant that will only offer overpriced set menus. But worst of all, they have to pretend they are enjoying themselves. Valentine's Day is receiving more and more attention in Europe but it is still nowhere near the machinery it is in America. Once the New Year has begun supermarkets greet shoppers with an explosion in red! Flowers, greeting cards, teddy bears, champagne bottles, perfume, and so much more. The color smacks you in the face to remind couples to get ready for the day of love and to remind singles to feel sad and depressed for being 'alone'. On my first Valentine's date in Los Angeles, we went to one of those overpriced re...