Hi! I'm Annette from Vienna, Austria.
I have a Bachelor's degree in Intercultural Communication and I finished my Master's in Translating and Interpreting in German, English and French at the University of Vienna in 2016. I'm currently working as a freelance translator.

Apart from reading, I like being outdoors, hiking, cycling, animals, languages, wasting time on the internet, and watching movies in English and French.
Some of my areas of interest are translating and interpreting, other cultures, world religions, spirituality (I practice Reiki on level 2), nature, human rights, space, psychology, etc.
I'm also quite interested in politics (national as well as international) and I love comedy and political satire.

I love animals, especially dogs. My twin sister and I are a foster home for an organisation that saves dogs from Slovakia and finds new homes for them in Austria.
I'm also currently volunteering at a farm offering animal-assisted therapy for kids. I love spending time with all the animals and doing something meaningful.

Ok, label time/full disclosure: I'm an aromantic asexual, highly sensitive, socially awkward, shy, an introvert, and a perfectionist. Yes, I'm a mess most of the time. My life is basically a string of embarrassments. I have no idea how I even made it this far, to be honest.

I'm looking for genuine, long-lasting correspondence and friendship. I'd like to find someone who shares my interests, especially someone who'd like to talk about books with me.

Of course, I would also help you with German. :)

I'm absolutely not interested in flirting or romance, and will not answer any such messages! But I do have to admit that some of them are very amusing. ;)

I enjoy learning languages and spend most of my time trying to improve my skills, which basically means reading and watching movies in English and French. ;)

I also have great appreciation for tea, irony, sarcasm, thunderstorms, wolves, traveling, and nature.

Hm, that's very difficult... I like all kinds of stuff, 80s rock, some classic, movie soundtracks, Scottish and Irish folk music,... Right now, I mostly listen to Enya and the LotR soundtrack.

I was really into old Hollywood when I was a teenager, so I know a surprisingly big number of 1940s screwball comedies.

I like period dramas and literary adaptations, basically everything the BBC makes into a series. I recently got into the Hornblower series (both the books and the films) and it's glorious!

I also watch a lot of documentaries and "heavy" stuff.

comedy: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee,

other: The West Wing, The Newsroom, Studio 60, Sherlock, Merlin, Call the Midwife, Downton Abbey, etc.

currently watching: Mozart in the Jungle

I think it's fair to say that I take reading very seriously. I just love books! Obviously, I have A LOT of them. Have I read them all? No, but that doesn't keep me from buying new ones all the time. ;)

I usually read more non-fiction (mostly memoirs) than fiction (I'm very picky, but I love the classics).

I sometimes do reading challenges, like trying to read 60 or 70 books a year. This year, I'm going for 70.

Some of my favorite authors are Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, the Brontë Sisters, Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, Donna Leon, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ferdinand Raimund, Johann Nepomuk Nestroy, Erich Kästner, Khaled Hosseini, David Sedaris, and Eoin Colfer.

Some of my favorite books:
Freedom in Exile (Autobiography of the Dalai Lama)
Long Walk To Freedom  (Nelson Mandela)
To Kill A Mockingbird
Autobiography of a Yogi
Gorillas in the Mist
The Other End of the Leash
Nathan der Weise (Lessing)
North and South
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Great Expectations
Little Dorrit
Les Misérables
Oskar Wilde: the plays
Shakespeare: the comedies
Sherlock Holmes Series
The Harry Potter Series
The Artemis Fowl Series
Lord of the Rings
The Nightrunner Series

finished: Mr Midshipman Hornblower
reading:  Lieutenant Hornblower

"Be yourself! Everyone else is already taken."
(Oscar Wilde)

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. But no one is entitled to their own facts."
(Jon Stewart)

“A library is like an island in the middle of a vast sea of ignorance, particularly if the library is very tall and the surrounding area has been flooded.”
(Lemony Snicket)

“The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man.”
(T.S. Eliot)

“The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.”
(Albert Einstein)

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Albert Einstein)

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
(Albert Einstein)

“The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.”
(David W. Orr)